Accounting for revenue is no piece of cake, and it’s especially true for a lot of Silicon Valley firms. If your rev rec won’t stand up in an audit, you’ve got your work cut out for you.
RoseRyan guru Miranda Chook has seen her share of rev rec fiascos. “Firms with complicated multiple-element agreements can really get tripped up,” she says. “They don’t have or haven’t consistently applied the proper accounting treatment for their various revenue streams. After awhile, they’re really in the weeds. They’ve closed a lot of deals, but they’ve documented them in incorrect ways. Now the audit needs to happen. Panic!
“What companies need is an auditor-approved treatment that covers all revenue types. Then they need to go back and apply industry-specific GAAP literature to deals. Once the accounts are clean, they need a template going forward so they don’t get in the weeds again.”
If rev rec is the bane of your existence (or just a nagging worry), rest easy—it’s one of the things we live for. Find out how we helped one high tech firm rectify its revenue accounting and come through an audit with clean books and a user-friendly rev rec template.
