Internet Financial Reporting: Disclosure about Companies on Websites

The Internet has emerged as a medium of communication of financial reporting information by companies since the mid to late nineties. There are various aspects of Internet based financial reporting that are different from the traditional hard copy presentation. These factors include the actual mode of presentation and, the process of access to the information, that is accessing a company’s website rather then the hard copy version of the financial reports. Various bodies mentioned in this paper have made recommendations to improve financial reporting disclosure online. There is lack of uniformity regarding financial reporting disclosure between companies world wide. This is in relation to various aspects of financial reporting. The three aspects of financial reporting disclosure investigated in this paper include: Fundamental reporting elements, Corporate Social Responsibility reporting elements and Corporate Governance elements. Four samples of companies were selected for comparison regarding financial reporting disclosure. These include: diversified companies, hotels, companies listed on the London and the New York Stock exchanges. It was found that 31 percent of the sample companies did not have a website. The diversified companies had the highest percentage of financial reports on their websites, with the hotels having the least presence of financial reports on their websites. The companies listed on the London Stock exchange had more financial reports available on their websites as compared to the ones listed on the New York Stock Exchange. The item that was least disclosed was the Analysts' Coverage item. Twenty percent of the sample companies with financial reports did not have accompanying audit reports. This is a cause for concern because all companies are required to have audit reports with their annual financial reports under national and international regulatory requirements. Out of the financial statements, the least disclosed statement was the Shareholder's Equity statement. It was found that the disclosure was varied from none to adequate but not 100 percent complete in regards to the three types of financial reporting disclosure mentioned above. It was also found that most companies were not following the best practice guidelines as recommended by various national and international bodied therefore having a negative impact on the implementation of the fundamental qualitative characteristics of accounting information being reliability, understandiblity, completeness, timeliness and verifiability of information. It is important for companies world wide to adopt a uniform approach to financial reporting on the Internet in order to make decision making by users a more informed process.