Accounting Research

As an expansion on yesterday's discussion of SEC accounting and FASB, I offer a quick research guide to GAAP materials for public companies.

Because of the variety of sources, I have found it useful to start with an accounting treatise. There are two Warren Gorham & Lamont treatises on Westlaw that cover accounting for public companies. Both treatises discuss the entire GAAP hierarchy from Regulation S-X to the FASB Emerging Issues Task Force. The SEC Accounting and Reporting Manual (WGL-SECMAN) is organized by disclosure type. There are sections on registering securities and filling out form 10-K. The Handbook of SEC Accounting and Disclosure (WGL-SECHDBK), on the other hand, is organized, like a convential auditors handbook, by financial statement type (the first chapter is "Balance Sheets.")

Reasearching primary FASB materials is about to change dramatically. In June, FASB published SFAS No. 168: The FASB Accounting Standards Codification (FASB ASC). The FASB ASC, which comes into force in the third quarter of this year, replaces pretty much every existing GAAP document and flattens the GAAP hierarchy to two levels (in FASB ASC, and not). Basic level access to a database containing FASB ASC is free.