Revenue Management: #1 What does it mean to "recognize" revenue?

Earning revenue isn't just about collecting cash from your customers. It's about recording the income correctly and consistently. Revenue recognition is the process of deciding when and how to record revenue in financial statements so that they reflect the true value after the goods or services are delivered.

​
Today's business models are more dynamic than ever. Subscriptions, long-term projects, bundled products, and usage-based pricing make it challenging to determine when a sale is truly earned.

​
We will be going through a series of posts on Revenue Recognition and how it works with different industries, starting with,

➤ What is revenue recognition?
➤ What are the principles behind the standards?

What is Revenue Recognition?

Revenue Recognition is an accounting principle that defines when and how businesses can record revenue in their books. It ensures revenue is reported only when the company has delivered the promised goods or service, not simply when a payment is received.

For instance, if a customer pays upfront for 12 months of service, the business cannot recognize all of that money immediately. It must recognize it gradually over the period the service is delivered.

To address these challenges, Accounting standards like IFRS 15 and ASC 606 were introduced.

​

​What Do IFRS 15 & ASC 606 Say?

Both IFRS 15 & ASC 606 are closely aligned. They denote that companies must recognize revenue when they satisfy their performance obligation, that is, when they deliver the promised goods or services fully to the customer.

The core principle is:

"Recognize revenue to depict the transfer of promised goods or services to the customer in an amount that reflects the consideration to which the entity expects to be entitled."

To make this consistent across industries, these standards use a five-step model.

​
This model helps businesses recognize revenue accurately by following a structured process. Each step ensures that income is recorded only when a company truly earns it by delivering the promise.

Steps	Description	Example
Step 1: Identify the Contract with a Customer	Confirm there is a legal, enforceable agreement with clear payment terms and obligations.	A software company signs a 12-month service contract with a client with proper terms and a clear payment schedule.
Step 2: Identify the Performance Obligations	Break the contract into separate performance obligations that provide unique values.	Contract includes access to software, onboarding support, and monthly training. These are distinct services and are treated separately.
Step 3: Determine the Transaction Price	Calculate the total expected payment, including any discount, bonus, or other variables.	The total contract worth is $12,000, but the customer gets a discount of $1000 for an annual payment upfront. The transaction price becomes $11,000 in this case.
Step 4: Allocate the Transaction Price to the Obligation	Distribute the transaction pricing across the performance obligation based on their standalone selling prices.	If software is usually sold for $9,000, support for $1500 and training for $1500, the $11,000 will be proportionally allocated to each of these.
Step 5: Recognize Revenue When (or As) Obligations Are Satisfied	Revenue is recorded either over time or at a point when the customer gains complete control of the product or service.	In case of software licensing and implementation, the revenue is recognized monthly over 12 months, but the onboarding is recognized as and when it's delivered.

 

This single contract shows how IFRS 15/ASC 606 helps businesses handle complexity like discounts, variable consideration, multiple deliverables and other aspects in recognizing revenue.

Ultimately, these standards require companies to:

• Recognize revenue only when the performance obligation is met.
  
• While selling services and goods together, consider them as individual deliverables.
• Allocate the total contract value fairly across all deliverables.
• Adjust discounts, bonuses, and other variable pricing.
• Provide an audit-ready document for how and when revenue is recognized.

The bottom line of revenue recognition is straightforward. But while computing, it doesn't look the same when you are dealing with different billing models and while handling hundreds of contracts/transactions.

In the next post, we'll look at where computing revenue recognition gets tricky with some real-time business scenarios. 

