The staff of the Securities and Exchange Commission has published a new staff accounting bulletin, but it contains no significant new guidance that would alter a company's reporting or filing practices.

Staff Accounting Bulletin No. 114 is a rewrite of the entire series of staff accounting bulletins to update various references and bits of guidance to conform to the Accounting Standards Codification. It compiles the entire series of bulletins into a single document and eliminates references to historical accounting standards that now have new names under the Codification. Staff accounting bulletins are meant to reflect the staff's views regarding accounting-related disclosure practices, and they are followed by the Division of Corporation Finance and the Office of the Chief Accountant as they police corporate disclosures.

The Financial Accounting Standards Board developed the Codification to reassemble all U.S. Generally Accepted Accounting Principles into a single topical library rather than a series of chronologically published rules with different levels of authority. The Codification includes certain pieces of SEC guidance to make it easier for users to find it, but the SEC maintains its own accounting guidance separate from FASB's Codification.

FASB spent several years developing the Codification, not only to reorganize all of GAAP by topic, but also to make it accessible and searchable through an online tool. The Codification was available to preparers and others involved in the financial reporting process for a year to become familiar with it and troubleshoot it. FASB deemed it the sole authority for all GAAP in July 2009.

The SEC says SAB 114 revises or rescinds portions of the guidance contained in the series of bulletins to make them consistent with authoritative references in the Codification. Because of the number of technical changes, the staff decided to republish the entire series in the SAB 114 release to capture the changes in a single document. “All of the changes are technical in nature, and none of the changes are intended to change the guidance provided in the SAB series,” the staff wrote in SAB 114.

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