Turkish financial reporting standards for SMEs: Aresearch on the opinions of the banks

Recently, issues such as globalization, technological advances, electronic trade and knowledge management are the most important developments in the world. In addition to these developments, the increases in the international activities of enterprises and the globalization of the capital have led a need to speak in the same language. This situation has brought many problems. In order to avoid the problems encountered and to develop a common accounting language, with the participation of many countries IAS and IFRS has been put forth. The idea of IFRS has been raised with the aim of providing uniformity in accounting applications and producing understandable accounting information for all the parties interested. The European Union (EU), has imposed an obligation to prepare consolidated financial statement in accordance with IFRS for publicly listed companies, since 2005. Türkiye, is in the process of EU membership, has also prepared and implemented its accounting system according to EU standards.As a result of the current interest in IFRS on all over the world and its performance on providing uniformity in national applications, the necessity for some specific studies has occurred for SMEs too. As a matter of fact, SMEs has an essential importance for national economies and their importance in international area is being increased day by day. Eventually, the accounting standards for SMEs were published in 2009 and the implementation date was up to their own decision. Therefore, SMEs on all over the world would be applying the same accounting standards and their financial statements would be comparable. Consequently, it is thought that these standards would increase the level of trust and contribute to the development of trade. For the SMEs in Türkiye, the accounting knowledge is mostly used for calculation of the tax to pay to the state, providing financial resource from the credit institutions and producing information to enterprise managerial board. And the most important area of usage of this knowledge is providing financial resource from the credit institutions. In Türkiye, SMEs have relationships mostly with the banks among all the credit institutions. This study aims to receive opinions of banks on the situations of current accounting applications in Türkiye, the applicability of TFRS for SMEs in Türkiye and all possible affects of the application process of TFRS. In this study, SMEs and the importance of SMEs for national economies has been studied. Additionally, Turkish banking system and the SME-Bank relationship has been examined and then the role and importance of accounting in this relationship has been emphasized. Finally, a survey which includes the existing situation and TFRS for SMEs, has been conducted on banks operating in Kayseri.