Field notes · 18 September 2025

Footnotes that change the face of the statements

IFRS notes have a reputation for length. Length is not the problem. The problem is a pack that treats every heading as equal, so the revenue disaggregation and the accounting-policy copy-block arrive with the same weight. A director who has ninety minutes will read neither if both look like homework.

The notes that change the face are known to anyone who has closed a year: revenue, leases, expected credit loss, fair value, related parties, contingencies, going concern, and — when it applies — hyperinflation or a discontinued operation. Each of those should be printed beside the line it explains, with last year’s figure and this year’s figure in the same hand. If the policy choice changed, the page should say that in a sentence before any table.

Furniture notes still have to exist. They do not have to be performed. A one-page appendix that lists “read if you wish” is a kindness to the room. It is also a record that the committee was not invited to skip a going-concern paragraph by accident.

In Georgia, SARAS’s interest in disclosure quality is not a reason to read every boilerplate paragraph aloud. It is a reason to make sure the paragraphs that carry risk are the ones the sitting actually saw. If a related-party note is thin relative to the register the company already keeps, mark the thinness. Do not fatten the note in the briefing; that is management’s and the auditor’s work. Mark it, and let the committee decide whether to send the pack back.