Revenue Recognition and sab 101
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- 1. Identify the primary criteria for revenue recognition. REVENUE RECOGNITION
- 2. Apply the revenue recognition concepts underlying the examples used in SAB 101.
- Persuasive Evidence of an Arrangement
- Delivery Has Occurred or Service Has Been Rendered
- Price is Fixed or Determinable
- Collectibility is Reasonably Assured
- Income Statement Presentation of Revenue: Gross or Net
| Revenue Recognition and SAB 101
The rise and fall of MicroStrategy encapsulates the boom and bust, sprinkled with accounting scandal, associated with the high-tech economy from 1998 through 2002. At its peak, MicroStrategy was worth $31.1 billion and was trading at a price-to-sales ratio of 152 and a price-to-earnings ratio of 2,220. But in a sell-off precipitated by a revenue-related accounting restatement, the shares reached a low of $0.47 on July 9, 2002, down from their peak of $333.00 on March 10, 2000 (a 99.9% drop). In the wake of this price collapse, MicroStrategy’s CEO was fined by the SEC, and the company’s auditor was sued by outraged investors. An outline of MicroStrategy’s rise and fall is given below. Many people have described Michael Saylor as the smartest person they know. [Footnote: Mark Leibovich, “MicroStrategy's CEO Sped to the Brink,” The Washington Post, January 6, 2002, p.A01. This article was the first in a four-part series by Mr. Leibovich that ran January 6-9, 2002 in The Washington Post. All four articles serve as source material for this brief history of MicroStrategy.] He grew up outside Dayton, Ohio, the son of an Air Force sergeant, and entered MIT on a ROTC scholarship, intending to become an Air Force pilot. While at MIT, Saylor developed skills in computer simulation, and he wrote his undergraduate thesis using a computer simulation to model the reactions of different types of government systems to catastrophes such as wars or epidemics. Since a heart murmur had cut short his chances of becoming a pilot, Saylor became a computer modeler for DuPont. In 1989, Saylor started his own computer modeling business, called MicroStrategy, in partnership with his MIT roommate, Sanjul Bansal. The foundation of MicroStrategy’s product line has been its corporate data-mining program. The program combs through terabytes of data in an unwieldy corporate database, looking for interesting relationships. For example, MicroStrategy customers McDonald’s and Wal-Mart could use the program to detect customer buying trends on, say, Monday afternoons in the summer in California compared to Texas in order to help in targeting local marketing efforts. This data-mining program was very successful, and MicroStrategy doubled its revenues each year from 1994 through 1998, growing from 1994 revenues of $4.98 million to 1998 revenues of $106.43 million. The company went public on June 11, 1998, with the shares opening at $12 per share and ending the first day of trading at $21 per share. In early 1999, MicroStrategy was a solid software company with an impressive record of revenue and profit growth. However, the company’s price-to-sales ratio was just 12, compared to ratios routinely over 100 for dot.com companies. This was because MicroStrategy was not benefiting from any of the “Internet halo” that seemed to surround all companies in those days that were in any way affiliated with the Web. And Michael Saylor had a vision of making his company much more than a software company. This vision is captured in the company motto: “Information like water.” Saylor wanted to place the power of the data mining software that MicroStrategy provided to corporations into the hands of individuals. Accordingly, in July 1999 MicroStrategy launched Strategy.com, which promised to make personalized information available to individuals, by email, through the Web, and by wireless phone. Subscribers could receive tailored messages about finance, news, weather, sports and traffic, and that was just the beginning. By the end of 1999, Strategy.com had not yet generated a single dollar of revenue for MicroStrategy, but the initiative had brought the aura of the Internet to the valuation of MicroStrategy’s stock, causing the price-to-sales ratio to increase from 12 to 150. In January 2000, while all 1,600 MicroStrategy employees were on a company cruise in the Cayman Islands, the company’s stock increased in value by 19 percent on one day, and Michael Saylor’s holdings alone increased in value by $1 billion. “We should go on cruises more often,” joked Saylor. A price-to-sales ratio of 150 means that investors expect substantial