Transitioning to Malaysian Public Sector Accounting Standards (MPSAS
The Governance Board of a federal government agency tasked its management to produce their complete set of financial statements using a new set of accounting standards i.e. the Malaysian Public Sector Accounting Standards (“MPSAS”). Previously, the agency was using the Malaysian Financial Accounting Standards (“MFRS”). The accounts of the subsidiaries and the associates are prepared by using the MFRS.
The Agency handles variety of activities that includes, amongst others, education, giving soft loans to small and medium industries and students, providing various public programmes etc. The Agency is also the parent to 44 subsidiaries and associates.
The financial statements have to be ready by 31 March for submission to the Jabatan Audit Negara.
Issues and Challenges
To handle the conversion of affected accounts of the Agency due to change of accounting standards i.e. from MFRS to MPSAS.
To handle the conversion of affected accounts of the subsidiaries from MFRS to MPSAS.
To consolidate the accounts of all the entities in the Group as if all entities in the Group are prepared using the MPSAS.
To prepare a complete set of financial reports within the stipulated time frame.
We designed and constructed a financial reporting template with the following features:-
For ensuring that proper data are inserted into the template, we provided training to the accountants of the Agency and its subsidiaries.
The subsidiaries converted the affected information (from MFRS to MPSAS) using the template which are then merged with those of the Agency for consolidation of the Group.
The template enables all the components of the Group to enter their data and relevant information expeditiously and with high degree of data integrity.
The high degree of automation enabled the production of high quality of financial statements of the Group and the Agency within the stipulated time frame.
The same concept and methodology is applied to various other large and medium size federal government agencies including 2 public research universities.
The schematic diagram for the above is depicted as follows:-