Answer to Question #67402 in Accounting for lisa

Question

List and describe the benefits and application of the methods for presenting and formatting financial data.

Answer 1

The first form of analysis is the nature of expense method. Expenses are aggregated in the income statement according to their nature (for example, depreciation, purchases of materials, transport costs, employee benefits and advertising costs), and are not reallocated among various functions within the entity. This method may be simple to apply because no allocations of expenses to functional classifications are necessary
The second form of analysis is the function of expense or ‘cost of sales’ method and classifies expenses according to their function as part of cost of sales or, for example, the costs of distribution or administrative activities. At a minimum, an entity discloses its cost of sales under this method separately from other expenses. This method can provide more relevant information to users than the classification of expenses by nature, but allocating costs to functions may require arbitrary allocations and involve considerable judgement.
Source: https://www.aasb.gov.au/admin/file/content105/c9/AASB101_07-04_COMPsep05_01-06.pdf