sales growth (and ultimately substantial profit and cash flow growth) in the future. It also means that any stumbling on the part of the company can result in a catastrophic drop in stock price. For example, if a company has a market value of $30 billion with a sales-to-price ratio of 150, like MicroStrategy in early 2000, then negative news about the future that causes the sales-to-price ratio to drop to a lower but still respectable level of, say, 6 (which was the sales-to-price ratio for Coca-Cola in early 2000) would cause the company’s stock price to drop 96% to $1.2 billion. This type of precarious valuation puts huge pressure on managers to continue to report revenue growth that meets or exceeds the market’s expectation. In the face of this pressure, MicroStrategy, like many firms before and many since, broke the accounting rules governing when sales can be reported. On March, 12, 2000, MicroStrategy’s chief financial officer (CFO) received a call from the partner in charge of the company’s audit. The audit firm, PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC), had been reviewing MicroStrategy’s revenue recognition practices and believed that a restatement was necessary. This investigation had been initiated in part in response to a March 6, 2000 Forbes article by reporter David Raymond questioning MicroStrategy’s reporting of sales. [Footnote: David Raymond, “MicroStrategy's Curious Success,” Forbes, March 6, 2000.] MicroStrategy’s board of directors was reluctant to restate revenue because preliminary revenue numbers for 1999 had already been announced, helping to drive the company’s stock price to its all-time high. However, finally convinced of the necessity, a press release was drafted explaining that MicroStrategy was lowering its 1999 revenues from the previously announced $205 million to between $150 and $155 million. The news announcement was issued at 8:06 a.m. on Monday, March 20, 2000. MicroStrategy’s stock opened the day trading at $226.75 per share; by the end of the day, the shares had dropped 62% to $86.75 per share. Subsequent SEC investigation confirmed that MicroStrategy had overstated its revenue, and the inquiry uncovered a number of questionable practices. [Footnote: Securities and Exchange Commission, Accounting and Auditing Enforcement Release No. 1350, Administrative Proceeding File No. 3-10388: In the Matter of MicroStrategy, Inc., December 14, 2000.] Two samples are given below:
The aftermath of the MicroStrategy meltdown was bad for all of the principal characters involved. Michael Saylor was judged by the SEC to have committed fraud. He paid a fine of $350,000 and was required to forfeit an additional $8.3 million in gains from stock sales. As of July 2002, his stake in MicroStrategy was worth just $20 million, down from $14 billion at his company’s pinnacle. In May 2001, PricewaterhouseCoopers agreed to pay $55 million to settle a class-action lawsuit brought by MicroStrategy shareholders who accused the audit firm of negligence in allowing MicroStrategy’s financial reporting to go uncorrected for so long. And MicroStrategy itself has not recovered from the bursting of its revenue bubble. The company reported losses of $261 million and $81 million in 2000 and 2001, respectively. And as of July 2002, the company’s price-to-sales ratio was just 0.25. In the MicroStrategy case, both the boom and the bust are tied to the accounting rules for revenue recognition. With high-growth companies boasting price-to-sales ratios of 150 or higher, a delay in reporting revenue from a $10 million contract can easily lead to losses in market value in excess of $1 billion. Because so much rides on how much revenue a company reports, many companies have succumbed to the temptation to either manage reported revenue or to commit outright fraud in boosting reported revenue. Because revenue recognition is such an important issue in today’s economy, the SEC released Staff Accounting Bulletin (SAB) No. 101, “Revenue Recognition in Financial Statements,” in December 1999. SAB 101 has been one of the most influential, and controversial, accounting pronouncements in the last 10 years. The FASB has also undertaken a comprehensive examination of the accounting standards related to revenue recognition. As investors struggle to guide their investment capital to its most valuable use in the uncertain, high-tech business playing field, reliable financial reporting with respect to revenue recognition is critical.
1. They are realized or realizable. 2. They have been earned through substantial completion of the activities involved in the earnings process.
