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Remember that time you moved into a new apartment, realized you needed a new kitchen table to replace your old one made in antiquity, and immediately headed to that smartly-priced Swedish furniture megastore? You were so proud of yourself and your grown-up decision until you opened the box, took a quick look at the hieroglyphic instructions, and immediately wished you were a carpenter.
Well, as most of our financial brethren would attest, new guidance descending upon us from atop Mount FASB can often feel like those pictogram directions from that Swedish megastore that serves really good meatballs in their food court. Take ASC 606, the new revenue recognition standards, for instance. The guidance might seem clear and reasonable enough from a distance but, as is often the case with new guidance, figuring out how it's going to impact your particular organization – as well as the best way to implement it – can often feel pretty Sisyphean. And that's not cool.
A Real-World Tool to Help Your Implementation
Since your empathetic friends here at Embark would rather watch a Teletubbies marathon than have you feel like you're pushing an accounting boulder up some rocky terrain, we've decided to share a tool that should go a long way in helping you decipher ASC 606 for yourself. Yes, you read that right, our financial friend – you now have access to a tool already being used for Big 4 audits to help companies with their ASC 606 implementation. And it's free. That’s why auditors love us and you should, too.
Our excel spreadsheet template for the new revenue recognition standards takes the complex and simplifies it, transforms the abstract into something tangible. In other words, it's pretty darn handy in evaluating your revenue streams, seeing where you land relative to the new standards, and gauging the material impact on your financials.
No More Procrastinating, Please
Of course, there might be a slight agenda behind this unexpected and hopefully appreciated largesse of ours. Clocks tick, deadlines quicken their pace, and blood pressure rises as confusion begets anger, anger begets frustration, and frustration begets penalties and general anarchy. To be quite frank about it, we think too highly of you to allow such a thing to happen.
The time to prepare is now. Procrastination or pretending the new revenue recognition standards don't exist will only hurt you in the long run. We're providing you an immensely beneficial excel spreadsheet template that has already proven to be extremely helpful in practice. And, as we said, it’s free. To put it another way, you're now officially out of excuses so the time to start implementing ASC 606 starts… now.
