Book Description

The New Revenue Recognition Standard is a joint bold move made by both the FASB and the IASB to give top-lines of companies, across industries, a common denominator. It is a ground-breaking shift from the fair value measure of vendor specific objective evidence ('VSOE') to measure revenue, to one which takes into account what consideration the entity really expects to be entitled to receive from the contract with a 'customer'. Collaborative arrangements would come under the scanner as the collaborator may not be acting as a 'customer'. Moreover, the terms 'client' and 'customer' would no longer be fungible.ASC 606 provides guidance that will apply to all entities, including non-public entities that previously did not have extensive guidance. IFRS differs in this respect as IFRS for Small and Medium-sized Entities is available for entities that do not have public accountability.The new standard broadens the definition of revenue to include newer concepts like costs to obtain and fulfil a contract, material rights and gain and loss from sale of non-financial assets. The revenue is recognised upon control transfer rather than on delivery/ transfer of risks and rewards and the standard introduces the concept of 'control transferred at a point in time' and 'control transferred over time'. The standard requires management to increase exercise of judgment and estimate variable consideration, after applying constraints. The hierarchy for estimating stand-alone selling prices has been done away with. Allocation of discounts and assessing collectability may undergo a change as the two would be analysed at the worm's eye view level of the performance obligation and not at the bird's eye view level of the contract. Early in 2017, we saw ASU 2017-01 and ASU 2017-05 narrowing the definition of 'business' and defining an 'In Substance Non financial asset', respectively. The new definition of business disqualifies a set as a business when all or substantially all of the fair value of the gross assets (acquired or disposed of) is concentrated in a single identifiable asset or a group of similar identifiable assets- think early stage life sciences companies, real estate and shipping companies. Further the new definition of business requires an input and a substantive process that together significantly contribute to the ability to create output- all of which should be acquired and evaluation of whether a market participant is able to replace the missing elements has been done away with. Further cost savings would not qualify as an output, which would be aligned with outputs described in ASC 606. The overall assessment of a business however still continues to be done from a market participant's angle and the buyer's and seller's intentions do not affect the analysis- same as today, except that the requirement of assessing whether a market participant would be able to replace missing elements has been done away with. These two ASUs impact the new revenue recognition standard from the point of view of a sale of non-financial assets to a customer- where the interest in an entity does not fall under the new definition of business but within the definition of essentially a non-financial asset.The new revenue recognition standard affects more than just revenue and impacts the business processes and results in dual SOX testing during the transition phase. With sufficient training, discussion and planning, all managements will be able to do the 'heavy lifting'.