FYI: “Realized” or “realizable” can be interpreted as having received cash or other assets or a valid promise of cash or other assets to be received at some future time. ========================== In general, revenue is not recognized prior to the point of sale because either (1) a valid promise of payment has not been received from the customer or (2) the company has not provided the product or service. An exception occurs when the customer provides a valid promise of payment and conditions exist that contractually guarantee the sale. The most common example of this exception occurs in the case of long-term contracts where the two parties involved are legally obligated to fulfill the terms of the contract. In this case, revenue (or at least a portion of the total contract price) may be recognized prior to the point of sale. Another exception to the general rule occurs when either of the two revenue recognition criteria is not satisfied at the point of sale. In some cases, a product or service may be provided to the customer without receiving a valid promise of payment. In these instances, revenue is not recognized until payment or the valid promise is received. Now you are saying to yourself, “Why would anyone provide a product or service to a customer without receiving a valid promise of payment?” A common example is a family doctor who frequently provides treatment first and then tries to collect payment later. Also, if a customer provides payment yet substantial services must still be provided by the company, then the recognition of revenue must be postponed until those services are provided. In any case, if both of the two revenue recognition criteria are met prior to the point of sale, revenue may be recognized. If either of the two criteria is not met at the point of sale, then the recognition of revenue must wait. While the point-of-sale rule has dominated the practice of revenue recognition, there have been notable variations to this rule. In fact, the far right column in Exhibit 7-1, the cases in which revenue should be recognized AFTER the point of sale, has proved to be very controversial. As illustrated in the MicroStrategy scenario at the beginning of the chapter, pressure to meet market and analyst revenue expectations has made companies, especially start-up companies, reluctant to defer the recognition of revenue past the point of sale. Because every income statement begins with total revenue, the measurement of revenue is fundamental to the practice of accrual accounting. As you can imagine, the topic of revenue recognition has been studied very thoroughly through the years. The FASB has commissioned a number of studies on the topic of revenue recognition. The AICPA has also compiled many specific guides to help in the application of the revenue recognition criteria to specific industries. In fact, AICPA Statement of Position (SOP) 97-2, “Software Revenue Recognition,” has been very influential in guiding revenue recognition practices in high-tech companies. In SOP 97-2, companies are given more guidance in applying the two general revenue recognition criteria through a checklist of four factors that amplify the two general criteria: [Footnote: American Institute of Certified Public Accountants Accounting Standards Executive Committee Statement of Position 97-2, “Software Revenue Recognition,” October 27, 1997, para. 08.] a. Persuasive evidence of an arrangement exists. b. Delivery has occurred. c. The vendor's fee is fixed or determinable. d. Collectibility is probable. In general, the first two items relate to whether revenue has been earned, and the second two items relate to the realizability of the revenue. Although these four items were developed in the context of software revenue recognition, the principles have been extended to many other contexts. In fact, the SEC used these four items as the framework for discussion of revenue recognition in SAB 101. Accordingly, these four items will be discussed in more detail in the next section. 2. Apply the revenue recognition concepts underlying the examples used in SAB 101. SAB 101 is a very interesting document. It is in a question-and-answer format. Most of the questions follow the pattern: “May a company recognize revenue in the following situation?” The answers given in SAB 101 are invariably “No.” SAB 101 arose in response to specific abuses seen by the SEC staff. As illustrated with the MicroStrategy scenario at the beginning of the chapter, these abuses were often driven by the desire of high-flying companies to maintain their aura of invincibility by continuing to report astronomical revenue growth each quarter. Because SAB 101 was released in order to curtail specific abuses, it should not be seen as a comprehensive treatise on the entire area of revenue recognition. Remember that the vast majority of companies apply the revenue recognition criteria in a very straightforward way with no questions from their auditor, from the SEC, or from investors. But it is precisely in the financial reporting of the results of high-growth, start-up companies doing innovative transactions where reliable and transparent accounting practices add greatest value. Thus, the revenue recognition issues covered in SAB 101 may not be comprehensive, but they are extremely important. ================ FYI: When the SEC releases accounting guidance, it is in response to an immediate need to safeguard investors from what the SEC views as faulty, and perhaps, deceptive, financial reporting practices. In these cases, the SEC sometimes grows impatient with the long deliberative process that the FASB follows before releasing a standard. ================= The question-and-answer format of SAB 101 follows the framework of the four revenue recognition criteria laid out in