Preparation of Financial Statements of Enterprises According to IFRS: An Empirical Study from Vietnam*

The purpose of this study was to find out what factors influence the preparation of financial statements in accordance with the International Financial Reporting Standards (IFRS) for Vietnamese businesses. The survey included 150 enterprises, including parent companies of state-owned economic groups, parent companies that are listed companies, large-scale public companies that are unlisted parent companies, and enterprises with 100 percent foreign direct investment, that will apply IFRS voluntarily from the year 2022 and switch to the mandatory application from the year 2025 (Ministry of Finance, 2016). The survey was carried out with the help of the Google Form tool, and the data was processed using EFA and regression analysis methods on the SPSS 22.0 software. The findings show, for enterprises in Vietnam, that six factors influence the preparation of financial statements in accordance with IFRS, ranked in order of influence from high to low: (i) Related party requirements; (ii) Professional qualifications of accountants; (iii) Roles of enterprise managers; (iv) Forms of capital ownership in enterprises, (v) Institutional regulations, and (vi) Operational characteristics of the enterprise. In addition, the study also shows that, for enterprises in Vietnam, the requirements of related parties are an important factor to promote the preparation of the financial statements of enterprises according to IFRS.