Handbook: Going concern
Handbooks | December 2025
Latest edition: Our comprehensive guide to management’s going concern assessment.
KPMG explains how an entity’s management performs a going concern assessment and makes appropriate disclosures. Q&As, interpretive guidance and illustrative examples provide insights into how continued economic uncertainty may affect going concern assessments. This latest edition includes illustrative application of going concern’s most significant complexities.
Applicability
- All entities
Relevant dates
- Effective immediately
Key impacts
The going concern presumption that an entity will be able to meet its obligations when they become due is foundational to financial reporting. This presumption may be challenged at any time, but especially during periods of economic disruption.
Economic disruptors have been prevalent in global markets over the last several years due to many unexpected macro events – uncertainty around tariffs and trade policies, supply chain disruptions, international conflicts, and fluctuating interest rates. The ever-evolving complexities attributable to economic disruption serve to amplify the subjectivity and difficulty of management’s going concern analysis.
When forecasting becomes less reliable and the past no longer predicts the future, the going concern assessment becomes increasingly difficult, and robust disclosures much more critical. These vulnerabilities continue to shine a bright light on management’s responsibility for its going concern assessment.
Report Contents
- Overview of going concern assessment
- Step 1: Assess whether substantial doubt is raised
- Step 2: Assess whether substantial doubt exists
- Disclosures
- Impact on other accounting matters
- Risk assessment and ICFR
- Auditor’s going concern assessments
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