User Guide

Converting IAS 1 financial statements to IFRS 18 presentation and disclosures — for preparers, reviewers, client signatories and organization administrators. Applies to both evaluation (demo) and production use; the workflow is identical.

1. Quick start (evaluators)

On the Dashboard, click “Try with sample data”. This seeds a complete, reconciling two-period project (FY2027 with a restated FY2026 comparative) into your own workspace and opens the statements. From there, explore the C3 transition note (Notes), the ★ Impact Assessment deck, and the exports — nothing to upload, and the sample is isolated to your organization.

2. Signing in & your account

• Your administrator creates your account and gives you a temporary password. Sign in at app.arivainc.com, then change it under Account → Change password. Changing your password signs out every session started before the change; the browser you changed it in stays signed in.
• Forgot your password? An organization admin can reset it (you'll receive a new one-time password). A reset signs the account out everywhere.
• Client users must replace the temporary password with one of their own before they can sign a report off — and again after any admin reset (section 16).
• After repeated failed sign-ins the account is temporarily throttled (~15 minutes) — this is intentional protection.

3. Organization administration (admins only)

Everything in Ariva Align belongs to your organization — users, entities, projects, and the audit trail are isolated to it. Under Organization admin:

Roles

4. Entities, projects & the guided workflow

Create an entity (the reporting company) once, then a project per reporting package (e.g. “FY2027”). The entity's main business activity flags (provides financing / invests in assets) drive IFRS 18 classification — you confirm these during import.

Every project page carries a workflow stepper across the top — Create project → Add data → Map accounts → Reconcile to report → Review & sign-off → Export — with completed steps ticked, the current step highlighted, and a Next: line telling you the single next action. A brand-new project opens with one question — “Start here — what do you have?” — routing you to the right path:

• An annual report (PDF/Word) → Path A below.
• A trial balance (CSV) → Path B below.
• Both (recommended) → import the report first, then upload the trial balance and reconcile — the app learns your mapping for future years (section 8).

5. Decisions, plan, readiness & reconciliation evidence (governance)

Three pages in the project navigation keep the implementation governed and visibly on track (a fourth, Reconciliation evidence, is described below):

• Decisions — the accounting-policy decision register, pre-seeded with the standard IFRS 18 judgements (main business activities, interest classification, dividends/FX/derivatives, cash equivalents, expense presentation, subtotals & MPMs, aggregation, transition). For each: record the decision, the rationale, and supporting evidence (a memo or working-paper reference). A reviewer approves each decision — never its own preparer (four-eyes); editing an approved decision reopens it. The register belongs to the entity, so it carries into every future period, and it prints in the audit pack. Reviewers can attach comments to any judgement; resolving a comment records who resolved it.
• Plan — a lightweight implementation checklist seeded with the standard stages (decisions, data, mapping, comparative, MPMs, disclosures, review, export). Assign an owner and due date per stage and progress each from To do to Done; add project-specific tasks freely. This is coordination only — whether the report itself is ready is measured automatically on the Readiness page.
• Readiness — one verdict: ready or not. Checks data completeness, mapping, the printed-totals tie-out, reconciliation, statements, validation, MPM completeness and judgement approvals; every red or amber item has a Fix → button that lands on the page that corrects it. The row Converted figures agree with the source report (Converted figures reconcile when no figures were captured from a document) links to the Reconciliation evidence page (below); it warns but never blocks. Once the report is approved, the verdict also says whether it is awaiting the client's sign-off or signed off by the client. A Changes since last review table lists only the events that changed report content since the last approval or submission — the reviewer reads this instead of re-inspecting everything.

Every working screen also states its period scope plainly — e.g. “Working population: FY2025 current period — 39 GL lines. FY2024 is comparative only.” The comparative appears in the statements' second column, never in this period's counts.

Reconciliation evidence

Reconciliation evidence (in the project navigation under Readiness, and linked from the Readiness page and the overview's review card) is a read-only page for every role, the client included. It sets the converted report against the document it came from:

• The verdict — a badge reading Agrees with the source document, Differences found or Not fully checked (Converted figures agree with each other when no printed figure was captured), the source document's name, the counts across all four layers and the published tolerance.
• Figures printed in the source document — the census: of the figures captured from the document, how many agree, differ, could not be checked, or are not compared by design, plus any the extraction returned but could not record.
• The four layers — 1 · Line coverage, 2 · Printed subtotals, 3 · Cross-statement ties, 4 · Accounting identities. Each check shows the required or printed figure, the converted figure, the difference, the tolerance and the evidence, with differences listed first.
• Figure coverage of the document text — every number found in the document's text, broken down by section: matched on the statement pages, matched from the MD&A, notes or front matter, non-financial, possible contradictions (information for the reviewer to check, not findings) and unexplained figures (the reviewer's worklist).

