Association of Chartered Certified Accountants
Notes to the Financial Statements for the year ended 31 March 2022
1 General informationACCA is a global professional accountancy body incorporated under Royal Charter with statutory recognition in the UK. Council has concluded that ACCA should prepare financial statements which comply with UK-adopted International Accounting Standards. These financial statements are presented in pounds sterling because that is the currency of the parent undertaking which is domiciled in the UK. All values are rounded to the nearest thousand pounds.
Non-UK operations are included in accordance with the policies set out in note 2.
New and amended standards during the year and changes in accounting policiesACCA has applied the following standards and amendments for the first time for the annual reporting period commencing 1 April In April 2021, the International Financial Reporting Standards Interpretations Committee (IFRIC) issued two Agenda Decision items which impacted ACCA’s treatment of its Software as a Service
(SaaS) arrangements.
• Customer’s right to receive access to the supplier’s software hosted on the cloud (IAS 38 Intangible Assets) – March 2019. This Agenda Decision considered whether a customer receives a software asset at the contract commencement date or a service over the contract term Configuration or customisation costs in a cloud computing (SaaS) arrangement (IAS 38 Intangible Assets) – April 2021. This Agenda Decision discussed whether configuration or customisation expenditure relating to SaaS arrangements can be recognised as an intangible asset and if not, over what time period can the expense be recognised.
ACCA’s accounting policy has historically been to capitalise all appropriate costs related to SaaS arrangements as intangible assets. Following the IFRIC Agenda Decision items, ACCA analysed previously capitalised intangible assets to assess whether a software asset could still be recognised. The basis for this were three main tests. Is the asset identifiable. Does ACCA control the asset. Does the asset generate future value?
The outcome of the analysis is that ACCA was unable to meet the test for control following the guidance issued and has revised its accounting policy dealing with intangible assets to recognise that the costs of configuring or customising suppliers application software in a SaaS arrangement to be expended in the consolidated income statement.
ACCA has reviewed its computer software assets to ensure that costs capitalised
in the years ended 31 March 2020 and 2021 are inline with IAS 38 Intangible Assets and the updated accounting policy which must be applied retrospectively. This has resulted in a reclassification of certain intangible assets to either a prepaid asset and/or as an expense in the financial statements impacting both the current and the prior year.
The following table summarises the impact, net of tax, of this change in accounting policy.
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