Accounting treatment of long-term contracts with the progress method


The method of advancement can only be used in certain cases and especially when precise conditions are met. The company must:
Be able to assess assets and work in progress at the end of the accounting period ( preferably, it should carry out a permanent inventory);
Be able to prepare forecasting accounting documents (it is advisable, in this respect, to keep an analytical accounting in order to correctly relate its expenses to the contracts concerned).
Three cases are distinguished and will be presented below. They depend in particular on the ability of the company to reliably or not estimate the result at the end of its contracts (its forecast margin). This condition is assumed to be met when the enterprise:
Can clearly identify the total amount of contract revenue ,
Can clearly identify the total cost of the contract
And that it has management tools to calculate and adjust the percentage of progress of each contract.
Accounting treatment of the method at the progress for the beneficiary contracts
This is the case where the forecast margin can be estimated reliably and results in a profit . The following accounting treatments apply:
Throughout the accounting period
All expenses incurred in performing the contract are accounted for in the normal manner. Revenue may be invoiced (or not) in the form of advance payments.
At the end of the accounting period
The charges relate to the next financial year are offset by the recognition of inventories , work in progress or in the recognition of prepaid expenses . Those relating to the current financial year are not neutralized and are left as such in the accounts.

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

The job of chief accountant

Long-term contracts: definition and accounting