"

5 Revenue Recognition and Accruals

The Periodicity Problem

Chapter five introduces the topic of periodicity, and builds on several topics learned in previous chapters. The topic of societal role of accounting continues from chapter one. The topic of assets continues from chapters two and three. The topic of liabilities continues from chapters two and three. The topic of links between statements continues from chapters two and three.

In the last chapter you learned how to create an Income Statement. You know how to classify revenue, expense, gains, and losses. But when should these items be recognized: this year or next year? In this chapter we will focus on timing and cut-off issues. In other words, periodicityPeriodicity:
A problem arising from artificially splitting a company’s lifespan into shorter periods.
.

License

Icon for the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License

Mastering Financial Statements Copyright © 2025 by Jacqueline Gagnon is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License, except where otherwise noted.