SOP 97-2. [Footnote: An SAB 101 implementation guide prepared by PricewaterhouseCoopers was useful in preparing the material for this section. See “Revenue Recognition: SEC Staff Accounting Bulletin 101 and Related Interpretations, Version 1.0,” PricewaterhouseCoopers, January 10, 2001.] Persuasive Evidence of an Arrangement The best evidence of a sale is that the seller and buyer have concluded a routine, arms’-length agreement that is conducted entirely according to the normal business practices of both the seller and the buyer. The first two SAB 101 questions highlight areas in which a seller might bend the revenue recognition rules in order to strategically time the reporting of a sale. Without a reliable internal control system, it is easier for the management of a seller to manipulate the timing of a sale. Also, when the seller enters into side agreements with the buyer, a transaction that appears to be a sale on the surface can be transformed into a consignment arrangement. SAB 101, Question 1 Company A requires each sale to be supported by a written sales agreement signed by an authorized representative of both Company A and of the customer. May Company A recognize revenue in the current quarter if the product is delivered before the end of the quarter but the sales agreement is not signed by the customer until a few days after the end of the quarter? [Footnote: Each of the 10 SAB 101 questions covered in this section has been simplified and adapted from its original wording. The original wording is available at www.sec.gov.] If a company does not have a reliable, systematic, predictable procedure in place for processing customer contracts, then it becomes much easier for company executives to succumb to temptation at the end of a quarter and strategically accelerate the booking of revenue. Thus, even though SAB 101 Question 1 seems narrowly focused, it should instead be seen as encouraging companies to implement good internal controls surrounding revenue recognition. Companies with such controls are much less likely to be called into question about their revenue recognition practices. As explained in the opening of the chapter, MicroStrategy executives deliberately delayed signing customer contracts near the end of a quarter until it was determined how many of the contracts were needed to meet revenue targets for the quarter. SAB 101, Question 2 Company Z delivers product to a customer on a consignment basis. May Company Z recognize revenue upon delivery of the product to the customer? Question 1 deals with internal control surrounding revenue recognition, and Question 2 addresses the issue of circumventing those controls through side agreements with customers. On its face, the answer to Question 2 is straightforward – no, revenue should not be recognized on consignment arrangements because no sale has taken place. The broader issue is that a seller can convert a “sale” into a consignment arrangement through side agreements with the customer. For example, the seller can “sell” a product to the buyer, but also guarantee a liberal return policy and not require the buyer to pay for the product until the buyer in turn sells it to a customer. Or, the seller “sells” a product to the buyer, but also agrees to repurchase the product at the same price and provides interest-free financing to the buyer. In both these instances, the seller may have followed the letter of its internal control policy regarding revenue recognition and contracts, but the side agreements between the seller and the buyer have transformed the deal into a consignment rather than a sale. To illustrate the appropriate accounting for a consignment, assume that Seller Company ships goods costing $1,000 on consignment to Consignee Company. The retail price of the goods is $1,500. No sale should be recorded. However, there may be a journal entry made to reclassify the inventory, as follows: Inventory on Consignment 1,000 Inventory 1,000 Axeda Systems sells software and systems to enable companies to use the Internet to remotely monitor the performance of their products. The company reports the following about its revenue recognition policy: “In certain consignment arrangements with distributors, if the period under which a right to return has expired with no physical return of the inventory, the inventory is considered sold, assuming all other criteria in SAB 101 are met. Delivery Has Occurred or Service Has Been Rendered One of the two general revenue recognition criteria is that the earnings process must be substantially completed. SAB 101 contains four questions that relate to this issue. Questions 3 and 4 examine the notion of transfer of effective ownership of goods, and Questions 5 and 6 relate to the recognition of revenue when there are several steps in the earnings process. SAB 101, Question 3 May Company A recognize revenue when it completes production of inventory for a customer if it segregates that inventory from other products in its warehouse? What if Company A ships the completed inventory to a third-party warehouse (but retains legal title to the inventory)? SAB 101, Question 4 Company R is a retailer that offers “layaway” sales to its customers. A customer pays a portion of the sales price, and Company R sets the merchandise aside until the customer returns, pays the remainder of the sales price, and takes possession of the merchandise. When should Company R recognize revenue from a layaway sale? Both of these questions center on so-called “bill-and-hold” arrangements. A bill-and-hold arrangement is exactly what the label implies – the seller bills the buyer for a purchase but holds the goods for later shipment. In general, revenue should NOT be recognized in a bill-and-hold arrangement until the seller has transferred both