Numbers all over the place.

More than a year after they were imposed, chief executives and company directors in Britain are struggling to come to terms to, let alone understand, the new accounting rules, according to a report by PricewaterhouseCoopers.

The so-called International Financial Reporting Standards (IFRS) seems to be causing some pain for little gain.

Certainly, the results, contained in PwC's IFRS company survey are a bit disturbing to say the least.

According to the survey, one in six respondents doesn't think the CEO understands much about IFRS. A similar proportion does not believe the board has sufficient knowledge of it. Some 40 per cent said IFRS had been unhelpful for the board and only 4 per cent found any benefit.

The survey also found that 85 per cent of companies have found it more difficult to explain their results under the new accounting rules.

There also seems to be a bit of a gulf between the companies and investors and markets when it comes to the standards.

Only one in five survey respondents believed IFRS was useful to fund managers and analysts but a majority of fund managers in a separate survey said IFRS information had been fairly or very useful to them.

Clearly, this might be a transitional issue. Change is never easy, particularly when it comes to something as abstruse as accounting standards.

But the PwC survey tells us that there is a fair bit of work ahead.