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Effective 1 January 2027

IFRS 18 changes how your income statement is presented, and most finance teams are not yet sure what moves where.

IFRS 18 Navigator answers your specific question with a citation, or reads your own statements and shows you the reclassification. It is built for the people who have to defend the numbers, so every answer names the source it came from.

Access opens in batches before IFRS 18 applies on 1 January 2027. Joining costs nothing and reserves your place.

An animated illustration of the reclassification. The same figures and the full detail are in the exhibit that follows.

The work is real, and the tooling is not

IFRS 18 introduces three mandatory categories in the statement of profit or loss, a required operating profit subtotal, and disclosure rules for management performance measures. Thus every line item has to be classified. Most are settled by the standard, and the ones that are not, together with the assessment of your main business activity, are the ones that have to be defensible. Moreover, the options for getting that decision right are a paid standards database, a Big Four manual that is not about your numbers, or a general chatbot that cannot tell you where its answer came from.

The categories are not obvious

Interest, dividends received, and the results of associates all sit differently depending on your main business activities. The standard turns on facts that a generic summary does not know about you.

Management performance measures now carry disclosure

A subtotal you publish outside IFRS may become an MPM, with a required reconciliation and a statement of why it is useful. Finding which of your measures qualify is a review, not a lookup.

Nobody accepts an unsourced answer

An answer you cannot trace is an answer you cannot put in a paper to the audit committee.

How it works

  1. 01

    Ask in plain language

    Type the question the way you would ask a colleague. The answer comes back structured as impact, requirement, and what to check, with the sources listed beside it.

  2. 02

    Or attach your own statements

    Add a PDF of your annual report, or an Excel trial balance. Spreadsheets are read as tables, not as pictures, so the figures stay figures.

  3. 03

    See the reclassification

    For a statement of profit or loss, the reclassification that would take an afternoon in Excel is laid out in under a minute: every line re-bucketed into Operating, Investing and Financing, with the new operating profit subtotal in place and the judgement calls flagged.

Watch a statement move

The work IFRS 18 creates is not the arithmetic, it is deciding which line belongs in which category and then re-presenting the statement around three new subtotals. Below is that decision made on an illustrative statement. Every line holds its figure and moves to where the standard puts it, and the operating profit subtotal appears once they have landed.

An animated illustration of the reclassification. The same figures and the full detail are in the exhibit that follows.

A marked line is one IFRS 18 places somewhere other than where the entity presents it today.

The Reclassification View

Current presentation on the left, IFRS 18 presentation on the right, the same figures in both. Lines that moved are marked. Lines that need a management decision are marked differently, because the standard does not decide them for you.

Reclassification View

Illustrative Group plc · Year ended 31 December 2027

£ million

Current presentation

Current presentation
Line itemAmount
Revenue4,820
Cost of sales(2,914)
Distribution costs(462)
Administrative expenses(538)
Restructuring charge(74)
Gain on disposal of property31
Share of profit of associates42
Dividend income from equity investments18
Interest expense on borrowings(148)
Interest expense on lease liabilities(34)
Interest income on cash deposits26
Net pension finance cost(11)
Income tax expense(382)

IFRS 18 presentation

IFRS 18 presentation
Line itemAmountChange
Operating
Revenue4,820
Cost of sales(2,914)
Distribution costs(462)
Administrative expenses(538)
Restructuring chargeMoved(74)
Gain on disposal of propertyMoved31
Operating profitNew subtotal863
Investing
Share of profit of associatesMoved42
Dividend income from equity investmentsMoved18
Interest income on cash depositsMoved26
Profit before financing and income taxNew subtotal949
Financing
Interest expense on borrowings(148)
Interest expense on lease liabilities(34)
Net pension finance cost(11)
Profit before income tax756
Income tax
Income tax expense(382)
Profit for the period374

Requires management judgement

0

No line in this statement is left to management by IFRS 18. That is the usual position for a trading company: most classifications are determined by the standard. The judgement sits upstream, in the assessment of whether the entity has a specified main business activity, and downstream, in which subtotals are management performance measures and how line items are aggregated.

Possible management performance measures

Subtotals here are used outside the financial statements and may meet the definition of a management performance measure, which brings a reconciliation requirement.

  • Adjusted operating profit before restructuring937Reconciliation required

    Used in the results presentation and in the remuneration report, and it is not a subtotal IFRS 18 requires. That combination is what brings a line into the management performance measure disclosures.

  • EBITDA1,284Reconciliation required

    Communicated to investors outside the financial statements. IFRS 18 treats an earnings-before measure as an MPM where it reflects management's view of performance.

What this reads assumed

  • Main business activity taken as general. Change it if that is wrong, because it moves interest and dividends. The entity sells goods and services and holds no material investment portfolio, so investing and financing are not main business activities.
  • Comparatives are shown for reference only; the exhibit compares presentations, not periods.
  • Exceptional items are not a category under IFRS 18. The two lines presented that way today are shown inside their IFRS 18 categories.

Illustrative figures. Your own statement produces your own exhibit.

What it does not do

It does not sign your accounts and it does not replace your auditor. It will not tell you that a judgement call has one right answer when the standard leaves it to management, and where its own sources are thin it says so rather than guessing. Lastly, it does not reproduce the text of IFRS 18 itself; the knowledge base is our own written guidance, with references you can look up in your own copy of the standard.

Pricing

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  • Five cited questions a month
  • Full answer with sources
  • Preview of the topic guides
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Launch offer, 75% off

$8.99Standard price $36per month

or $99 per year

  • Unlimited questions, within fair use
  • Saved and searchable history
  • Financial statement analysis and the Reclassification View
  • PDF and share-link export
  • Full topic guides
Reserve a place

Standard pricing is $36 a month and $396 a year. The launch price applies while we onboard the first cohort.

Annual billing works out at a little over eight months at the monthly rate. Prices exclude any tax that applies in your country. Cancel from the billing portal at any time.

Talk to us before you commit to an approach

Most teams reach the same two questions: which of our lines actually move, and what do we tell the auditor about the ones the standard leaves to us. Leave your details and we will arrange a working session on your own statements. We do not sell a licence on that call.

Include the country code, for example +44 20 7946 0958.

Frequently asked questions

Where do the answers come from?
A knowledge base we write and maintain ourselves, covering IFRS 18 presentation, the three categories, the operating profit subtotal, management performance measures, aggregation and disaggregation, and the transition requirements. Each entry carries a reference to the paragraph of the standard it relates to so you can check it in your own copy.
What happens to the statements I upload?
They are encrypted at rest, readable only by your account, and you can delete any file from the conversation it sits in. Uploaded figures are masked in our analytics and session-replay tools, so they are never captured there.
Can my team share a workspace?
Yes. Invite colleagues into a shared workspace and they see the workspace conversations. Billing stays with the account that owns the workspace.
Is this only relevant to IFRS reporters?
IFRS 18 applies to entities reporting under IFRS Accounting Standards for annual periods beginning on or after 1 January 2027. If you report under a different framework, the categories discussed here will not map onto your statements.

IFRS 18 Navigator is a reference aid for qualified finance professionals. It does not provide accounting, audit, legal or tax advice, and it is not a substitute for the standard itself or for your auditor’s judgement. Verify every conclusion against IFRS 18 as issued and your own facts before you rely on it.

IFRS 18 Navigator — referenced answers on the new income statement