Revenue recognised when you earn it, not when you invoice

IFRS 15 asks you to recognise revenue as you satisfy the obligation. Invoice a year of support in January and eleven twelfths of it is not yours yet: it is a liability, and it belongs on the balance sheet until you have done the work.

What goes wrong without it

A year billed in one month makes that month look extraordinary and the eleven after it look poor. Worse, the money is reported as earned before it is, so a cancellation in month three has to be unpicked out of a period that may already be closed.

What Elvira does

• Defer the sale and release it across its term, automatically.
• Three methods: daily, evenly, or evenly with the first and last months prorated to the days actually covered.
• Rules you set once and attach to an item or to a single invoice line: a support plan defers, the hardware on the same invoice does not.
• A schedule per invoice, showing what has been recognised, what is still deferred and whether it is on track.
• Recurring invoices earn out the same way, so an annual plan that renews does not need touching.
• Opening balances, for revenue already deferred before you moved to Elvira.

And it comes back out properly

Deleting a schedule is not a removal. The recognitions are reversed: and anything inside a closed period is reversed by a dated entry rather than by rewriting history, because a filed period is filed. This is the half most implementations forget, and it is the half an auditor asks about.

Coming to this

• Construction contracts on percentage of completion under development
• Milestone billing with contract assets and contract liabilities under development

Those two are not built yet and are marked as such here for the same reason they are marked on the front page: a feature list that quietly includes what is coming is a list nobody can trust.