Compared with general assistants
IFRS 18 Navigator compared with ChatGPT and Claude
A general assistant will give a fluent answer on IFRS 18. The difficulty is defending it. It cannot show the paragraph it relied on, it does not say when it is guessing, and it does not check its own arithmetic on your statement. When an auditor asks how a position was reached, a fluent answer is not enough.
1Answers you can check against the standard
IFRS 18 Navigator
Answers are drawn from the text of IFRS 18 held in the product's own library, indexed paragraph by paragraph. A statement that rests on the standard cites its paragraph, such as IFRS 18.B54, and opens that passage in the standard, highlighted.
A general assistant
Answers from what it absorbed in training or found on the open web. Its references do not open the paragraph in the standard, and a paragraph number it gives may not exist.
2It says when the standard does not settle a question
IFRS 18 Navigator
Ask about impairment testing under IAS 36, or about a paragraph the standard does not have, and it says so rather than filling the gap. Each answer carries a label for how well the standard supports it: well supported, partly supported or thin support.
A general assistant
Is built to answer, and does not reliably tell you when its source does not settle the point.
3Your own income statement, reclassified and checked
IFRS 18 Navigator
Attach an income statement as a PDF, Excel, CSV or image, scans included. Each line is placed in operating, investing or financing, and the required subtotals are computed by the software rather than by the model. The result is then checked against the totals the statement prints, so a misread figure shows up. Thus the reclassification that would take an afternoon in a spreadsheet is on screen in a minute or two, with its arithmetic already checked.
A general assistant
Can describe a reclassification, but does not check that the figures still add up to the statement you gave it.
4Judgement is flagged, not decided for you
IFRS 18 Navigator
Where IFRS 18 leaves a classification to management, such as whether a regulator's fee calculated on profit is an income tax, the line stays where you present it and is marked for a decision. Possible management-defined performance measures are listed, and a statement already prepared under IFRS 18, or under US GAAP, is recognised as such.
A general assistant
Tends to give one confident reading of a question that has two.
5A record you can return to
IFRS 18 Navigator
Threads are kept, can be renamed and found again, and reclassifications are marked. Moreover, citations keep opening after the library is updated, so the passage behind an answer given in March is still there when the auditor asks in September. Questions and files can be deleted at any time.
A general assistant
Keeps a chat history, which is not a working paper.
At a glance
| IFRS 18 Navigator and a general assistant, feature by feature | IFRS 18 Navigator | A general assistant |
|---|---|---|
| Answers from the text of IFRS 18 | Yes, held in its own library | From training data or the open web |
| Cites the paragraph and opens the passage | Yes | Not reliably |
| Says when the standard does not settle a question | Yes, with a support label | Not reliably |
| Reclassifies your income statement | Yes, with the totals checked | Can describe it, without checking the figures |
| Leaves judgement calls to you, flagged | Yes | Not reliably |
| Big Four interpretations | Being added, with a link to each firm | Unattributed, from memory |
| Questions beyond IFRS 18 | No | Yes |
Being added
Two further layers are in development and are not available yet. The first is interpretations from the Big Four firms, shown side by side with a link to each firm's own page, and checked every month so that a change reaches answers only after a person has approved it. The second is practice from audited IFRS 18 statements: how early adopters presented the judgement areas, labelled as what a named company did, never as what the standard requires.
What it does not do
It is a reference aid, not professional advice, and a position should be confirmed with your technical accounting lead or auditor. It covers IFRS 18 in depth and little else, so for questions beyond the standard a general assistant remains the better tool. It cannot open web links, so a statement has to be attached.