legal ownership, evidenced by the buyer taking title to the goods, and economic ownership, meaning that the buyer accepts responsibility for the safeguarding and preservation of the goods. The transfer of legal title occurs in accordance with the shipping terms – legal title passes at shipment if the terms are FOB shipping point and at customer receipt if the terms are FOB destination. Thus, in the situation described in Question 4, a layaway “sale” is not really a sale because the seller still has custody of and legal title to the goods. Accordingly, revenue from a layaway sale is not recognized until the goods are delivered to the customer. To illustrate the appropriate accounting for a layaway sale, assume that Seller Company receives $100 cash from a customer. The $100 payment is a partial payment for goods costing $1,000 with a total retail price of $1,500. The journal entries to record the receipt of the cash and the subsequent delivery of the goods when the remaining $1,400 is collected are as follows: Receipt of $100 cash as initial layaway payment: Cash 100
Deposits Received From Customers 100 Receipt of final $1,400 cash payment and delivery of goods to customer: Cash 1,400 Deposits Received From Customers 100 Sales 1,500 Cost of Goods Sold 1,000 Inventory 1,000 Whitehall Jewellers operates jewelry stores in shopping malls around the country. Before SAB 101, the company described its accounting practice with respect to layaway sales as follows: “Layaway receivables include those sales to customers under the Company's layaway policies that have not been collected fully as of the end of the year. Layaway receivables are net of customer payments received to date, and net of an estimate for those layaway sales which the Company anticipates will never be consummated. This estimate is based on the Company's historical calculation of layaway sales that will never be completed.” In 2000, Whitehall changed its revenue recognition practice to defer recognition of layaway sales until the merchandise is delivered to the customer. As you consider the situation in Question 3, you can see why the SEC is concerned with cases such as this. Without strict revenue recognition guidelines for bill-and-hold arrangements, a seller wishing to boost revenue near the end of a quarter could simply push some goods to the side of its warehouse and claim that the goods had been sold to a buyer and were being held for shipment. In order to recognize revenue in a bill-and-hold arrangement, a seller must be able to demonstrate that the goods are ready to ship, that they are segregated in fact and cannot be used to fill other orders, and most importantly, that that buyer has requested, in writing, the bill-and-hold arrangement. This is true whether the bill-and-hold goods are kept in the seller’s warehouse or are shipped to an intermediate, third-party location such as a warehouse owned by a storage company. In connection with the idea of the transfer of both legal and economic ownership, the seller should not recognize revenue from a sale of goods until all customer acceptance provisions have been satisfied. For example, the sales agreement for sophisticated equipment usually includes a provision that the equipment must be delivered to the buyer’s location, installed, and tested to the buyer’s satisfaction. In cases like this, no revenue is to be recognized until the customer acceptance provisions of the sales agreement are satisfied. The underlying idea is that the acceptance provisions must be important to the buyer or else they wouldn’t have been included in the sales agreement in the first place. Accordingly, the seller has not completed the earnings process until the customer acceptance provisions have been satisfied. To illustrate the appropriate accounting for customer acceptance provisions, assume that Seller Company receives $1,500 cash from a customer as payment in full for equipment costing $1,000. The sale is not complete until the equipment is installed at the customer’s place of business. The journal entries to record the receipt of the cash and the subsequent completion of the installation are as follows: Receipt of $1,500 cash as payment in full for equipment: Cash 1,500 Advance Payments Received From Customers 1,500
Advance Payments Received From Customers 1,500 Sales 1,500
Inventory 1,000 Before SAB 101, Levitz Furniture recognized revenue from a furniture sale when the sales order was written if the merchandise was in stock. In response to SAB 101, Levitz changed its revenue recognition practice so that no sale was recorded until the customer took delivery of the furniture. SAB 101, Question 5 Company H requires customers to pay an upfront, non-refundable fee in addition to monthly payments for its services. When should Company H recognize the revenue from the upfront, non-refundable fee? SAB 101, Question 6 Company A provides its customers with computer-based services over an extended period. Customers are required to prepay the entire fee for the extended service. Company A performs initial set-up activities to get a customer entered into its system, and the remaining service is automated. When should Company A recognize revenue for this service? The situations described in Questions 5 and 6 relate to the recognition of revenue when service periods cover extended periods and when there are several different activities that the seller must perform in providing the service. The concern in cases such as this is that sellers will wish to frontload the recognition of revenue; in the extreme, the seller would like to recognize all of the revenue immediately. The guidance given in SAB 101 is that, in general, revenue should be recognized on a straight-line basis over the life of the contract and that recognition of an extra