The Ultimate ASC 606 Disclosure Checklist

October 10, 2025
Jason Berwanger
Accounting

Get a practical ASC 606 disclosure checklist with clear steps for compliance, detailed examples, and tips to simplify your revenue reporting process.

ASC 606 disclosure checklist on a desk with a laptop for revenue recognition compliance.

When you’re facing a complex project, the best first step is often to make a list. The same logic applies to accounting standards. The disclosure requirements of ASC 606 are extensive, demanding a level of detail that can easily lead to mistakes if you don’t have a structured process. Instead of getting lost in the details, you can bring order to the chaos. Creating a thorough asc 606 disclosure checklist is the single most effective way to ensure you cover every requirement, every time. This isn't just about ticking boxes; it's about building a reliable system that makes your financial reporting more efficient and your audits much smoother. In this article, we’ll show you how to construct a powerful checklist that simplifies compliance and gives you confidence in your numbers.

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Key Takeaways

  • Tell the Story Behind Your Revenue: Your disclosures must go beyond top-line numbers. Clearly explain the nature, timing, and uncertainties of your revenue, and be transparent about the significant judgments you made to build trust with investors and auditors.
  • Create a Consistent Compliance Process: Use a detailed checklist to standardize how you document contracts, define performance obligations, and track key balances. A repeatable system ensures accuracy and makes year-end audits significantly smoother.
  • Use Automation and Collaboration to Reduce Risk: Move away from manual spreadsheets that invite errors. Implement automated systems for accurate calculations and foster clear communication between finance, sales, and legal teams to ensure contracts are compliant from the start.

What Are the ASC 606 Disclosure Requirements?

If your business earns revenue from customer contracts, you need to get familiar with ASC 606. This accounting standard isn't just about how you recognize revenue; it’s also about how you communicate that process to others. The disclosure requirements are the part of the standard that dictates exactly what information you must include in your financial statements to explain your revenue streams. Think of it as showing your work on a math problem. It’s not enough to get the right answer—you have to explain how you got there.

The main idea is to give anyone reading your financial statements, like investors or lenders, a complete picture of your revenue. This means providing both quantitative data (the numbers) and qualitative information (the story behind the numbers). You’ll need to break down revenue into useful categories and explain the significant judgments you made in your accounting. This level of detail is a big step up from previous standards, requiring companies to be much more transparent about where their money comes from, the promises they’ve made to customers, and when they expect to fulfill them. Getting these disclosures right is essential for compliance and for building trust with your stakeholders.

The Main Goal of ASC 606

At its core, ASC 606 aims to provide a clear and detailed story about your company's revenue. The standard’s primary objective is to give users of financial statements a solid understanding of the nature, amount, timing, and uncertainty of revenue and cash flows from customer contracts. It’s all about answering the key questions: What did you sell? How much did you earn? When did you earn it? And are there any risks or variables involved? By standardizing how companies answer these questions, ASC 606 makes it easier to compare financial performance across different industries and companies, creating a more level playing field for everyone.

What’s Different from the Old Standards?

The biggest change with ASC 606 is the sheer amount of detail required. Compared to the old rules, the new standard demands significantly more disclosure. Before, revenue recognition guidance was often fragmented and varied by industry, which could make comparing two companies a real challenge. ASC 606 replaced that patchwork system with a single, comprehensive framework. Now, all companies must apply a standardized five-step model for recognizing revenue from customer contracts. This shift means you have to provide more granular information about your revenue processes, making your financial reporting more rigorous but also much more transparent.

How ASC 606 Affects Your Financials

The impact of ASC 606 on your financial statements can be substantial, even if your core revenue recognition practices haven't changed much. The new rules require significantly more detailed disclosures, often resulting in revenue notes that are three times longer than they were under the old standards. This isn't just about adding a few extra lines; it's about fundamentally changing the way you report and explain your revenue. You’ll need to break down revenue figures, explain contract balances, and detail the judgments made along the way. This increased transparency has a profound effect on the information you must present in your financial statements.

