Post balance sheet events

A ‘post balance sheet event’ is defined by SSAP 17 — Accounting for post balance sheet events — as ‘those events, both favourable and unfavourable, which occur between the balance sheet date and the date on which the financial statements are approved by the board of directors’.1 This definition, therefore, incorporates all events occurring between those dates — irrespective of whether or not they relate to conditions which existed at the balance sheet date. Consequently, the principal issue to be resolved is which post balance sheet events should be reflected in the financial statements?