IFRS 18 in practice

More than an accounting project

When IFRS 18 replaces IAS 1 from the 2027 financial year, the income statement faces its biggest overhaul in nearly three decades. The income statement will be divided into five categories, with operating, investing and financing as the new main pillars. Operating profit becomes a defined measure, and companies' own performance measures, known as management-defined performance measures (MPMs), must be disclosed in an audited note.

So far, the discussion has mainly focused on how items should be classified and how key figures should be defined. These are important questions, but for most companies the real test lies elsewhere: in the operational logistics of report production itself. Companies that treat IFRS 18 as a purely accounting project risk being surprised by how time-consuming the actual transition turns out to be.

The timeline does not make things easier. The new structure must already be applied, with restated comparative figures, in the interim report for the first quarter of 2027. The work therefore needs to be under way now, so that the new structure is in place before year-end.

The comparative figures for 2026

Because IFRS 18 must be applied retrospectively, the comparative figures for 2026 need to be restated quarter by quarter. And it does not stop at the primary statements.

A change in classification ripples through the entire report. It affects segment notes, key figure tables, multi-year summaries, charts and individual figures in both the CEO's statement and the board of directors' report. The same process is repeated in every interim report during 2027, and often also in restated historical series that the company chooses to publish in advance.

In a manual process, every such adjustment triggers a chain reaction. Someone has to track down every instance of the figure, change it and check that everything still adds up. Changing a figure takes seconds. Making sure every instance has been updated can take considerably longer.

The risk of parallel tracks

At many companies, figures pass through several stages before the report reaches the market. They are prepared in Excel and transferred to Word or InDesign, often by an external agency, and then reused in presentations and press releases. Each stage creates a new copy, which increases the risk of conflicting figures.

When a figure is adjusted late in the process, which is common during a transition, there is an immediate risk that different documents will show different values. The same applies if the change does not reach every stage. A discrepancy like this damages trust among analysts and investors, and it is difficult to explain to the auditor.

IFRS 18 increases that risk in several ways:

• During the transition, two versions of operating profit are in circulation, the old and the new, and they are easy to mix up.
• Management-defined performance measures must be disclosed in an audited note. A figure that differs between the note and the body text therefore becomes a matter for the audit.

A single source of data

The most effective way to reduce these risks is to have all figures drawn from a single, unified data source. When tables, charts and figures in the body text are linked to the same underlying data, the IFRS 18 restatement is done once. The change then takes effect everywhere at the same time. This sharply reduces the risk of discrepancies, shortens the time needed for checks and makes late changes manageable. The finance function gains control over the figures instead of chasing them.

From burden to control

OnlineReports is built around exactly this principle. Figures are taken directly from the company's master Excel file and generate tables and charts automatically. Through text variables, the figures in the body text are also updated the moment the underlying data changes, in every language. The layout follows the company's visual identity, so new rows and subtotals require no new design work. PDF and digital formats are created from the same content, and the reports are prepared for ESEF tagging in established tools.

For IFRS 18, this means the transition becomes a controlled process instead of a manual hunt for figures. And the gains do not stop in 2027. Companies that eliminate parallel tracks now avoid the same bottleneck in every future interim report.