Elucidation of Cash Flow Statements in Administrative Bodies of Public Sector

The cash flow statement is a financial statement that helps significantly in decision-making about organizations’ financial flexibility. Although providing this financial statement is arbitrary as specified in the public sector’s accounting standard no. 1, no standard has been introduced about how to present this financial statement. Current research has sought to establish a suitable model for the cash flow statement of reporting units of the public sector, considering the diversity of users of financial statements in the public sector, their informational needs, and the distinction between these needs and the private sector.

This research is applied research considering the objective and descriptive-survey research considering the nature and data acquisition method. The research area includes all the administrative bodies included in Article 219 of the Law on Fifth Program of Iran’s Development that somehow utilize Iran’s general budget. Various relevant questionnaire models were established after the interviews with experts and comparative research. Next, these models were distributed among accountants, accountant assistants of administrative bodies, and university professors, which were then collected and analyzed. Context analysis was utilized in this research for analyzing conducted interviews, while statistical methods and SPSS software were used to analyze distributed and collected questionnaires.

Results of the generalization test of three divisions of operating, investment, and financing activities were approved significantly. Next, the significance of their existence in the internal structure was determined by testing other questionnaire items. In the test for observations distribution symmetry, Kolmogorov–Smirnov test has been utilized for the data normality test in this research. The chi-square single variable test illustrates the chi-square goodness of fit test. Following this table, the level of significance of the chi-square of all hypotheses is less than the 5% error level. In the Kruskal–Wallis test, the distribution of research observations was not symmetric. Hence, the Kruskal–Wallis test has been used to analyze research hypotheses among respondents’ three occupational categories. Mann–Whitney test allows the comparison between outcomes of two independent groups. For ordinal-qualitative data in a study, it is better to use the Mann–Whitney test, which is an asymmetric test equivalent to the two-sample independent t-test.

The general categories of the private sector’s cash flows statement can be applied to the public sector. However, in the details and structure of each category, according to the test results of the items, the internal structure of the categories is suggested. Considering data analysis results and research findings, it is concluded that the main three divisions of cash flow statements in the private sector can be applied to the public sector’s reporting units. Also, the suggested model can be proposed for presenting cash flow statements in the public sector’s reporting units based on findings resulting from analyzing questionnaire items’ response. The said model can then be used by the public sector’s Accounting Standards Committee in audit organizations and the Islamic Republic Iran Ministry of Economic Affairs and Finance to establish standards relevant to the public sector.