Accounting & reporting standards
Bookkeeping never happens in a vacuum — every set of books is kept on the basis of one or more standards (the law, a body of authoritative guidance, or a tax regime). Which standard applies depends on what entity you are, where it is based, and who reads the accounts. When more than one applies, they can conflict — a lease that goes on the balance sheet under one framework stays off it under another.
This section is a reference for the frameworks Shillinq supports. Each framework has its own page with an overview table of its standards (and, for the standards most relevant to bookkeeping, a deeper table of key requirements), every row linking to the authoritative source so you can read up on it.
Standard titles, numbers and effective dates were verified against the official sources (ifrs.org, wetten.overheid.nl, rjnet.nl, fasb.org, ipsasb.org, EUR-Lex) as of June 2026. Standards and their endorsement/transposition status evolve — always confirm a specific paragraph against the linked authoritative source before relying on it for a compliance decision. Items still subject to change (e.g. the EU CSRD/ESRS reform) are flagged on their page.
Three kinds of "standard"
A bookkeeping product juggles three different kinds of standard, and they behave differently — which is why they are modelled separately:
| Category | Behaves like | Examples |
|---|---|---|
| A. Bases of accounting | Competing — when several apply, one wins (the Standards policy ranks them) | IFRS, national GAAPs, tax bases, GASB/IPSAS/BBV |
| B. Compliance obligations | Additive — meet all that apply (tracked per jurisdiction, not ranked) | e-invoicing, ViDA, SAF-T, VAT |
| C. Output / filing formats | Layered on top of a chosen basis | ESEF/XBRL, SEC, SSARS |
Beneath all three sits the rule corpus — ~1,300 granular, machine-readable rules (invoice content, VAT, retention, recognition, …) that the bookkeeping engine actually applies. The corpus and the compliance catalogue define behaviour and ship as versioned static code — they add no menu or pages; the only standards UI is the per-tenant apply/order screen below.
Frameworks covered
A — Bases of accounting (the precedence catalogue)
| Framework | Issued by | Who applies it | Page |
|---|---|---|---|
| IFRS / IAS (IASB) | IASB | EU-listed groups (consolidated); optional for many others | IFRS / IAS |
| IFRS (EU-endorsed) | European Commission (EFRAG) | the legally binding EU variant (may lag IASB) | EU national GAAP |
| Dutch GAAP — BW2 Title 9 + RJ | Wetgever + RvdJ | Dutch legal entities | Dutch GAAP |
| German HGB (+ SKR / DRS) | HGB law + DRSC | German non-listed entities | EU national GAAP |
| French PCG | ANC | French entities (mandatory chart) | EU national GAAP |
| Italian OIC / Spanish PGC | OIC / ICAC | Italian / Spanish entities | EU national GAAP |
| Dutch tax — goed koopmansgebruik | Wet IB/Vpb + case law | Dutch taxpayers | Dutch GAAP → tax |
| US GAAP — FASB ASC | FASB | US entities under US GAAP | US GAAP |
| US special-purpose — tax / cash / modified-cash / FRF for SMEs | IRC / AICPA | US private entities not on full GAAP | US GAAP → OCBOA |
| IPSAS | IPSASB (IFAC) | Public-sector accrual reporting | Public sector |
| Dutch BBV | Wetgever + Commissie BBV | Dutch municipalities & provinces | Public sector |
| US GASB / FASAB | GASB / FASAB | US state-&-local / federal government | Public sector |
| ESRS (CSRD) | EFRAG → EU Commission | In-scope EU undertakings (sustainability) | Sustainability |
| IFRS S1 / S2 | ISSB | Investor-focused sustainability | Sustainability |
B — Digital compliance obligations
EN 16931, Peppol, ViDA (mandatory intra-EU e-invoicing from 2030), per-country mandates (IT, PL, ES, FR, DE, BE), SAF-T, and EU VAT — see Digital compliance.
C — Output & filing formats
ESEF & US-GAAP XBRL, SEC Reg S-X/S-K, AICPA SSARS — see Output & filing formats.
See also the cross-framework comparison — where the bases of accounting disagree (revenue, leases, inventories, development costs).
Deliberately excluded: IFRS for SMEs. Despite being the IASB's purpose-built private-entity standard, no EU member state has adopted it (it conflicts with the Accounting Directive), so for an EU+US product the national GAAPs are the correct SME layer. Revisit only if targeting LatAm/Africa.
How Shillinq uses this: the Standards policy
A bookkeeping entity is frequently subject to several frameworks at once — a Dutch BV keeps commercial books on BW2/RJ and a tax computation on goed koopmansgebruik; an EU-listed group adds IFRS; a municipality adds BBV. Where two frameworks prescribe a different treatment for the same transaction, the business logic needs to know which one wins.
Shillinq lets an administrator declare this in Settings → Accounting standards:
- Enable the frameworks that apply to the administration.
- Rank them in order of precedence (drag to reorder) — e.g. IFRS above Dutch GAAP for a listed group, or Dutch GAAP above IFRS for a BV that reports on Title 9.
The ranked policy is saved as a StandardsPolicy object. Business logic can then
ask the policy, for any topic where frameworks conflict (revenue, leases,
inventory, …), which enabled framework has the highest precedence — so the
resolution is a deliberate, auditable configuration choice rather than a hidden
default. See the comparison page for the conflicts this is
designed to resolve.
The policy and its precedence ordering are configured today; the per-topic resolution is exposed to business logic through a single resolver (
StandardsPolicyService.resolve(topic)) so future posting/valuation logic can consult it consistently.