A list shown in part always says so (“Showing 50 of N”, with Show all).

6. Path A — from an existing annual report (recommended)

1. Open Import Statements and upload the annual report (PDF or Word). Scanned/image-only PDFs are supported — the pages are read directly.
2. Extraction takes up to a minute. Both the current and prior-year columns are captured; the currency is auto-detected (editable).
3. Answer the classification questions (main business activity — pre-selected from the detected industry).
4. Review the Import completeness summary: the file (with its fingerprint), currency, extraction method, lines extracted, periods detected, narrative captured — and the report’s own printed totals (Revenue, Profit, Total assets, Total equity), captured separately as the check that the extracted lines add up to what the report prints. If no printed totals could be read, a prominent warning tells you before you continue. If an amber panel says the figures don’t tie to the printed totals, correct the flagged lines in the grid — the tie-out re-runs live about a second after any edit, and clears when the figures tie again.
5. Click Generate IFRS 18 report. Both periods are converted; you land on the statements.

7. Path B — from a trial balance

1. On the project overview, upload a CSV with headers gl_code, gl_name, account_type, amount, currency (or press Load sample trial balance).
2. Run Auto-map: deterministic rules classify most lines with confidence scores and explanations; AI-assist proposes mappings for anything no rule matches. Every action reports what it did (e.g. “Auto-mapped 37 of 39 lines — 2 still need attention”).
3. Review in GL Mapping — every mapping is editable, and a Nature tag feeds the expenses-by-nature disclosure. The Rule column states in plain words who classified each line — an automatic rule, the entity's learned mapping, an AI suggestion, or a named preparer — so provenance is visible without opening anything.
4. GL Mapping opens on a “Needs attention” view showing only the lines requiring judgement — unmapped, low-confidence, or operating expenses missing a nature tag — with a live count; switch to All lines any time. The Reconcile page similarly leads with the buckets that don’t tie.
5. Build from Statements → Rebuild from mappings.

8. Reconcile to the report & learn the mapping

The strongest check of a trial-balance mapping is against your own audited report. If you imported a report (Path A) and uploaded the matching trial balance (Path B), the report's printed totals become the answer key:

1. Open ↳ Reconcile to report. Every IFRS 18 line shows Report vs Trial balance vs Difference, marked tied or off.
2. Fix any “off” lines — assign unmapped accounts right on the page, or correct mappings in GL Mapping — until the banner turns green: “✓ Every bucket ties to the report. The mapping agrees with the audited figures — learn it to reuse on future years.”
3. Click Learn this mapping for the entity. The confirmation reports how many GL accounts were learned — this saved mapping is the entity's reusable asset.

9. Roll forward to the next period

When a period is done, Roll forward to next period (on the project overview) creates next year's project in one click:

• this period's figures become the new project's comparatives (IFRS 18's two-period presentation comes for free);
• the learned mapping carries over — upload the new year's trial balance and known accounts auto-map;
• MPM definitions and narrative report sections carry forward as drafts;
• a Year-over-year changes card appears on the new project: new accounts, accounts no longer present, reclassified accounts, the largest movements, and MPMs added/removed — the reviewer's checklist.

10. Statements, drill-down & exports

The statements page shows the income statement with the two new mandatory subtotals (Operating profit; Profit before financing and income taxes), comprehensive income, the balance sheet, and cash flow — with the restated comparative alongside when loaded.

Drill-down provenance: click any line marked with a ▶ to see the exact GL accounts behind the figure — code, name, mapping rule, amount, and their sum (which ties to the statement figure by construction). The auditor's first question, answered in-app.

11. Narrative report sections

A full annual report carries narrative beyond the statements — the directors'/strategic report, chairman's statement, governance, principal risks, shareholder information. Manage these under Report sections: each section has a title, free text, and a placement (front = before the statements; back = after the notes). They render in the compiled Word/PDF in filing order and carry forward on roll-forward as drafts.

