Oracle Systems Corporation Essay

* Partial Revenue Recognition method would recognize the sale and extended warranty at the time of sale. And the rest of the contract revenue will be deferred and recognized when the contract period is complete. This method is acceptable for financial reporting in few situations. The calculation is based on the estimated cost of the product and extended warranty. This method allows the company to recognize most of the revenue at the time of sale, and allows some future revenue recognition.

They may pose a problem when recognizing revenue, due to the fact that original GAAP criteria of determining a relative fair value determination is now out the window. Companies like Apple typically base their measurements against the relative selling price of the unit.

Computer Associate did not sell or transfer title of its software products to its customers. Instead CA licensed its software products pursuant to license agreements by which CA’s customers agreed to pay a one-time license fee and annual usage and maintenance fees. Therefore, under GAAP, in order for CA properly to have recognized revenue from a license agreement in a particular fiscal quarter, the license agreement was required to have been signed by both CA and its customers within that quarter, which happened to be manipulated by CA’s executives. (NY)

In accounting there is much to be learned, about the financial aspects of a business. In the past five weeks I have learned the importance of financial reports and how they relate to the success of an establishment. These reports may include balance sheets and income statements, which help accountants and the public grasp the overall financial condition of a company. The information in these reports is really significant to, managers, owners, employees, and investors. Managers of a business can take and deduce financial

This is not in compliance with the provisions of GAAP or SAB 101. Revenue should not be recognized until it is realized or becomes realizable and earned. If we followed this statement the company did not have realized revenue Furthermore, the penalty payments if enforced could not be paid till the year 2005 as stated in the contract. Also, the journal entry resulted in recognizing revenue when it was not earned or

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

The conditions for this alternative are very similar to alternative #2 in the aspect that the only thing that has changed is the condition for the collectability. If we decide to recognize the partial revenue of $15,000 on October 4, 2015, when the customer pays the remaining $15,000, collectability is assured 100 percent because all the payment has been paid. In

Revenue recognition is one of the top causes for financial statement restatements. In addition, revenue recognition is an area commonly questioned by the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) staff in their review of public filings and resultant comment letter process. Furthermore, revenue recognition is often prey to financial fraud.

For each of the specific contracts described in the case, please describe the best revenue recognition policy considering the criteria in SAB 101. (Onsetcom, Cataumet, Sandham, XLSemi, Technical Devices and Ashaban)

* The vendor can reasonably estimate the fair value of the benefit identified under the preceding condition. If the amount of consideration paid by the vendor exceeds the estimated fair value of the benefit received, that excess amount shall be characterized as a reduction of revenue when recognized in the vendor’s income statement.

4. Currently management has two problems on their hands. The first and most pressing is the fact that they have to issue a restatement of previous years’ financial statements due to accounting errors associated with premature revenue recognition. The second problem, which may have contributed to the first problem, is the fact that the company’s revenue streams are drastically changing and they hope that they continue to evolve into lifetime revenue streams, which unfortunately defer revenue significantly. This change in revenue streams and the associated recognition of that revenue, at the appropriate time, has caused INVESTools the issue of having to make the restatement. Since both issues need to be addressed and can be at the same time, it might be in the company’s best interest to do so simultaneously. The company historically chose not to capitalize most expenses that could have been capitalized under SAB 104 since their business didn’t rely on many deferred revenue streams at the time. The company would have undoubtedly preferred to change their policy for expensing deferred-revenue contracts were it not for the SEC’s preference that such costs were treated consistently and for the additional fact that they would have to make their case to the SEC, gain their approval, and restate all previous year’s financial statements. Now that the company is facing having to restate past financial statements, they might as well approach

Like several companies, Nortel stipendiary their executives with stock choices (Collins, 2011). This compensation solely inspired the tendency to be but honest regarding the company’s finances. author closely-held stock choices that solely inspired his actions to fulfill or beat the benchmark set by analysts. If Nortel’s earnings showed to be higher than the benchmark, Nortel’s stock costs would rise creating the stock closely-held by management to be even a lot of valuable. By tweaking the books to indicate the road earnings price as critical the allowable accumulation price he created the stakeholders assume that the corporate was creating extra money than it had been. “Nortel ne'er incomprehensible a benchmark over the sixteen quarters (Collins, 2011).” it had been too tempting to bump the numbers up so the stocks gave the impression to be value over they were. “Nortel’s accounting practices junction rectifier to AN investigation by AN freelance review committee, that found that insubordination with accumulation and accounting fraud were undertaken to fulfill internally obligatory earnings targets (Collins, 2011).”

Revenue is the gross inflow of economic benefits during the period arising in the ordinary course of activities. Revenue should be recognized when the future economic benefits that will flow to the entity can be measured reliably. The recognition criteria are usually applied separately to each transaction, but sometimes and under specific circumstances, it is necessary to apply the recognition criteria to the separate recognizable parts or of a single transaction in order to reflect the substance of the transaction. In aviation industry, the revenue transaction or events takes a significant period of time in order to complete because of the nature of product delivering against the sum of money. The five‐step revenue recognition process for this transaction are as follows:

This means that under the company’s current policy, revenue is recognized too early, before delivery, while actual payment is not received until 30 days after customer acceptance or until the 90-day warranty period has ended. Furthermore, the 90 day warranty provision creates an uncertainty in the collectibility of sales proceeds.

Revenue recognition and its important role cannot be ignored in this analysis. CA clients were delaying signing of contracts leveraging time in their favor to obtain better discounts. If Stephan had changed his sales method (through monitoring of his internal controls and proper risk assessment) to resolve how his clients were leveraging the contract signing timeline in their favor he would have prevented the situation giving birth to the need of improper revenue recognition. Perhaps he would have provided discounts for early contract signers that outweighed the late signing benefits, thus revenue could be more accurately predicted and recognized without needing to backdate contracts. The accounting problem that ultimately led Stephen to jail