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

• Should I Use DMARC?

  When I configure Zoho Mail's DMARC settings, it's mandatory to fill in the RUA and RUF (Aggregate notification email address*, Forensic notification email address*) addresses. When we enter an email address in these fields, we receive reports from the

• Introducing Profile Summary: Faster Candidate Insights with Zia

  We’re excited to launch Profile Summary, a powerful new feature in Zoho Recruit that transforms how you review candidate profiles. What used to take minutes of resume scanning can now be assessed in seconds—thanks to Zia. A Quick Example Say you’re hiring

• Books API Receiving an Error that Doesn't Make Sense when Creating Credit Note - trying to use 'ignore_auto_number_generation' argument

  Hello, I'm working on a newly created routine and I'm getting an error that doesn't make sense when trying to create a new Credit Note. Here is my POST request. Endpoint: https://www.zohoapis.com/books/v3/creditnotes?organization_id=########## Body:     {

• How to move emails to Shared Mailbox?

  Hello, I created a Shred Mailbox instead of using a distribution group. But I cannot move previous emails to certain shared mailbox. Is it possible move some emails from inbox to shared mailbox?

• Collaboration with free plan user.

  Hello. Do both users need to be on Pro plan to collaborate? Or can a Pro user share a note with a free plan user with the ability to edit?

• Zoho Inventory Now Supports VeriFactu for Businesses in Spain

  Starting from January 1, 2026, Spain requires real-time invoice reporting for all B2B transactions. From July 2026, this requirement will extend to B2C transactions as well. All reporting must be carried out through the VeriFactu to AEAT (Agencia Estatal

• Connection to other user

  Zoho Cliq handles sharing of Custom OAuth Connections that require individual user logins.

• In arattai received message can't be deleted

  The issue has been noticed in following: arattai app (Android) arattai app (Window) arattai web While the message posted by me may be deleted, the ones received from others can't be. The item <Delete> change to <Report> when the message is a received

• Analytics Portal

  I have the "standard plan" and want to explore the portal option; I activated the 15-day trial but do not see the pricing for the add-on. How can I get the price under "Upgrade add-ons." Thanks Rudy

• Can I filter a Lookup field to only show related records from another Lookup in Zoho CRM?

  In our Leads module, we have two Lookup fields: Recruitment Agency – the agency that the lead came from Recruiter – the individual contact from that agency who sent us the lead Both fields link correctly to their respective records in CRM. However, our

• 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,

• How do I filter contacts by account parameters?

  Need to filter a contact view according to account parameter, eg account type. Without this filter users are overwhelmed with irrelevant contacts. Workaround is to create a custom 'Contact Type' field but this unbearable duplicity as the information already

• Zoho Writer to Zoho Sign Template Misalignment – Request for Community

  We are currently facing a critical issue impacting our live business operations due to a misalignment problem between Zoho Writer templates and Zoho Sign output. Issue Summary: We have an automated workflow in Zoho CRM using Deluge scripts that generates

• Account blocked

  Yesterday I got my Zeptomail account blocked due to too many hard bounces. My account is used exclusively for sending transactional emails (eg. your order has been shipped, a form has been filled, etc) and the sudden blocking impacted hundreds of websites

• Migration Tool Download

  Since apparently you have to ask for the migration tool to download (why?), I need the download for the migration tool for exchange servers. Please forward link, thanks.

• IF Formula

  Hi, I'm having trouble setting up a custom formula in a field. Can you help me with it? The formula should do the following: If the created date is less or equal to 30 days the field should display a string New in pieline or Exisitng pipeline if above

• Autorespond to one specific sender

  Is there any way to create a rule or filter that sends an automatic reply to messages from one specific email address?  I really need to set up something like a "vacation response" but only for one "received from" address.

• View comprehensive logs of all actions in Custom Module History

  Hello everyone, We are happy to announce our new feature, Detail View in Custom Module History, which enhances visibility, control and accountability over your records. Users can now access a detailed timeline of every action that has been performed on

• Track ZohoForm Conversion using Postmessage event

  Hi, I’ve been using a third-party lead tracking tool to capture leads from my website along with their source. Earlier, with the HubSpot form, the third-party script was able to detect the postMessage event that iframe forms typically send back to the

• Email task creator when task is updated/marked complete

  I am looking for a way to notify the creator of a task in zoho todo when - Task is updated Task is closed Comments entered 1 and 2 are critical, and I cannot find a zoho flow to do this. There is no way that as a manager I will know when someone has completed

• Email Recall Feature In Zoho Mail Which Should Also Work For Outside Organisation Members

  Add a feature to recall or undo sending an email within a configurable short time window (e.g., 30 seconds to 2 minutes) after hitting send, similar to Gmail’s undo send. Currently the sent email can not be recall If the recipient is not from within your

• How to implement calculating average value of averaged values?