What to Include in Your ASC 606 Disclosures

The main goal of ASC 606 disclosures is to give anyone reading your financial statements a clear and complete picture of your revenue. It’s about telling the story behind the numbers—where your revenue comes from, when you earn it, and any uncertainties involved. Think of it as providing the context needed for investors, auditors, and other stakeholders to truly understand your company's financial performance. Getting these details right isn't just about checking a compliance box; it's about building trust and transparency through your financial reporting.

Your disclosures should cover everything from the general nature of your customer contracts to the specific promises you’ve made within them. You’ll need to break down how you arrived at the transaction price for your products or services and explain how you handle any variables that might change that price over time. This level of detail helps everyone understand the significant judgments and estimates your team makes when recognizing revenue. While it might seem like a lot of information to pull together, organizing it logically makes the process much more manageable. Let's walk through the key components you need to include.

The Criteria for Recognizing Revenue

At its core, ASC 606 is the revenue recognition standard from the Financial Accounting Standards Board (FASB). Its main job is to create a consistent framework for how companies report the money they earn from customer contracts. Before this standard, revenue recognition rules could vary quite a bit between industries, making it tough to compare one company’s performance to another. ASC 606 changes that by setting a single, principles-based model for everyone to follow. This ensures that your financial statements are clear, consistent, and comparable, giving stakeholders a more reliable view of your revenue streams.

Required Contract Information

Your disclosures need to paint a clear picture of the revenue and cash flows that come from your customer contracts. The goal is to give anyone reading your financial reports enough information to understand the nature, amount, timing, and uncertainty of that revenue. This means going beyond just the numbers on your income statement. You should provide both qualitative and quantitative information about your contracts, including any significant payment terms and the typical length of your agreements. This context helps stakeholders understand the stability and predictability of your revenue, which is crucial for making informed decisions.

Defining Performance Obligations

A performance obligation is simply a promise you make to a customer to provide a distinct good or service. Your disclosures must clearly describe these promises. This includes explaining what you’ve agreed to deliver, when you typically satisfy these obligations (e.g., at a point in time or over a period), and any significant payment terms. You also need to provide details on obligations for things like returns, refunds, or other warranties. Being specific here is key, as it helps readers understand exactly what drives your revenue and contract costs.

Determining the Transaction Price

The transaction price is the total amount of money you expect to receive in exchange for transferring goods or services to a customer. It’s not always a straightforward number. Your disclosures should explain how you arrived at this price, especially if it includes variable components. You’ll need to account for things like discounts, rebates, credits, or performance bonuses. You also have to consider any significant financing components, noncash considerations, or payments you might owe to the customer. This transparency shows exactly how you’ve valued the contract from the start.

Accounting for Variable Consideration

Variable consideration is any part of a transaction price that is uncertain or could change, like commissions or usage-based fees. You have to estimate this amount when you recognize revenue, and your disclosures need to explain the methods you use to do so. It’s also important to report any revenue recognized in the current period that relates to performance obligations you completed in prior periods. This often happens when your initial estimates for variable payments change. For example, if a project earns an unexpected bonus, that adjustment needs to be clearly disclosed in your financial statements.

How to Build Your ASC 606 Disclosure Checklist

Creating a checklist for ASC 606 might sound like a chore, but it’s one of the most practical things you can do to get organized. Think of it as your roadmap for compliance. It breaks down a complex standard into a series of clear, manageable steps, ensuring you don’t miss a single detail. This isn't just about ticking boxes; it's about building a repeatable process that makes your financial reporting accurate and your audits much smoother.

A solid checklist helps you gather the right information from the start, document your decisions consistently, and present your financials with confidence. It’s your secret weapon for turning compliance from a headache into a streamlined part of your operations. By outlining every requirement, you create a single source of truth that your entire team can follow. This proactive approach saves you from last-minute scrambles and gives you a clear view of your revenue, which is essential for making smart business decisions. For more tips on financial operations, check out the HubiFi Blog.