• Topic Participants

• Hari Hara Sudhan. S

  

• Sticky Posts

• Community Learning Series | Digest #5 — September 2020

  Dear customers, We're happy to bring you the September edition of our #CommunityDigest! Keep track of your subscription KPIs right from your smartphone: Last month, we enhanced our Android mobile app to help our customers get daily updates on their business health. We got to know from a lot of customers that this has made their job much more easier because they no longer have to keep a reminder to manually check on the previous day's revenue or activations. If you have not downloaded it yet, here's

• Community Learning Series | Digest #4 - August 2020

  Dear customers, We hope you're staying safe and healthy. I'm happy to bring you the fourth edition of our #CommunityDigest with some brand-new updates from us. 1. Daily Business Updates (for Android users) The Zoho Subscriptions Android app has got a cool new update: You can now get a push notification to your smartphone that lets you know how many activations and cancellations have taken place, and what's the net revenue for the previous day. The best part is, you can tell the app when exactly you

• Community Learning Series | Digest #3 - July 2020

  Dear customers, We hope you're staying safe and healthy. We're glad to bring you the July edition of our #CommunityDigest. New community members can view our previous newsletters here. This time, we have two major updates and three interesting topics for you: 1. Zoho Subscriptions Developer Community Since the inception of Zoho Subscriptions, our team believed that the recurring billing platform we provide should be able to offer an extensive API library that empowers businesses to automate most

• Introducing: Community Learning Series | Digest #1 - May 2020

  Dear customers, We hope you are staying safe and healthy. Helping businesses manage their customer subscriptions more efficiently has always been, and always will be, our goal at Zoho Subscriptions. We strongly believe this is possible if we grow together as a community and share what we know with each other. To nurture this shared learning experience, here is our brand-new Community Learning Series! ​ Welcome to the first edition of our digest! Each edition of our community digest includes guides

• Recent Topics

• Closing the Loop: Why Lookup Asymmetry is Harming Data Integrity in Creator

  TL;DR: Lookup fields allow users to add new related records inline via the "+" icon, but there's no equivalent ability to edit an existing related record without navigating away and losing form context. Adding a native "Edit" icon—with automatic User

• Add the ability to Hide Pages in Page Rules

  Hi, We have Field Rules to show and hide fields and we have page Rules, but we can't hide a page in Page Rules so it isn't completed before the previous page (And then have the Deny Rules to prevent submitting without both pages completed), we can only

• Enable Free External Collaboration on Notecards in Zoho Notebook

  Hi Zoho Notebook Team, I would like to suggest a feature enhancement regarding external collaboration in Zoho Notebook. Currently, we can share notes with external users, and they are able to view the content without any issue. However, when these external

• Zoho Desk API - Send Reply to CUSTOMERPORTAL

  Hello! I'll try to send a reply to Customer Portal, But the response is 500 (INTERNAL_SERVER_ERROR in service response). {"Error":"{\"errorCode\":\"INTERNAL_SERVER_ERROR\",\"message\":\"An internal server error occurred while performing this operation.\"}"}

• Is It Possible to Convert a Custom Module to a Quote?

  I recently created a custom module in our CRM environment for RFQs so that our sales team can submit quote requests directly in Zoho rather than by email/phone. This allows for a cleaner overall process, minimizing potential errors and potentially encouraging

• using the Client script on the load of the form if service no is empty means then i want to make issue relate to is Service

  using the Client script on the load of the form if service no is empty means then i want to make issue relate to field is Service if Purchae no is empty means then i want to make issue relate to is Purchase

• Changes to the send mail Deluge task in Zoho CRM

  Hello everyone, At Zoho, we continuously enhance our security measures to ensure a safer experience for all users. As part of our ongoing security enhancements, we're making an important update on using the send mail Deluge task in Zoho CRM. What's changing?

• Analytics : How to share to an external client ?

  We have a use case where a client wants a portal so that several of his users can view dashboards that we have created for them in Zoho Analytics. They are not part of our company or Zoho One account. The clients want the ability to have user specific,

• Work Order wont mark as Completed

  I have a couple of work orders that won't mark as completed even when I've marked the Service Appointments as completed fully.

• Item name special charaters <>

  Im trying to input speical characters such as < and > into item name and item description but comes up with following error: Invalid value passed for Item Name and Invalid value passed for Item Description How do i allow speical characters?

