The Consternation of Public Sector Financial Reporting and Accountability: Implementation of Cash versus Accrual Accounting in Zimbabwe

Abstract

The study investigates the issue of either implementing cash or accrual accounting based financial reports for central government. It is trying to provide some literature on this area by contributing to the improvement of public sector accounting and reporting. The qualitative research design was used in this study because of its ability to extract views from respondents. The population of this was made up of Accountants, Economists, Trainers and Auditors. A sample of forty three from these public finance management people was used and stratified and convenience sampling methods applied to balance on the issue of time-cost saving and representation. A self-administered questionnaire was used to collect data together with analysis of annual financial reports for four developing countries in Africa. The results show that cash and accrual basis of accounting has benefits and challenges and IPSAS accrual and modified are preferred because of their comprehensiveness for the earlier and latter to enable some sort of comprehensiveness. Recommendations are the current financial reports under cash basis should include a statement of receipts and payments, accounting policies and considerations for migrating to IPSAS and further research on the challenges of adopting IPSAS in different countries identifying both the factors and strategies.

Keywords: Basis of accounting, cash accounting, accrual accounting, migrating, IPSAS