chunk of revenue for completion of a specific service act under the contract can be justified only if that service can be sold as a separate product. In the situation described in Question 5, immediate recognition of the nonrefundable upfront fee as revenue cannot be justified because no customer would pay separately to simply be “signed up” for a service. Instead, the signup and payment of the upfront fee are integral parts of the entire service arrangement, and the entire package should be accounted for as a unit. An example given in SAB 101 is the nonrefundable initiation fee paid when a customer buys a lifetime membership to a health club. The initiation fee and the subsequent monthly payments should be accounted for as a unit because no customer would pay a separate fee merely to sign up for the club without the expectation of using the club in the future. [Footnote: This general approach has been discussed by the EITF, but as of July 2002 no consensus had been reached. See EITF Issue No. 00-21, “Accounting for Revenue Arrangements with Multiple Deliverables.”] ITT Educational Services offers technology-oriented degrees programs to more than 30,000 students in the United States. SAB 101 impacted the company’s revenue recognition policy as follows: “Effective January 1, 2000, we implemented SAB 101 and changed the method by which we recognize the laboratory and application fees charged to a student as revenue. We began recognizing those fees as revenue on a straight-line basis over the average student's program length of 24 months. Previously, we recognized the quarterly laboratory fee as revenue at the beginning of each academic quarter and the application fee as revenue when we received the fee.” In the situation described in Question 6, the seller might agree to spread the recognition of revenue over the life of the service contract but desire to recognize a disproportionate amount of revenue at the beginning of the contract because of the completion of the initial setup activities. Again, no customer would pay for the set-up activities as a separate product, so revenue cannot be assigned specifically to the completion of that part of the agreement. In addition, SAB 101 also states that extra revenue cannot be recognized at the beginning of the arrangement just because proportionately more of the cost is expended during the setup activities. The recognition of revenue should be based on the amount of the expected service that has been provided, not the amount of the cost that has been incurred. Unless there is strong evidence to the contrary, revenue should be recognized on a straight-line basis, independent of the amount of cost incurred. In addition, no revenue should be recognized before the term of the agreement begins. For example, if a licensing agreement is signed on December 10 but doesn’t begin until January 1, revenue recognition should not begin until January 1. To illustrate the appropriate accounting for a service provided over an extended period, assume that Seller Company receives $1,000 cash from a customer as the initial signup fee for a service. In addition to the initial signup fee, the customer is required to pay $50 per month for the service. The expected economic life of this service agreement is 100 months. The journal entries to record the receipt of the initial signup fee, the receipt of the first monthly payment, and partial revenue recognition for the initial fee after the first month are as follows: Receipt of $1,000 cash as the initial signup fee: Cash 1,000 Unearned Initial Signup Fees 1,000
Cash 50
Monthly Service Revenue 50 Partial recognition of the initial signup fee as revenue ($1,000 ÷ 100 months): Unearned Initial Signup Fees 10 Initial Signup Fee Revenue 10 Cendant is the largest hotel franchisor in the world, franchising hotels under the names Days Inn, Ramada, Super 8, Howard Johnson, and more. The company also owns the Avis rental car franchise network. The company explains the impact of SAB 101 as follows: “[T]he Company revised certain revenue recognition policies regarding the recognition of non-refundable one-time fees and the recognition of pro rata refundable subscription revenue as a result of the adoption of [SAB 101]. The Company previously recognized non-refundable one-time fees at the time of contract execution and cash receipt. This policy was changed to the recognition of non-refundable one-time fees on a straight line basis over the life of the underlying contract. The Company previously recognized pro rata refundable subscription revenue equal to procurement costs upon initiation of a subscription. … This policy was changed to the recognition of pro rata refundable subscription revenue on a straight line basis over the subscription period.” Price is Fixed or Determinable Revenue recognition criteria (c) from SOP 97-2 (included in the list above) is that no revenue should be recognized until the transaction price can be definitely determined. Two key accounting issues are involved here. The first issue is that it is difficult to argue that an arms’-length market transaction has occurred when the parties have not even agreed upon the final price. The second issue is that until a transaction price is fixed, there is substantial uncertainty about how much cash the seller will ultimately receive, and thus measurement of the value of the transaction is problematic. If measurement uncertainty is too great, then the information is not reliable enough for recognition and inclusion in the financial statements. SAB 101 Questions 7, 8, and 9 involve situations in which the transaction price might not yet be fixed or determinable. SAB 101, Question 7 Company M is a discount retailer. Company M charges its customers an annual membership fee. The fee is collected