Event-Based Revenue Management

The Revenue Management Engine automates the timing of revenue recognition for manually entered invoices, or invoices imported via AutoInvoice. If you use event-based revenue management, then Receivables evaluates these invoices and decides whether to immediately recognize revenue, or temporarily defer revenue to an unearned revenue account.

Revenue is subsequently recognized depending on certain events, such as customer acceptance or receipt of payment.

The automated process occurs as follows:

  1. Receivables evaluates an invoice when manually entered or imported.

    When first evaluating an invoice for revenue recognition or deferral, Receivables checks transaction lines to determine if any revenue contingencies exist.

    Contingencies are defaulted to invoices when imported from a feeder system or entered manually in the Transactions workbench. Receivables defaults contingencies if the enterprise revenue policy has been violated, or if certain conditions on the related sales order or contract exist.

    Receivables does not default contingencies to imported transaction lines that have deferred accounting rules.

    If revenue must be deferred, then the Revenue Management Engine does so and records the reason for the deferral.

  2. Receivables then waits for an event that can remove the contingency and trigger revenue recognition. The Revenue Contingency Analyzer monitors contingencies until they expire or are removed. When such an event occurs, the Revenue Contingency Analyzer can automatically recognize the appropriate amount of unearned revenue on the invoice.

    Specifically, revenue is scheduled according to the initially assigned accounting rules and rule start dates. For invoice lines without accounting rules, the revenue date is set to the latest contingency removal date.

See: Evaluating Invoices for Event-Based Revenue Management.

This automated revenue management process helps you to comply with the strict revenue recognition requirements mandated by US GAAP and International Accounting Standards.

Note: Even if you enable this automated revenue recognition process, you can always use the Revenue Accounting Management (RAM) wizard to manually adjust revenue. See: Revenue Accounting and Modifying Invoices Under Collectibility Analysis.

However, once you manually adjust revenue, Receivables discontinues the automatic monitoring of contingencies.

Prerequisites

Note: You cannot use this functionality with Oracle Projects invoices, because revenue from Projects is recorded directly in the general ledger, not in Receivables.

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