Segment reporting continues to be an important element of financial reporting for public companies. While the requirements of ASC280, Segment Reporting, have been effective for several years, segment disclosures continue to be a frequent area of emphasis in SEC staff comment letters. In these reviews, SEC staff often challenges companies’ determination of the chief operating decision maker and companies’ conclusions on identifying and aggregating operating segments. Companies also are frequently challenged about the adequacy of their entity-wide disclosures with respect to products and services A fundamental principal of ASC280 is that a company’s segment disclosures should be consistent with management’s reporting structure. The objective is to allow users to “see through the eyes of management” a company’s business. By highlighting the risks and opportunities that management views as important, the FASB believes that financial statement users will be better positioned to understand the public entity’s performance, to assess its prospects for future net cash flows and to make more informed judgments about the entity as a whole. Based upon the comment process, it is clear the SEC staff also believes that disaggregation of financial information is a benefit to investors.As a result, they are often skeptical when companies aggregate operating segments that separately would provide meaningful information to investors.This publication provides our interpretive guidance and reflects our experience in practice with ASC280 since its issuance in June 1997 as Statement 131. This eighth edition has been updated to include further clarifications and enancements to our interpretive guidance. See Appendix D for further detail on the updates provided.In light of the most recent SEC staff public comments on segment , we encourage public companies to continue to challenge their segment reporting practices, especially in situations in which an entity has undertaken a reorganization or when there are inconsistencies between an entity’s management reporting structure and its segment disclosures.