in advance, but a customer can cancel and receive a full refund at any time during the year of membership. May Company M recognize the entire initial membership fee as revenue at the beginning of the year? Should Company M recognize the membership fee as revenue on a straight-line basis over the course of the membership year? First note that this situation is different from the estimate and recognition of bad debt expense. With bad debts, there is a legal obligation on the part of the buyer to pay the seller, and the seller estimates the dollar amount of such legal obligations that will not be paid. In the situation described in Question 7, the buyer can legally reclaim the membership fee at any time during the year because the contract defines circumstances in which the buyer is not legally required to pay. Because the final transaction amount is not known until the refund period is over, SAB 101 stipulates that no revenue should be recognized until the end of the year. Viewed in another way, the seller does not know until the end of the year whether the liability recorded when the membership fee was received in cash will be satisfied through providing a service or by refunding the cash. SAB 101 does allow recognition of the membership fee as revenue month-by-month during the membership year if the seller can make a reliable estimate of the number of refunds that customers will request. SAB 101 indicates that these reliable estimates are possible only under the following limited circumstances:
To illustrate the appropriate accounting for a refundable membership fee, assume that Seller Company receives $1,200 cash from each customer as a fully-refundable, one-year membership fee. It is estimated that the cost to Seller Company to provide the membership service to each customer will be $360 for one year (incurred evenly, in cash, throughout the year). Seller Company can reliably estimate that 40 percent of customers will request refunds during the year; assume that all of these refunds occur at the end of the year so that the entire $360 must be expended to service each customer. The total number of customers who paid the $1,200 cash fee on January 1 is 1,000. The journal entries to record the receipt of the membership fees, the recognition of revenue at the end of the first month, and the full refund to 40 percent of the customers (as expected) on December 31 are as follows: Receipt of cash as the refundable membership fee (1,000 × $1,200): Cash 1,200,000 Customers’ Refundable Fees (40%) 480,000 Unearned Membership Fees (60%) 720,000 Recognition of revenue and costs incurred after one month: Unearned Membership Fees ($720,000 ÷ 12 months) 60,000 Membership Fee Revenue 60,000 Cost of Membership Fee Revenue (60%) 18,000 Administrative Expense (40%) 12,000 Cash [($360 ÷ 12 months) × 1,000 customers] 30,000
Customers’ Refundable Fees 480,000 Cash 480,000
FYI: In at least one case, accountants do estimate and recognize the future impact of future events. As explained in Chapter 16, recognition of a deferred income tax asset requires that one assume that the company will generate enough taxable income in the future in order to be able to utilize future tax deductions. ====================
Cash 10,000 Rent Revenue 10,000
Cash 10,000 Rent Revenue 10,000
Contingent Rent Revenue 15,000 ($3,150,000 - $3,000,000) × 0.10 = $15,000
Cash 10,000 Rent Revenue 10,000
Contingent Rent Revenue 100,000 $1,000,000 × 0.10 = $100,000
Contingent Rent Receivable 200,000 ($5,000,000 - $3,000,000) × 0.10 = $200,000 Kimco Realty is one of the largest owners and operators of community shopping centers in the United States. Some of the company’s rental contracts call for additional rent if the tenant reaches a certain level of sales. Kimco describes its revenue recognition policy as follows: “Minimum revenues from rental property are recognized on a straight-line basis over the terms of the related leases. Certain of these leases also provide for percentage rents based upon the level of sales achieved by the lessee. The percentage rents are recorded once the required sales level is achieved.” SAB 101, Question 9 According to FASB Statement No. 48, a company may not recognize revenue on a sale for which the customer has the right of return if the company cannot reasonably forecast the amount of product returns. What factors would make it so that a company could not reasonably forecast returns? The issue of product returns addressed in Question 9 is similar to the issue of prepayment refunds in Question 7. In both cases, there is substantial uncertainty over whether, when all the smoke clears, a sales transaction will have actually taken place. This issue is emphasized in Question 9 because of SEC concern about “channel stuffing” which is the practice by a manufacturer of selling more to customers than they really want near the end of a quarter in order to report increased sales for the quarter. Channel stuffing in one quarter cannibalizes reported sales in the next quarter, but companies that engage in channel stuffing are typically worried only about weathering the current crisis, confident that sales will pick up in the next quarter. Without guidelines in place regarding the ability to estimate product returns, companies are more likely to engage in channel stuffing in order to recognize revenue in the current quarter, hoping that they might just go ahead without negative consequences and record the product returns in the next quarter. FASB Statement No. 48 outlines conditions in which a company cannot reasonably forecast the amount of its product returns: [Footnote: Statement of Financial Accounting Standards No. 48, “Revenue Recognition When Right of Return Exists,” Stamford, CT: Financial Accounting Standards Board, June 1981, par. 8.]
