An accounting statement is a financial statement (primary or supplementary) that belongs to a set of the key or additional financial statements that an entity has to prepare, publish and make available to the users. Primary statements constitute those statements that are always required to be presented under normal reporting conditions, while supplementary are a different set of financial statements that are prepared and issued as a supplement to primary statements.

The primary financial statements are the statement of financial position (balance sheet), statement of profit or loss (the statement of income) and other comprehensive income, the statement of changes in equity and the statement of cash flows. The statement of cash flows is a presentation statement and does not cause any circular reference issues (i.e., does not affect double-entry tie-up).

Supplementary financials provide “supplementary information” to users of financial statements such as statements of charity (donations) or subsidized lending facilities (interest-free loans), etc. Supplementary statements may also include supporting schedules that provide specific disclosures in the form of a detailed itemization of the contents of an entity’s accounts or financial statements. Supporting schedules communicate additional details on the items of accounts (e.g., assets and liabilities) that usually take the form of tables of data constituting material information about such items.

A presentation statement, on the other hand, is a financial statement that is prepared and published only for presentation purposes. In other words, such a statement does not have an impact on double-entry movement in the accounts of an entity. Therefore, such a statement does not involve any circular reference connections- e.g, in terms of timing differences in payment or repayment schedules or expense incurrence patterns as set in the broader context of a financial statement or a set of financial statements. Examples of presentation statements include statement of cash flows, statement of quasi-equity, statements of assets under management, etc. The statement of cash flows summarizes the movement of cash and cash equivalents (CCE), in both ways- as inflows and outflows over the course of a financial period.