• Zoho Analytics Dashboard - How to hide the user filter

  I am using the same dashboard template across different external clients and applying a user filter to the data by site URL. How can I hide the user filter in View Mode so the external client won't see the list of other clients in the drop-down menu?

• Customer Parent Account or Sub-Customer Account

  Some of clients as they have 50 to 300 branches, they required separate account statement with outlet name and number; which means we have to open new account for each branch individually. However, the main issue is that, when they make a payment, they

• Cannot get code to work with v2.mergeAndStore!

  Please can someone help me pass subform items into a repeating mail merge table row using v2.mergeAndStore? I have a mail merge template created in Writer and stored in Workdrive. This template is referenced by a custom CRM function which merges all of

• Kaizen #229: Email-Deal Associations in Zoho CRM

  Hi All, Welcome back to another week of Kaizen! Emails are a core channel for customer communication in any CRM system. In Zoho CRM, emails can be associated with records across multiple modules. In this post, we will focus on email associations with

• Deprecation of the Zoho OAuth connector

  Hello everyone, At Zoho, we continuously evaluate our integrations to ensure they meet the highest standards of security, reliability, and compliance. As part of these ongoing efforts, we've made the decision to deprecate the Zoho OAuth default connector

• Action Required: Update Microsoft SQL Server Security Settings Before February 2026

  Dear Users, We recently deployed security updates in Zoho Analytics that inadvertently caused connection failures for a few customers using Microsoft (MS) SQL Server hosted on older Windows versions (Windows Server 2012, 2012 R2, and 2014). To restore

• Contacts limit in basic vs standard - what counts? Are customers contacts?

  I’ve been using books for a number years for my small business. I only ever work with 20 clients at any given time. I do purchase services from a number of vendors to run my business, so there are some comtacts there too. I used to use the basic package,

• Saving issue

  First problem I opened a MS word file in writer. after the work is done, it does not save instantly, I waited for like 10min and it still did not save. second problem When I save a file, then file gets saved as another copy. I just did save, not save

• Automating Employee Birthday Notifications in Zoho Cliq

  Have you ever missed a birthday and felt like the office Grinch? Fear not, the Cliq Developer Platform has got your back! With Zoho Cliq's Schedulers, you can be the office party-cipant who never forgets a single cake, balloon, or awkward rendition of

• Create Tasklist with Tasklist Template using API v3

  In the old API, we could mention the parameter 'task_template_id' when creating a tasklist via API to apply a tasklist template: https://www.zoho.com/projects/help/rest-api/tasklists-api.html#create-tasklist In API v3 there does not seem to be a way to

• How to mix different types of inputs (such as dropdown list and textbox)

  Hi, I'm creating a form called "Room Reservations" for a company. I created a "table" using "Matrix Choice". I created "Room 1", "Room 2" and "Room 3" with the "Questions". I would then like to create two columns with the "Answers", one called "Department"

• Ability to Set a Unified Tab Order/View for All Users in Zoho Projects

  Hello Zoho Projects Team, We hope you are doing well. We would like to submit a feature request regarding tab/menu organization in Zoho Projects. Current Behavior: The tab (module) order in Zoho Projects is user-specific. Each user (internal or external)

• Layout Rules Don't Apply To Blueprints

  Hi Zoho the conditional layout rules for fields and making fields required don't work well with with Blueprints if those same fields are called DURING a Blueprint. Example. I have field A that is used in layout rule. If value of field A is "1" it is supposed to show and make required field B. If the value to field A is "2" it is supposed to show and make required field C. Now I have a Blueprint that says when last stage moves to "Closed," during the transition, the agent must fill out field A. Now

• Task Order

  Hello! I've recently switched to Zoho Projects and a long time user of MS Project, Asana and LiquidPlanner (which has recently been purchased) and I'm running into a frustration I'm hoping someone can assist with. It has to do with how tasks are ordered

• Automating CRM backup storage?

