Finance, Accounting and Audit
Financial Reporting
International Financial Reporting Standards (IFRS)
The standards where judgement decides the number, and the disclosure that has to explain the judgement.
- Duration
- 5 days
- Contact hours
- 30
- Level
- Intermediate
- Fee from
- On enquiry
Overview
Most of IFRS is mechanical and most of the argument is not. The difficulty is concentrated in a few places: when revenue is recognised, what counts as a lease, whether an impairment has occurred, how an expected credit loss is estimated, and what fair value means when there is no market. Those are the areas where two competent accountants reach different numbers from the same facts, where auditors push back, and where a disclosure note has to carry the reasoning. This week works through them on the delegate's own statements rather than on illustrative examples.
Who should attend
Financial accountants and reporting managers preparing IFRS statements, financial controllers reviewing them, and internal auditors and analysts who have to understand how a number was arrived at.
What you will be able to do
- Apply the five step revenue model to a contract where the performance obligations are not obvious.
- Account for a lease from the lessee side, including the judgements about term and discount rate.
- Test an asset for impairment and support the assumptions that drive the result.
- Estimate an expected credit loss and explain the staging decisions behind it.
- Write a disclosure note that answers the question a reader will actually ask.
How it is taught
Short input, then work, across 5 days of roughly 6 teaching hours each. Exercises run on situations delegates bring rather than on a case study written for a different organisation. Cohorts are capped so that everybody is asked something.
Available as classroom, live online, in house.
Programme outline
Day 1
Where IFRS is actually difficult
- The handful of standards that produce most of the argument
- Principles, policy choices, and the difference between them
- First time adoption and transition in practice
- Reading the basis for conclusions when the text is ambiguous
Day 2
Revenue
- Identifying performance obligations in a bundled contract
- Variable consideration and constraint
- Over time against at a point in time, and the evidence for either
- Principal or agent, and why it changes the top line
Day 3
Leases and assets
- Lease term, options and the incremental borrowing rate
- Recognition, measurement and the effect on gearing
- Property, plant and equipment, componentisation and useful life
- Intangibles, development cost and the capitalisation line
Day 4
Impairment and credit loss
- Indicators, cash generating units and allocation
- Recoverable amount, and defending a discount rate
- Expected credit loss, staging and forward looking information
- Reversals, and what cannot be reversed
Day 5
Presentation and disclosure
- Fair value hierarchy, and what level three actually requires
- Disclosure as explanation rather than as compliance text
- Judgements and estimates, written so they inform
- Reviewing a set of statements the way a regulator reads them
What you leave with
- A worked revenue, lease or impairment treatment for one of the delegate's own contracts or assets.
- A file note recording the judgements made and the basis for each, in audit ready form.
- A shortlist of the delegate's own disclosures that would not currently survive a challenge.
Dates and fees
| Dates | Location | Format | Fee |
|---|---|---|---|
| 23 to 27 November 2026 | Nairobi, Kenya | Classroom | US$1,500 |
| 30 November 2026 to 4 December 2026 | Dubai, United Arab Emirates | Classroom | US$1,500 |
| 7 to 11 December 2026 | Lagos, Nigeria | Classroom | US$1,500 |
| 14 to 18 December 2026 | Durban, South Africa | Classroom | R15,000 |
Fees are per delegate and cover tuition, all programme materials and the certificate. Travel, accommodation and visas are arranged by the delegate. Registration closes two weeks before a programme starts.
Certificate
A GATI certificate recording what was attended, issued after the programme has run and attendance has been taken. Attending at least 80 per cent of the days earns a certificate of completion; attending less earns a certificate of attendance stating exactly what was attended. Every certificate carries a code that anybody can check against GATI's own record.
It records participation. and GATI does not claim one it does not hold.