Revenue Recognition and a Matching Concept

Apple Inc. designs, manufactures, and markets personal computers, mobile communication devices, and portable digital music and video players and sells a variety of related software, services, peripherals, and networking solutions. The Company sells its products worldwide through its online stores, its retail stores, its direct sales force, and third-party wholesalers, resellers, and value-added resellers. (Source: Company Form 10-K)

Throughout history and in our own time, legitimate accounting methods have been utilized to fraudulently engage in manipulating activities that results in illicit gains to the perpetrators and losses to individuals and financial institutions.

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.

Fraudulent financial reporting is one form of corporate corruption and may involve the manipulation of the documents used to record accounting transactions, the misrepresentation of accounting events or transactions, or the intentional misapplication of Generally Accepted Accounting Principles (GAAP) (Crumbley, Heitger, and Smith, 2013). Examples of fraudulent schemes befitting of this category abound and usually involve financial statement items that have been misclassified, omitted, overstated, undervalued, or prematurely recognized. One case involving CEO Bill Smith of Moonstay

Revenue determination is an important tool for health care organizations because it allows for efficient management of payment systems. This paper will look at the different components that form the payment-determination bases of revenue determination. Moreover, the difference between specific and bundled service payments will be discussed. Lastly, the three ways health care providers control their revenue function will be highlighted.

In fraud committed against organizations, the victim of fraud is the employee’s organization. In frauds committed on behalf of an organization, executives usually are involved in some type of financial statement fraud; typically, to make the company’s reported financial results appear better than they actually are. In this second case, the victims are investors in the company’s stock. A third way to classify frauds is via the use of the ACFE’s occupational fraud definition, “the use of one’s occupation for personnel enrichment through the deliberate misuse or misapplication of the employing organization’s resources or assets” (ACFE, 2010). The ACFE includes three major categories of occupational fraud: asset misappropriations involves the theft or misuse of the organization’s assets, corruption involves the wrongful use of influence in a business transaction in order to procure benefits contrary to their duty to their employer, and fraudulent financial statements involving falsification of an organization’s financial statements for personal gain.

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.

The following report is in response to your request for an authoritative answer regarding revenue recognition when a right of return exists. The authoritative literature that addresses the revenue recognition when right of return exists is the FASB codification. More specifically, the section regarding revenue recognition of products. This section discusses the necessary conditions for recognizing revenue when a right of return exists and the factors that may impair the ability to make a reasonable estimate of the amount of future returns. (FASB ASC 605-15-25)

For as long as businesses have existed, so has accounting. With time, it has become more complicated and detailed, but it is still a process of keeping financial accounts in order. Through accounting, or financial reporting, a system is set up to keep track of, maintain and audit the financial proceedings. Because accounting and financial reporting of a business is so important for its accuracy and in general, a lot of ethical, technological and legal concerns are involved. In this paper, we will look identify and explore the concerns of each of these.

The issue of revenue recognition practices is an area that has received a lot of attention from regulators. Whenever there is a report of financial restatements or negative earnings, regulators pay extra attention to review the financial statements in order to verify that that there are not any indications of financial fraud or that the organization overstepped their boundaries in the area of managed earnings. The reason that regulators have taken a special interest in financial accounting and potential fraud is due to the collapses of companies such as Enron, WorldCom and Tyco. Regulators and those in the accounting profession are focusing their efforts on the causes of fraud as well as the steps that can be taken to effectively detect

Ignoring the revenue recognition principle could end up distorting an entity's balance sheet/statement of financial position. It is important to note that without adherence to this principle, it could be possible for entities experiencing a decline in sales to hide such an occurrence by modifying some items. In such a case, a refundable cash inflow i.e. a deposit used as security for the possible completion of an agreed upon task at a specified future time could be recognized as revenue. Under this principle, such an inflow should ideally be recognized as a liability and later as revenue only after the said task has been completed.

Excello Telecommunications is looking to record revenue before the earning process has been completed or before the unconditional exchange has occurred. Terry Reed, the CFO is trying to influence the accounting department to look for options to record the sale of 1.2 million in equipment by December 31 to boost earnings on financial statements. The purchasing company does not want the order of equipment delivered until the middle of January.

Revenue recognition is considered to be the flipside of the cookies jar. Where through revenue or expense recognition it can lead to have inflated financial statement. Which simply means that if a company dabbled with earnings management then they have to inflate revenue in next period more , because they need to makeup for the shortfall they had in the previous period an so on . this technique will be a never ending one cause it will be ongoing and non stop where they try to cover up the things they have made. Examples for it creating false revenue, changing time in recognizing revenue: early revenue recognition or deferred

2) By increasing net income in the manner Derek suggested, Derek would benefit in terms of gaining a substantial bonus and likely a new yacht, Susan and I might benefit in terms of maintaining our jobs and likely getting promoted. On the other hand, other stakeholders such as stockholders, employees, vendors and suppliers, creditors, and investors might be harmed as a result of making wrong decisions by relying on the fraudulent financial statements.

The revenue recognition principle is a foundation of accrual accounting and one of the main principles of GAAP. The revenue recognition principle is a set of guidelines that helps accountants to identify when a revenue event has taken place and how to appropriately record cash exchanges before, during, and after the revenue event. According to the revenue recognition principal, revenue must (1) be realized or realizable and (2) earned, in order to be recognized. According to the SEC revenue is realized when (1) Persuasive evidence of an arrangement exists, (2) Delivery has occurred or services have been rendered, (3) The seller’s price to the buyer is fixed or determinable, and (4) Collectability is reasonably assured. It is essential