Accounting Resources: Financial Accounting

The Financial Accounting Standards Board (FASB) is a private, not-for-profit organization whose primary purpose is to develop generally accepted accounting principles (GAAP) within the United States in the public's interest.

The FASB makes publicly available the authoritative standards that it has issued, as well as the standards issued by its predecessors (the Accounting Principles Board and the Committee on Accounting Procedure). Also available are nonauthoritative Statements of Financial Accounting Concepts issued by the FASB.

The Codification reorganizes the thousands of U.S. GAAP pronouncements into roughly 90 accounting topics and displays all topics using a consistent structure. It also includes relevant Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), guidance that follows the same topical structure in separate sections in the Codification.

The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (frequently abbreviated SEC) is a federal agency which holds primary responsibility for enforcing the federal securities laws and regulating the securities industry, the nation's stock and options exchanges, and other electronic securities markets in the United States.

EDGAR, the Electronic Data-Gathering, Analysis, and Retrieval system, performs automated collection, validation, indexing, acceptance, and forwarding of submissions by companies and others who are required by law to file forms with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (the "SEC"). The database is freely available to the public via the Internet.

The Education Initiative is developing 35 stand-alone training modules—one for each section of the International Financial Reporting Standard (IFRS) for Small and Medium-sized Entities (SMEs).