Evaluation of accounting policies in terms of financial statements analysis on Bist-100 companies

In the century we live in, businesses have to disclose their financial information to the public in a transparent manner in order to take part in international markets more effectively and efficiently and to maintain their existence. In this respect, enterprises are required to provide accounting and financial information reflecting their commercial activities to information users within the framework of certain rules. This information is formed by the financial reporting process by the enterprises. Financial reporting; are the tables that show the financial condition of the enterprises, the results of their activities that appear as the output of accounting and serve to give us an estimate about the enterprise. The formation of financial statements occurs within the scope of accounting policies within the framework of financial reporting and accounting standards preferred by enterprises. Users of financial statements want financial statements to be comparable and accounting policies to be applied consistently as a basic concept of accounting. In this context, changes and errors in accounting policies and accounting estimates are practices that affect the reliability of financial statements. Businesses may change their accounting policies in some periods. In this context, they must explain the policy changes in the footnotes section, which is an additional part of the financial statements. The aim of this study is; To determine the current status of the enterprises by examining the accounting policy preferences and disclosure levels in accordance with IAS 8 Standard by the enterprises traded on the stock exchange within the framework of Accounting Standards. In the first part of the study, studies in the field of IFRS / IAS and the elements of financial reporting were included and comparative information presentation and footnotes were mentioned in the financial statements. In the second part, explanations on mandatory accounting policies, alternative accounting policies, accounting forecasts and errors are included and the topics are supportedwith examples. In the third part, based on the BIST 100 index, 5 accounting policies included in the footnotes for the years 2016-2017-2018-2019-2020 belonging to enterprises in different sectors were examined. In addition, the data for the accounting policy preferences of the sectors were compared on a yearly basis and the changes realized according to the years were explained. According to the results of the study, it was determined that the sectors largely made statements in their accounting policy method choices and that IAS 23 borrowing costs werethe highest disclosure or undisclosed standard. Key Words: Accounting Policies, Accounting Estimates, Errors, Footnotes, BIST-100