Accounting Series Releases (ASR)

What Are Accounting Series Releases?

Accounting Series Releases (ASRs) are official accounting professions distributed by the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC). ASRs furnish accountants with accounting and auditing procedures to follow in reports documented with the SEC. ASRs remember rules and rules for the different facets of corporate accounting, for example, auditing policies, disclosure orders and filing statements for publicly traded companies.

Understanding Accounting Series Releases (ASRs)

Accounting Series Releases (ASRs) are issued by the SEC as a means to help constantly refine accounting requirements and principles in response to financial reporting issues. The principal Accounting Series Release was distributed on April 1, 1937. The SEC issued this first release in response to divergent and ambiguous concepts pervasive among rehearsing accountants around then. Because of the equivocalness of the financial data then being reported by publicly traded companies to regulators and the investing public, the SEC looked to issue guidance on what ought to be thought of, and what it as a regulator would consider, as sound accounting practice.

Accounting Series Releases in Practice

The SEC has issued many Accounting Series Releases since ASR Number 1 was distributed in 1937. Subjects tended to in various ASRs run the array of the accounting practice, and incorporate such things as deferred taxes (ASR Numbers 85 and 86), the SEC's preference for an "comprehensive" income statement north of one dealing with just current income (ASR Number 70) and the accounting of employee stock options (ASR Number 76). As a specific model, ASR 280 addresses the SEC's rules on accounting for the income or loss applicable to common stock. In this ASR, that's what the SEC demonstrates "income or loss applicable to common stock ought to be reported on the face of the income statement when it is really unique ... from reported net income or loss or ... indicative of critical trends or other qualitative contemplations."

Alongside being distributed in the SEC Docket, recent Accounting Series Releases might be posted on the SEC's website. ASRs are distributed alongside Auditing Enforcement Releases (AAERs) in the SEC Docket. Accounting Series Releases were classified as Financial Reporting Releases (FRRs) starting in 1982.