Based on the recent experience of the SEC staff, SAB 101 expands on these conditions contained in FASB Statement No. 48. These additional conditions in which there may be an inability to reliably estimate product returns include the following:
If a seller cannot make a reasonable estimate of product returns, based on the conditions identified in both FASB Statement No. 48 and SAB 101, then no revenue should be recognized until after the return period has expired. Palm, Inc., is the maker of the Palm Pilot. In the quarter ended March 2, 2001, the company reported revenues of $471 million, down from $522 million the quarter before. Announcement of this drop in revenue caused the company’s share price to fall 50 percent in one day. At the same time, some analysts were saying that the news was even worse than it seemed. These analysts suspected that Palm had engaged in channel stuffing. The suspicions of channel stuffing in the case of Palm were at least partially confirmed when reported sales for the following quarter, ending June 1, 2001, plunged to just $165 million. Collectibility is Reasonably Assured Because collectibility is one of the two fundamental criteria for revenue recognition, it is mentioned in SAB 101 for completeness. However, SAB 101 does not include any specific discussion of cases or situations that offer further guidance on assessing collectibility. As mentioned at the outset of this discussion, SAB 101 was released in order to curtail specific abuses, and it should not be seen as a comprehensive treatise on the entire area of revenue recognition. Accounting for revenue when collectibility is not reasonably assured is discussed later in this chapter in the section on installment sales accounting. Income Statement Presentation of Revenue: Gross or Net Question 10 of SAB 101 does not deal with when revenue should be recognize but instead with how the revenue should be reported in the income statement. SAB 101, Question 10 Company A operates an Internet site through which customers can order the products of traditional Company T. Company T ships the products directly to the customers, and Company A never takes title to the product. The typical sales price is $175 of which Company A receives $25. Should Company A report revenue of $175 with cost of goods sold of $150, or should Company A merely report $25 in commission revenue? The issue dealt with in Question 10 is labeled “gross vs. net” revenue reporting. In gross reporting, Company A reports the total sales price as revenue, and the difference between the $25 proceeds to Company A and the $175 sales price is reported as cost of goods sold. Before SAB 101, this was the preferred accounting treatment by Internet brokers. The alternative is the net method in which Company A merely reports the $25 it receives as commission revenue. The reason that Internet companies preferred the gross presentation is illustrated by referring back to the MicroStrategy story. Recall that with MicroStrategy there was frequent reference to the company’s price-to-sales ratio. Because most companies report losses in their early years, earnings-based valuation methods don’t work. An alternative approach is to value the company based on its reported sales, under the assumption that as the company becomes established, those sales will eventually generate positive earnings and cash flows. But a revenue-based valuation model also gives companies an incentive to maximize their reported revenue, even if there is no impact on bottom-line earnings. Thus, the gross method is preferred over the net method. SAB 101 makes clear that the gross method (reporting $175 in revenue and $150 in cost of goods sold in the Question 10 example) is inappropriate when a company merely serves as an agent or broker and never takes legal and economic ownership of the goods being sold. This same issue is addressed in more detail in EITF No. 99-19 where characteristics of a transaction in which a company should report revenue on a net basis are given as follows:
As described in Chapter 1, Enron shot up to Number 5 in the Fortune 500 list for 2002 by virtue of its reported revenue of $139 billion. Using a gap in the accounting rules with respect to revenue reporting for energy trading companies, Enron reported its energy trades using gross reporting instead of net reporting. To illustrate, assume that Enron brokered a deal between a natural gas supplier and a local utility. Enron guaranteed a selling price of $1,000,000 to the natural gas supplier and guaranteed a purchase price of $1,050,000 to the local utility. When the natural gas supplier then provided the natural gas to the utility, Enron would keep the $50,000 excess. Because of the lack of a definite standard for revenue reporting for energy trading, Enron was able to report revenue of $1,050,000 (with cost of goods sold of $1,000,000) rather than the more appropriate reporting of simply $50,000 in commission revenue. It was mentioned at the beginning of this section that SAB 101 was not intended to be a comprehensive treatise on the topic of revenue recognition. However, in response to the concern over revenue recognition practices, the FASB has initiated a comprehensive review of the existing standards and existing practice. [Footnote: FASB News Release, “FASB Adds Revenue Recognition Project to Its Agenda,” Norwalk, CT, May 20, 2002.] The FASB has decided on a two-pronged approach to the revenue recognition project. The “bottom-up” portion of the project will involve a systematic categorization of existing revenue recognition standards and practices to identify the inconsistencies and gaps in existing standards. The “top-down” portion of the project will focus on the concepts underlying revenue recognition. ====================== Stop & Research: Access the FASB’s Web site at www.fasb.org and determine the current status of the revenue recognition project. Solution: On June 21, 2002, the FASB posted the following update on the progress of the revenue recognition project: “The Board anticipates that this project will take two to three years to complete. The Board is exploring the possibility of working jointly on this project with the International Accounting Standards Board. The staff has also begun the "top-down" development of conceptual guidance and the "bottom-up" inventory of accounting literature. The AICPA’s Accounting Standards Executive Committee has agreed to assist the Board in developing the inventory of relevant AICPA literature.” ====================================== Directory: accounting accounting -> Spring 2009 Newsletter jmu's cpa exam Boot Camp accounting -> Accounting 432/732 Outline—Chapter 1 accounting -> Messod Daniel Beneish accounting -> Accounting Montgomery College Programs Accounting Certificate: 167; Business A. A.: 006 accounting -> Clasify the following items as an operating, investing, or financing activity. Assume all items involve cash accounting -> John Gillingham, All Rights Reserved, 2015 For educational purposes only accounting -> Creation and Segmentation of the Euronext Stock Exchange and Listed Firms' Liquidity and Accounting Quality: Empirical Evidence accounting -> Chapter three accounting -> Higher risk, lower returns: What hedge fund investors really earn Download 70.05 Kb. Share with your friends:
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