  Hi, I'm trying to implement a formula in my layout for a module that calculates the average of 2 averaged values, but I can't do so using the formula custom field. To calculate the 2 averaged values, I could use the formula custom field, but in the custom

• Zoho Recruit update published job boards

  If we have a job thats already posted on several different job boards and we edit this job in zoho recruit (e.g. the description of the job), does this then automatically update this new information to all the published job boards?  If not, how does the

• Narrative 14: The magic bazaar of Desk

  Behind the scenes of a successful ticketing system: BTS Series Narrative 14: The magic bazaar of Desk Marketplace is a centralized platform where users can discover Zoho and third-party applications that can be integrated with their Desk account to facilitate

• Collections Management: #2 Late Payment Automation

  "Sir, I'll process the payment by evening, please don't apply any late payment charges", the customer said while arranging papers on his desk. Sanjay stood there with a tired smile. He had already visited twice that week. Payment collection was one thing.

• Create a table in the layout section of modules

  Dear Sirs, I would like to know whether is possible to create a table under new fields in layouts section of modules. In fact in this section there are single line, multi line, pick list, multi-select, date, formula etc. but I am unable to add a table

• Nimble enhancements to WhatsApp for Business integration in Zoho CRM: Enjoy context and clarity in business messaging

  Dear Customers, We hope you're well! WhatsApp for business is a renowned business messaging platform that takes your business closer to your customers; it gives your business the power of personalized outreach. Using the WhatsApp for Business integration

• Power of Automation :: Automatic Task Status Handling for Users

  Hello Everyone, A custom function is a software code that can be used to automate a process and this allows you to automate a notification, call a webhook, or perform logic immediately after a workflow rule is triggered. This feature helps to automate

• Migration of corporate mail environment from Yandex 360 to Zoho mail

  I have to migrate a corporate mail environment with an existing domain from Yandex 360 to Zoho mail. It is vital to migrate all users with all the data. I have read the article on this topic using MacMister Email Backup Software just now and have some

• Question - why no way to input a 'tool description' and 'tree of 'tools'

  Every business is different, with different business processes. To be truly useful Zoho MCP needs to have user editable tool descriptions (or ruleset) and a 'tool tree' so that the LLM is context aware when being used. For example, the tool description

• Develop Zoho Meeting as a Full Native Application (Not a Browser Wrapper)

  Hello Zoho Meeting Team, Hope you are doing well. We would like to suggest an important improvement regarding the Zoho Meeting desktop application. At the moment, the Zoho Meeting app feels more like a mini browser window or an iframe that loads the web

• Can I create a custom function for chart of accounts?

  I'm trying to add a custom function that should run whenever a record in the Chart of Accounts module is edited, but on the form for creating a new function, the module dropdown does not include the chart of accounts as an option.

• billing

  hi, I am being billed $12/year, and I can't remember why. My User ID is 691273115 Thanks for your help, --Kitty Pearl

• Automatic Matching from Bank Statements / Feeds

  Is it possible to have transactions from a feed or bank statement automatically match when certain criteria are met? My use case, which is pretty broadly applicable, is e-commerce transactions for merchant services accounts (clearing accounts). In these

• Unable to confirm Super Admin assignment — confirmation button not working

  I’m trying to change the roles within my organization. I am currently a super admin and would like to add another user as a super admin. When I attempt to confirm the action, a screen appears asking for my password to verify my identity. However, when

• Automation#36: Auto-create time-entry after performing the Blueprint transition

  Hello Everyone, This week’s edition focuses on configuring a custom function within Zoho Desk to streamline time tracking within the Blueprint. In this case, we create a custom field, and request the agent to enter the spending time within the single

• Feature Request: Reviews

  Any chance we could get a "Reviews" element to put on sites? It should be extremely simple to do. Basically just take the comments box and add an option for a star rating. At the very least, it would be nice to have more customization options for the comment box so the text could be changed from "Comments" to "Reviews". I've looked at a bunch of embeddable review widgets but nothing meets my needs so this would be a great feature to have added to the site builder.

• Can we handle a support like (incident management) project in Zoho Projects?

  Hi, I have a new profile of a project whereby we provide "ticket" base support to a client. They have a request and ideally we would handle comms via a email exchange logged in Zoho. Today we use Zoho Projects for all out projects, which means that we

• Trying to show the actual Terms & Conditions on PDF

  Hi, On Zoho forms I am trying to have the actual terms and conditions that the user needs to accept also show on the pdf that they receive after. Right now it only says "Agreed". Please help.

• Installing EMAIL Setup in New Domain

  Respected Support team, I'm facing an issue with cloudflare in Pakistan, I want to setup Zoho Mail Setup but I Don't know how to enable Zoho mail setup without cloudflare. My Website https://stumbleguyzzapk.com/, https://fakservices.com/ is using CF,

• Next Page