Editing Pro forma (section)

== Accounting ==
The ''pro forma'' accounting is a statement of the company's financial activities while excluding "unusual and nonrecurring [[Expense|transactions]]" when stating how much money the company actually made. Examples of expenses often excluded from ''pro forma'' results are company [[restructuring]] costs, a decline in the value of the company's investments, or other accounting charges, such as adjusting the current [[balance sheet]] to fix faulty accounting practices in previous years.

There was a boom in the reporting of ''pro forma'' results in the US starting in the late 1990s, with many [[Dot-com company|dot-com companies]] using the technique to recast their [[Income statement|loss]]es as [[profit (accounting)|profit]]s, or at least to show smaller losses than the US [[Generally Accepted Accounting Principles (United States)|GAAP]] accounting showed. The [[U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission]] requires [[public company|publicly traded companies]] in the United States to report US GAAP-based financial results, and has cautioned companies that using ''pro forma'' results to obscure US GAAP results would be considered [[fraud]] if used to mislead [[investor]]s.