Revenue recognition and Nortel
Nortel Networks Corp. once again will have to restate its financial results to fix accounting mistakes, the company said on Friday as it posted a fourth-quarter loss of $2.2 billion.
Their chief executive maintains that the revenue was just recognized in incorrect periods, from 2002 through 2005.
Revenue recognition is definitely a touchy subject these days, I know we certainly spend more time nowadays on it than we used to. We have checklists to ensure we’ve considered every different aspect of sales arrangements and there is a note to the financial statements concerning how and when revenues are recognized.
Since Nortel is large (complicated) and public (risky), the audit could take quite long and I wouldn’t be surprised if there are a handful of public accountants who are there each year more often than they are at their own office.
[…] Om Malik, writer at Business 2.0 and power blogger, has posted his thoughts on the Nortel announcement from a couple days ago that they would have to restate their earnings again. His reaction is one of incredulity that Nortel, “a big NYSE company,” could actually not be able to get their accounting straightened out after all this time. Let me take a stab at an explanation. […]