Comment letters on standards-setting priorities ask for limited agenda.
Businesses, trade groups, and accounting firms writing to FASB about the board's standards-setting priorities have sung a common refrain: Slow down and set limits. Many comment letters responding to FASB's “Invitation to Comment, Agenda Consultation” stress the need for time to implement major accounting standards before the board begins work on new amendments. FASB's agenda consultation document, released in August, asked the public about whether it should try to address four areas that have long frustrated accountants: intangible assets, pensions and other post-retirement benefits, the distinction between liabilities and equity, and performance reporting and cash flows.
Revenue advisory panel stresses use of judgment in applying new revenue standard.
Businesses that have grown accustomed to recognizing revenue from customer contracts all at once under existing GAAP should not presume that they can continue the same practice once FASB's new revenue standard goes into effect, according to the participants in a November 7 meeting of the board's Transition Resource Group (TRG). The standard, which goes into effect for public companies in 2018, says that a business satisfies its obligations when it transfers control of the asset to the customer. The standard includes criteria to determine whether a business transfers control over time or at a point in time. “In the staff's view, this is very clear,” FASB assistant project manager Aarika Friend said.