Analysis Of The Notes On The Accounts Of Companies Carrying Out Information Technology Services

In the globalized and accelerated world of our time, competition amongst enterprises has become much more intense. In this world, information, knowledge and promptness are of paramount importance for decision-making. This means that challenges can only be met by companies that possess the necessary information and are able to convert it rapidly into organisational knowledge. Annual accounting statements are an important source of information within business relations amongst companies. However, it should be noted that due to their aggregate nature, the necessary information and through that, the necessary knowledge can only be obtained from the two fundamental parts of the annual statements (balance sheet and profit and loss account,) if the third part of the statement (the notes on the account) contains the textual and qualitative information that contributes to the more comprehensive interpretation of the other two parts of the annual statement. Without notes on the accounts, which possess adequate information, effective utilisation of the balance sheet and profit and loss account might be problematic. It is also to be pointed out decision-making based on inadequate knowledge further increases economic risks that are already high. However, annual statements should help reduce risks through more established decision-making. In our research, we examine whether the notes on the accounts of companies include the information, which could help obtain necessary financial knowledge concerning the partner companies. For the analyses, we used the notes on the accounts of companies, which have information-technology services (Hungarian NACE No. 62) as their main line of business. The analyses were carried out by means of various packages of the R statistical system. By means of text mining, we analyse the extent to which the notes on the accounts provide the necessary information that would be indispensable for the proper interpretation of the balance sheet and the profit and loss account. The scope of this information is also regulated by the Accounting Act. In present study, the notes on the accounts of 8,226 companies are analysed. The content of the notes on the accounts is analysed for each type of company and annual statement, looking for correlation between the two aspects and the notes on the accounts.