  Hi there, We've recently set up automatic backups for our Zoho CRM account. We were hoping that the backup functionality would not require any manual work on our end, but it seems that we are always required to download the backups ourselves, store them,

• Zoho Books | Product updates | January 2026

  Hello users, We’ve rolled out new features and enhancements in Zoho Books. From e-filing Form 1099 directly with the IRS to corporation tax support, explore the updates designed to enhance your bookkeeping experience. E-File Form 1099 Directly With the

• 2026 Product Roadmap and Upcoming Features

  This is your guide to what is coming in Zoho Vertical Studio throughout 2026. We’ll update this post throughout the year as items move from development to release, and as and when new initiatives are added. Once a feature is released, it will be reflected

• Vendor legal and DBA names for USA users

  I would like to hear how Zoho Books users are handling DBA names in the vendor profile. If the Company name in the vendor profile has to be the legal name (line 1 of the W-9), whare are you entering the DBA name (the name that checks are made out to)

• Zoho Books API invoice email bouncing with 'relaying-issues' error

  I have waited over 30 days for zoho books uk to assist with the following and i have had no replies or tickets erronously closed. The service has been terrible - very unlike zoho! So i am raising this here hoping that a community member can assist: Hello,

• Stop the Workarounds: We Need Native Multi-Step Forms

  After over 17 years of community requests, I'm hoping the Zoho team can finally address the lack of native multi-page form support in Zoho Creator. This has been one of the longest-standing feature requests in the community, with threads spanning nearly

• Product Updates in Zoho Workplace applications | January 2026

  Hello Workplace Community, Let’s take a look at the new features and enhancements that went live across all Workplace applications for the month of January. Zoho Mail Zoho People Notifications preview in Zoho Mail Notification emails from Zoho People

• How do i setup default values for few fields

  We have few fields in CRM like rate of return, type etc - they can be picklist and standard inut fields. picklist we have choice to set default value. but how do we default some value in input type of fields?

• We know the company but not the contact

  We are fairly new to Zoho, part of our marketing stack is we use products like lead feeder to identify which companies are visiting our site. We are able to match this data to salesiq but cannot find a way to add a company name to the salesiq visitor

• Sort Legend & stacked bar chart by value

  I'd love to see an option added to sort the legend of graphs by the value that is being represented. This way the items with the largest value in the graph are displayed top down in the legend. For example, let's say I have a large sales team and I create

• Customize Calendar view in Teamspaces Settings

  Right now every customization that happens inside of the calendar view inside of CRM is only visible for the specific user. We want to be able to set up calendar views as an admin for specific roles. I would suggest to do that inside of the settings of

• How to filter subform report based upon main form report in dashboard

  Hi Team, I am creating a dashboard in Zoho Analytics. I want to have a main form report and below I want to show subform report of main form. If I filter the main form with date then I want to show subform records based upon main form. how can I achieve

• using the Client script I want to Hide Show the Fields

  if Related to service means some of the field like service no want to shoe and hide Amc no , purchase no how i achive this let issu = ZDK.Page.getField('Issue_Related_To').getValue(); if (issu == 'Service') { var field_obj = ZDK.Page.getField('Warranty_Cases');

• From Zoho CRM to Paper : Design & Print Data Directly using Canvas Print View

  Hello Everyone, We are excited to announce a new addition to your Canvas in Zoho CRM - Print View. Canvas print view helps you transform your custom CRM layouts into print-ready documents, so you can bring your digital data to the physical world with

• Ask the Expert – Zoho One Admin Track : une session dédiée aux administrateurs Zoho One

  Vous administrez Zoho One et vous vous posez des questions sur la configuration, la gestion des utilisateurs, la sécurité ou encore l’optimisation de votre back-office ? Bonne nouvelle : une session Ask the Expert – Zoho One Admin Track arrive bientôt,

• Kanban view on Zoho CRM mobile app!

  What is Kanban? The name doesn't sound English, right? Yes, Kanban is a Japanese word which means 'Card you can see'. As per the meaning, Kanban in CRM is a type of list view in which the records will be displayed in cards and categorized under the given

• Next Page