Problem:
While the direct method is preferred most companies use the indirect method due to the time it would take to complete the direct method. For my place of employment I can only begin to think how we would arrive at the information we would need for the direct method without a lot of work. On top of that if the direct method is used companies are still required to include the reconciliation between net income and operating cash flow. Therefore it would be very time consuming and costly from the perspective of man hours to report using the direct method.
For what reasons do you believe the direct method is more useful to financial statement users? Any reasons it would be less useful?