Field notes · 12 March 2026

What a board needs on the table before it signs

A board that signs IFRS statements is not a second audit committee and it is not a seminar. It has a morning. The papers that must be on the table are few: the face of the three statements, the going-concern paragraph as it will be printed, related-party balances, and any note that has changed the measurement of a material line since the last signed year.

Everything else can be present without being performed. Directors who are given forty pages of ratio commentary will perform none of it and then feel they have failed. Directors who are given four pages that name the movements, with the supporting note behind each tab, can finish the sitting with a record of what they asked.

In Tbilisi this is not a theoretical preference. Public-interest entities already file a great deal with SARAS. The sitting does not need to re-enact the filing. It needs to know whether the year in the draft is the year the directors believe they oversaw. If revenue jumped because a single contract was pulled forward, that belongs on the opening spread. If cash fell because a related party was repaid, that belongs next to it. If neither happened, the spread should say so in a sentence, not in a chart that implies drama.

The company secretary’s job is to get those pages into the room two days early. The finance director’s job is to live with the questions they raise. The worst pack we see is the one that arrives on the morning of the sitting with a new lease note no director has had time to dislike.