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Financial Accounting Research System Generally Accepted Accounting Principles (GAAP) is established by pronouncements
of the Financial Accounting Standards Board (FASB). Prior to FASB, there was the
Committee on Accounting Procedure’s Accounting Research Bulletins (ARB), and the
Accounting Principles Board Opinions (APB). Other publications by the American
Institute of Certified Public Accountants (AICPA) and FASB staff are important,
but officially, GAAP can be used if no explicit statement exists on the issue.
Text which has been amended or superseded is shaded. ACCESSING THE FARS DATABASE  Below the main window is a “Hit Reference” window with seven tabs (All, Search,
Browse, etc) Contents View
Topical Index
If you have no specific document (FAS, ARP, etc.) in mind but want to find out if there are any on a broad topic such as “Depreciation” in any of the infobases, click on the orange button next to “Topical Index.” You can then either click on the letter “D,” then scroll down to the specific topic, “depreciation”, or you can use the topic index in the left window to scroll down. There will be a list of documents under the heading (and any subheadings) that you can click on to get to the Original Pronouncements (left column), the Current Text (middle column), or EITFs (right column). Double click on the item you want to bring up. For example: Index term Original Pronouncement Current Text EITF Callable Obligations FAS78, ¶5 B05.109A-109B EITF.86-30 Query and Advanced Query Windows
There are two modes of “query searches”; these are keyword types of searches. One is the basic, (below) where a blank query window is displayed. Before beginning, it is best if you click the “All” tab at the bottom of the main window so that all of the various windows will be open.
To the left of the small query window at the very bottom of your screen, if you click on the binoculars (or dropdown “Search”, “Advanced Query”), the advanced query option (above) is launched. The Word List on the left is an alphabetical list of all the words contained in the current infobase. You can scroll through this list and double-click on a word to add it to the “Query For” box. As you type in each key word and then the space bar, the number of hits for that term is displayed, and as other terms are added it provides the results of the combination. (See example above.) If you want to find out what the required disclosures are for liabilities, type in “required” (641 hits), “disclosures” (275 hits, 108 in combination with “required”), “liabilities” (459 hits, 18 with “required” and “disclosures”). After you hit enter or OK, the upper window will list information on the section of the infobase you are in, the main window will display the text, and the bottom window will give you a brief listing of the next few hits in context. Clicking on the “Hit List” tab will expand the bottom window so that you can quickly locate the section you think would be most appropriate. HINTS ON USING THE FARS DATABASE
The FARS database has many of the search features of popular search engines like Google. How you use them will help to improve the quality of your search. We recommend using the advanced search (the icon with the binoculars) so that you can see how many hits you have. This will give you some idea if you want to use a more general term to increase the number of hits or, alternatively, if you want to add additional terms in order to narrow the results. Wildcards - A wildcard allows you to find words using patterns for a set of words. Single character - A "?" can be used to replace any single character in a term.. For example "advi?e" would match both advise and advice. Multiple character - A "*" can be used to replace 0 or more characters in a term. For example, "bank*" would find all terms which start with the pattern work (such as bank, bankers, or bankbook). Using quotes - If you want to search an exact phrase then the terms in the phrase should be placed in quotes. Example - "cash flows" returns over 1,000 hits in FARS, however, "cash flow" returns less than 500 hits but they are NOT included in the "cash flows" search. In order to get the results from both searches you need to modify the query as follows: "cash flow*" The * modifies the query so that the results include any phrase that matches the pattern. Using more than one term - as you add terms to a query the system will only return results that contain all of the terms you enter. This has the advantage of narrowing your search but it can omit results that are relevant to your search. If you want to search on either one term or another you need to place an "or" between the terms. Example - "common stock" and "common shares" are both phrases used in the FARS database to represent equity of stockholders. In order to get results that use either of those phrases you would enter "common stock" or "common shares" Synonyms - As illustrated above with "shares" and "stock," one idea can often be expressed with different terms. FARS has a Thesaurus which will automatically augment a term with a list of synonyms. We do NOT recommend that you take advantage of this feature. The reason for this recommendation is that the synonym list in FARS is generic and not accounting specific. Therefore you will get many terms, and therefore results, which are not relevant. If you would like to view the synonyms that FARS has for a particular term, in the advanced search window type your search term followed by "$" You can then pick out terms which you feel are relevant and use them in a search rather than having the system automatically use all of them. Example - debt$, returns terms such as liability, debt, score, arrears, checks, etc. Some of these terms, i.e. score, checks, would not be appropriate for most accounting searches. If you just want variations of the same word you use an “%”. Example – account%, returns the terms account, accounts, accounted, accounting. Proximity Searches - If you would like the same words to appear close to each other but you are not sure of the exact phrase you can use a proximity search. Word proximity allows you to specify a range that all terms in the proximity search must appear. If you are unsure which term will appear first you want an unordered proximity search. To do this enclose the terms in quotes and use the @ sign followed by the number within which the quoted terms must appear. Example – When talking about the financial statements a researcher could use “income statement” or “statement of income,” as well as other phrases. To obtain both of these phrases as well as any other times these terms appear close to each other you could search on “income statement” @3. The system will return all the results where the two terms within 3 words of each other or 544 hits. If you are sure of the order the terms must appear then do an ordered proximity search. To do this enclose the terms in quotes and use an / followed by the number within which the quoted terms must appear. Example – “income statement”/3. This query returns 475 hits, less than the above query because the terms income must precede the term statement. J. Spencer & Patricia Standish
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