Essay on Informix Revenue Recognition

When analysts question a firm’s earnings quality, it raises concerns regarding under or over aggressive accounting practices that may be allowing the firm to manipulate the earnings. Earnings quality is defined as the strength of the current earnings in being used to predict future earnings and cash flows. Since earning quality is indicative of future performance, analysts are more likely to address issues that have substantial impact on the earnings quality. An issue arises when the nature of the earnings is questioned. While permanent earnings are part of normal operations, any irregular, one time earnings can skew the earnings, making the firm look more profitable than it is. This is due to the inability to recreate similar one-time transactions that will give rise to such numbers. Investors prefer predictable

Such an intense focus has been placed on quarterly earnings as an indication of a company’s success by everyone from analysts to executives that ethics have for the most part been thrown out the window, sacrificed to the all important number, i.e. earnings per share. This is the theory in Alex Berenson’s book “The Number: How the Drive for Quarterly Earnings Corrupted Wall Street and Corporate America.” This number has become part of a game to be played, a figure to be manipulated – beat the number and Wall Street all but throws a parade, miss it and a company’s stock may be abandoned. Take into account the incentives that executives have to beat the number and one can find plenty of reasons to manage earnings.

SFAC No. 8 addresses the cost constraint on useful financial reporting, “Cost is a pervasive constraint that standard setters, as well as providers and users of financial information, should keep in mind when considering the benefits of a financial reporting requirement.” (SFAC No. 8 BC 3.47) However, the ability to place a dollar value and fully enumerate a cost or benefit is almost an impossible task for standard-setters. Additionally, there is no way to successfully identify and measure all of the economic consequences associated with a new standard. The FASB should be applauded though for advancing uniformity in accounting standards, however; uniform financial reporting suggests a one size fits all approach. “Smaller, non-publicly listed firms (and their auditors) argue that accounting standards are formulated mainly for larger, publicly traded firms” and that “compliance costs are disproportionately higher and the

Generally accepted accounting principles (GAAP) allow companies wide latitude in the choice of accounting policies. After a firm chooses a set of accounting policies, current accounting rules permit changes from one alternative policy to another at the discretion of the management. Since reported accounting figures are widely used by a number of external parties, managers of firms have incentives to choose accounting policies in order to influence the behavior of these parties. A variety of managerial motives for

American Trucking Company has recently been experiencing an increase in stolen loads—a loaded tractor/trailer is stolen and the load sold. The merchandise is often worth thousands of dollars, sometimes exceeding the value of the tractor/trailer. American Trucking, while wishing to recover both the load and equipment, seeks a way to locate the tractor/trailer at all times so they can dispatch their security team to retrieve the load before it is sold on the black market (as well as to retrieve the truck/trailer before it is vandalized). They have engaged the services of Truck Locators, a provider of locating services to the trucking industry.

According to Kimmel, Kieso and Waygandt (2011), "the revenue recognition principle requires that companies recognize revenue in the accounting period in which it is earned." Basically, this means that revenues should be recognized (or in other words recorded) on completion of the process of revenue generation i.e. once revenue has been earned. This is as per the accrual basis of accounting. Essentially, revenue recognition derives its significance from its utilization when it comes to the determination of the specific accounting period in which earnings should be recorded.

Baruch Lev and Feng Gu authors of “The End of Accounting and The Path Forward for Investors and Managers” indicate that over the past 110 years, the structure and content of financial reports has not changed, and that the role that these reports play in influencing the decisions of investors has greatly diminished. Lev and Gu make a case that non-transaction events that are not captured by the financial reports such as those disclosed through 8-k filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission (“SEC”) have a greater impact on stock prices, and thus more useful to investors. In addition, they suggest that one of reasons for the decline in usefulness of financial reports stems from the increase of estimates that has made its way into these reports (Lev and Gu 2016).

Wareham SC Systems, Inc. is a capital equipment and testing instrument manufacturer and supplier comprised of three divisions: the Glendale Division, the Advanced Technology Division and the Technical Devices Division (Anthony, Hawkins, & Merchant, 2011, p. 137). In 1999, Somai Desai, the company’s chief financial officer, received news that the Security Exchange Commision (SEC) issued a new set of revenue recognition and reporting guidelines which were to be implemented no later than the fourth quarter of 2000. These new guidelines called the Staff Accounting Bulletin No. 101 (SAB 101), provided more specific criteria for revenue recognition and are listed as

Support: The Company’s revenues increased considerably (19%). However, the Accounts receivables also increased significantly (38%). Increase in revenues are generally associated with a proportional increase in the allowance for doubtful debts. By not reporting a significant ‘allowable for bad debt accounts’, the company is able to overstate its profits and could be a cause for concern in the long run, if the receivables turn out to be bad.

As stated in Exhibit 3, Earnings management is the managerial use of discretion to influence reported earnings. Within the accrual accounting system, managers have significant discretion with their firms’ accounting choices. Management has the ability to make choices that can opportunistically lead to higher or lower reported earnings. Richard 's and Ira Zar’s (CFO) actions would not change if these results were the result of GAAP flexibility because he violated the rules of accounting, the conceptual framework principle of neutrality in numerous ways to report the financial results that CA did under false pretenses. It would be one thing if CA garnered these results through legitimate business decisions versus using accounting tactics like changes in accounting estimates or outright fraud as in the use of the 35 day Month. The purpose of which was solely to allow CA to meet or exceed analysts’ estimates.

In section 5, the author hypothesizes that the accounts receivable accruals map into the cash flow realizations to a lesser extent than those under SOP 91-1. The author points out that the earlier the recognition, the more likely the customer is to not pay. Circumstances such as acceptance, commitment to pay and/or needs for customization may change prior to or upon delivery of the software or rendering of the service that may not be foreseen at the time of contract signing or earlier than as specified in SOP 91-1.

In September 2007, the IASB issued a revised IAS 1 “Presentation of Financial Statements”, in which the definition of comparability was expanded to include consistency with regard of the definition of Canadian GAAP. The definition of comparability in IAS 1 is “Users need to be able to identify differences between the accounting policies for like transactions and other events used by the same entity from period to period and by different entities.” In this paper, we focus on the real economic similarities and differences among companies with regard to comparability.

GAAP is exceptionally useful because it attempts to regulate and normalize accounting definitions, assumptions, and methods. Because of generally accepted accounting principles one is able to presuppose that there is uniformity from year to year in the methods that are used to prepare a

There are a number of key concepts that can help with understanding accounting, and the importance of financial statements. The first of these is the generally accepted accounting principles (GAAP). The US GAAP is a set of guidelines for the preparation of financial accounting statements. This common set of standards, principles and procedures are authoritative and all public companies trading on US exchanges must produce GAAP statements (Investopedia, 2012). The reason that the GAAP were developed is so that investors would have a common set of accounting standards. This ensures a level of consistency among accounting standards that allows investors to compare information across companies and across time as well. There is, however, a certain amount of leeway within the GAAP so that companies can use different techniques that GAAP allows. It is therefore important to read the notes to the financial statements to understand which specific GAAP policies the company using.

The non-refundable portion of the license fee specified in the agreements should be recognized either upon delivery of the product or at the time