Abstract:

The importance of quality financial reports is emphasized by users, accounting professionals and regulatory institutions alike. The latter have issued guidelines and frameworks that dedicate a special place to the quality of accounting and financial information, in order to accommodate the best interests of financial reports’ users. This paper reviews the international referential regarding the qualitative characteristics of accounting information with the aim of examining its traits, limits, importance and role in the continuously-changing reality of global economics. We conclude that given the great diversity of reporting entities and dynamic economic contexts, the balance between quality characteristics is a matter of professional judgement of those whom produce or use financial reports.