Fast, smart and automatic: Boost productivity on revenue recognition with the right tools
(This article was originally posted to Gravity Software's Grow Your Business Blog)
Time-strapped accountants are always looking for ways to make their daily work more efficient, and one way of doing that is to more completely automate revenue recognition.
That’s been especially top of mind since the enactment of ASC 606, the somewhat complicated 2017-18 ruling that (among other changes) strictly regulates when public and private companies can count revenue. Of course any changes to revenue recognition practices are a big deal for accountants, since wrong moves can affect the accuracy of the profit and loss margins that dictate company financial health (and investor perceptions).
If you’re still struggling to handle those changes manually, you could be compromising everything from ASC 606 compliance to contract reviews to project management to your ability to scale business operations.
“Revenue recognition is a critical and often complex accounting area that companies can’t afford to get wrong,” notes Dusty Stallings in Accounting Today. She points to a survey of U.S. accounting execs in which most respondents ranked ASC 606 revenue recognition implementation issues, including the increased demands for disclosure, as “somewhat or very difficult.”
With that in mind, here’s a summary of some top revenue recognition challenges mentioned in the survey and ways they can be remediated through a capable revenue accounting automation tool.