IFRS Community Forums – Quick Start Guide

The IFRS Community Forums can be accessed at https://ifrscommunity.com/forum/.

Registration and login

To participate in the forums, you must first register. Simply click the ‘Register’ button located in the top-right corner of the forum’s homepage. After registration, you’ll receive an activation link via email. The link may take a few minutes to arrive. If you don’t see it in your inbox, please check your Spam or Promotions folders. While awaiting the activation link, feel free to draft your initial post in a local text file. After activating your account, log in to start publishing your posts.

Creating a new topic

To create a new topic, first navigate to the specific forum that best suits your query. For example, for topics directly related to IFRS, click on the relevant forum title:

Make sure you’re logged in, then click the ‘New Topic’ button.

For questions concerning universal accounting principles, local GAAP, or general financial reporting, please use the ‘General accounting and financial reporting discussion’ forum. This is also the suitable place for beginners to post their questions, even those related to IFRS:

When titling your new topic, be specific and descriptive. Avoid generic titles like ‘I need help with IFRS 16’ or ‘IFRS 16 Leases’.

Replying to posts

You have two options for replying to a topic:

Quick reply: This box appears beneath the last post in a topic. It’s a convenient way to respond quickly, but it doesn’t allow for text formatting:

Full editor: To access this, click the ‘Post Reply’ button while viewing a topic.

If you’ve started a quick reply and wish to switch to the full editor without losing your draft, simply click the ‘Full Editor & Preview’ button.

Quoting in replies

Remember, the rule of thumb is: the fewer quotes, the better the readability. If you’re responding to an older post, simply begin with @username of the author (note that the forum software won’t highlight this mention). Also, there’s no need to fully quote the previous post, as it’s unnecessary repetition.

If you’d like to reference a specific part of someone else’s post, you have two ways to do so:

Reply with a quote: Click the ‘Reply with a quote’ button, located in the top-right corner of the post you wish to quote:

After clicking, a reply box will appear containing the entire quoted post. Before writing your own reply, remove any parts of the quoted text that are not directly relevant to your response. Overquoting will quickly make a thread hard to read.

Quote button in full editor: Copy the text you want to quote, paste it into your post, highlight it, and then click the quote button in the formatting menu:

For example, your editor will show:

[quote]this is quoted text[/quote]
I am now referring to the quoted text.

And when published, it will look like this: 

Having the quoting guidelines in mind, please use this quotation mark-up when copying and pasting content, such as extracts from IFRSs or guidance from Big 4 manuals.

Formatting your post

When composing a post using the full editor, you have access to a variety of formatting options:

The forum software automatically converts any valid URL that you type into a clickable link without you needing to add any special tags or even the “http://” part. For instance, if you simply type a URL like ‘https://ifrscommunity.com/’ or ‘www.ifrscommunity.com’ into your message, the software will display it as a clickable link when someone views your post.

To display customised text rather than the raw URL, use the following template: [url=https://example.com]your text[/url]

For example, to display a link as ‘See the page on recognition of leases.’, format your link like this:

[url=https://ifrscommunity.com/knowledge-base/ifrs-16-recognition-and-measurement-of-leases/]See the page on recognition of leases.[/url]

This will result in:

See the page on recognition of leases.

When referring to specific sections within the Knowledge Base, use anchor links rather than copying and pasting the text. These anchor links appear in your browser’s address bar when you click on a section in the table of contents. For instance, the link below directs the reader to the section concerning the initial measurement of the right-of-use asset:

https://ifrscommunity.com/knowledge-base/ifrs-16-recognition-and-measurement-of-leases/#initial-measurement-of-the-right-of-use-asset

Subscribing to email notifications

To stay updated on new topics, you can subscribe to email notifications. Navigate to the forum that interests you and find the subscription button next to the search box at the top of the page:

IFRS Community currently has three forums: ‘IFRS-related topics’, ‘General accounting and financial reporting discussion’, and ‘After hours’. I recommend subscribing to all of them. However, please note that there’s no option to subscribe to all forums with a single click.

Forum rules

Please take the time to familiarise yourself with the forum rules before participating.