We are now rapidly approaching 2011, and this is the start of the move to the International Financial Reporting Standards (IFRS). It is one massive change for those in accounting jobs, as until now the US has been working on the Generally Accepted Accounting Principles (GAAP). If you were starting out in an accounting career, the GAAP is what you would have been taught.

Accounting employment is certainly going to have to accept some changes to the way it works, but the move to the IFRS is better in the long run as it means that the way countries interact in terms of accounting will match more closely and in the long run make it easier for all to understand. However, at the moment universities seem to be dragging their heels a bit with this, and only less than 40% have done anything to change their courses to incorporate IFRS when surveyed recently. This certainly isn't such good news for those seeking accounting jobs and accounting careers.

However, being aware of the new accounting employment changes as an individual will make it a lot better for you than going into accounting careers without any knowledge of the pending change, and this one is going to happen, of that you can be sure, so spending time personally researching IFRS will stand you in good stead for competing in the accounting jobs market. Timing the transition to IFRS is all important and it does look more like the accounting world themselves are on track, so if you are going in as a trainee you should find that you are being taught the newer ways of working rather than lagging on the GAAP standards.

Government bodies will be moving over to IFRS; however, smaller private companies will actually get a choice and could choose to use both accounting rules, but the question then has to be, why would you do that? If the private companies need to provide work using IFRS to compete in the business world then it would seem thoroughly pointless to keep working with two sets of standards as this just leads to double handling of work and makes it much more complicated, causing the company to become less cost effective. If smaller companies start to lose money there is a big risk that they will not survive in the current economic climate.

The final decisions are still to be made and will not be made until 2011, but accounting employment organizations will need to be keeping a close eye on the decisions made. However, erring on the side of caution suggests that IFRS makes so much sense when looking at the US as part of the global community, so going with the flow and moving over to the newer standards is going to be the most sensible option. Some courses are being created specially to help those already in accounting move over and will look at the differences in the course, so it may be worth taking the bull by the horns and getting your staff onto the courses sooner rather than later and making sure you are one of the first to know how it all works.

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