Quality of Accounting Information: Essence and Assessment Method

The article is devoted to the substantiation of theoretical and methodological principles of assessing the quality of accounting information. The analysis of existing approaches to the interpretation of the essence of the quality of accounting information is performed. The dual nature of the quality of accounting information is substantiated. Firstly, the quality of accounting information is considered as a set of consumer characteristics of information that exist objectively, and embody the resources consumed at each stage of accounting process; secondly, the quality of accounting information is determined by its ability to meet the information needs of different user groups in the decision-making. The approach to assessing the level of correspondence of the quality parameters of information to reference indices, needs, demands and expectations of different users is proposed. The author’s approach to assessing the quality of accounting information is based on expert methods and provides for the consistent implementation of the following steps: structuring of qualitative characteristics of accounting information, determining the degree of correspondence of its quality characteristics to benchmark indices, calculating the baseline quality of accounting information, ranking the quality characteristics of information by users, and calculation of integral index of quality of accounting information.