12. MPMs — suggested and defined

An MPM is a measure your entity actually uses in public communications. The MPMs page suggests candidates in that spirit:

• Detected in your own report — measures found in your imported MD&A, each with the quote as evidence. These are your strongest candidates.
• Common in your industry — a checklist only. IFRS 18 does not require any of them; add one only if you publish it.

Click Add to accept (then complete any “enter amount” items and the tax/NCI effect of each reconciling item — validation reminds you), or define measures from scratch. Not MPMs: free cash flow, net debt, per-unit metrics and ratios — they aren't income/expense subtotals.

13. Equity, notes, MD&A, validation

• Changes in Equity — enter movements per component; the closing balance is cross-checked against the balance sheet, and the statement renders in the compiled Word/PDF.
• Notes — generated first-adoption disclosures: basis of presentation, classification, expenses by nature, MPMs, EPS, cash-flow classification, and the IFRS 18.C3 line-by-line transition reconciliation; your existing accounting policies are carried over verbatim. Items needing judgement are marked [Management to confirm] — resolve them before publishing.
• MD&A — drafts a narrative strictly from your reported figures (never invents a number); every paragraph is editable. On a rolled-forward project, last year's narrative becomes the scaffold: figures update with real period-on-period variances, but the tool never invents why something moved — it inserts [DRIVER NEEDED: …] placeholders where only management can explain, and a flag counts them until they're resolved. A driver workbench on the page helps close each one: the account-level facts of what moved (from your own trial balances) and last year's narrative per section, ready to copy and adapt. Outstanding drivers also appear on the Readiness page as a warning until completed.
• Validation — one pass covering integrity and IFRS 18 compliance: both balance sheets balance (current and comparative), the comparative income statement reconciles, comprehensive income ties (profit + OCI), the cash-flow statement ties (including the FX effect), plus mapping and disclosure flags. Aim for zero errors; treat warnings as a to-do list.

14. Impact assessment & the board deck

★ Impact Assessment is the executive view: upload a full report and it shows what changes under IFRS 18 and what doesn't (profit, equity, net assets are unchanged), the new subtotals, key reclassifications, and the reconciliation to the filing — with a one-click PowerPoint board deck.

15. Interim (IAS 34) reports

For quarterly reporting — the first IFRS 18 statements most calendar-year entities publish in 2027 will be the Q1 interim report. The Interim Report tab marks the project as interim, and the comparative is read on the IAS 34 basis: the same quarter one year earlier (not the immediately preceding quarter). Notes switch to condensed/IAS 34 wording with the IFRS 18.C4 first-time disclosures, and exports are captioned accordingly.

16. Review & sign-off

1. The preparer clicks Submit for review on the project overview.
2. A different user with the reviewer role (or above) clicks Approve (sign off) — the platform enforces four-eyes: the submitter cannot approve their own report. Send back to draft returns it to the preparer.
3. The report now reads approved — awaiting client sign-off. It is not final yet: the client owns its financial statements, so a user with the client role must sign it off — even when every reconciliation check agrees.
4. The client user opens the project overview, clicks Sign off for the client…, reads the confirmation, optionally adds a note to be recorded with the sign-off, and clicks Confirm the client sign-off. The report reads signed off by the client, and the review card shows ✓ Draft → ✓ Submitted for review → ✓ Approved (four-eyes) → ✓ Signed off by the client, the steps after Draft each with a name and date.

Each step (who, when) is recorded in the audit trail and appears in the audit pack. Only a client user assigned to the report's entity can sign — never the submitter or the approver, and only once the report is approved. The client must first replace its temporary password under Account → Change password; until then signing is refused (“Change your password before signing”), and an admin password reset sends it back to that step.

What the sign-off records. Under Recorded with the client sign-off the overview shows the source document, the reconciliation at signing (printed figures that agree, differ or were not checked, and any possible contradictions), the differences recorded, whether the client confirmed signing despite open items, and the client's note as typed. The record also keeps the source document's SHA-256 fingerprint and fingerprints of the report as approved. Audit pack section 8 repeats the source document, the reconciliation at signing, the open-items confirmation and the note, and states facts about the signing account — who created it, who gave it the client role, and how its current password was set — adding that these facts do not establish who operated the account. Ariva Align does not verify who uses a client account: your own admins create client accounts and can reset their passwords, which is why the record discloses these facts rather than claiming the client's identity.

17. Limits & troubleshooting

Support

Questions or onboarding help: contact Ariva.