Document Your Revenue Streams

Your first step is to clearly map out every way your company makes money. The goal is to provide enough detail so that anyone reading your financial statements can understand the nature, amount, timing, and uncertainty of your revenue and cash flows. This means going beyond a single "sales" number. Your checklist should prompt you to break down revenue by product lines, service types, geographical regions, or customer types. By disaggregating your revenue, you give investors and stakeholders a transparent look into what drives your business. This level of detail is a core requirement of the ASC 606 standard and sets the foundation for all other disclosures.

Track Your Contract Balances

Next, your checklist needs a section for tracking contract balances. This includes your contract assets, contract liabilities, and accounts receivable. You’ll need to disclose the opening and closing balances for each of these accounts for every reporting period. This shows the movement and changes in your customer contracts over time. For example, a growing contract liability balance (deferred revenue) could indicate strong future sales. Tracking this information clearly demonstrates how revenue recognized in the current period was included in the opening contract liability balance and highlights any revenue recognized from past performance obligations. It’s a key part of telling the complete story of your customer relationships.

Detail Your Performance Obligations

A performance obligation is essentially a promise in a contract to deliver a good or service to a customer. Your checklist must ensure you describe these promises in detail. This includes explaining the nature of the goods or services you provide, when you typically satisfy these obligations (e.g., upon delivery, over time), and any significant payment terms. You also need to clarify if you are acting as a principal (providing the goods yourself) or an agent (arranging for another party to provide them). Getting this right is crucial because it directly impacts the timing of your revenue recognition. Clearly defining each distinct promise helps you accurately allocate the transaction price.

Note Significant Judgments and Estimates

ASC 606 isn't always black and white; it requires you to make significant judgments and estimates. Your disclosures need to be transparent about these decisions. Your checklist should include points for documenting how you determined the transaction price, especially when it includes variable consideration like bonuses or discounts. You also need to explain how you allocated that price across different performance obligations and the methods you used to measure progress toward completing them. Documenting the "why" behind your accounting treatments provides crucial context and shows auditors that you have a thoughtful and consistent process for applying the standard.

Set Your Documentation Standards

Finally, establish clear documentation standards for your team. ASC 606 requires significantly more disclosure than previous revenue recognition rules, so having a consistent process is key. Your checklist should serve as the guide for what needs to be documented for every contract. This includes the contract itself, any modifications, the analysis of performance obligations, and the rationale behind any significant judgments. Strong documentation not only ensures compliance but also makes future audits less painful. Using an automated system can help maintain these standards by centralizing data and streamlining workflows. Explore how HubiFi’s integrations can help you connect your systems for seamless documentation.

Key Elements for Your Disclosure

When you're putting together your financial statements, your ASC 606 disclosure is where you tell the story behind your revenue numbers. It’s not just about checking a compliance box; it’s about providing a clear, transparent picture of your company’s financial health. Think of it as the narrative that gives context to the figures, helping investors, auditors, and other stakeholders understand how your business really makes money. Getting these key elements right is crucial for building trust and ensuring everyone is on the same page.

The main goal here is to offer enough detail for a user of your financial statements to understand the nature, amount, timing, and uncertainty of revenue and cash flows arising from contracts with customers. This means going beyond the surface-level numbers and explaining the why and how. For high-volume businesses, manually gathering and organizing this information can be a massive headache, leading to errors and delays. This is where having a robust system in place makes all the difference. With an automated revenue recognition solution, you can pull the necessary data accurately and efficiently. This frees up your team to focus on crafting a clear and insightful disclosure that truly reflects your company's performance, rather than getting bogged down in spreadsheets.

Breaking Down Your Revenue

You can’t just report a single, top-line revenue number. ASC 606 requires you to break it down into meaningful categories. This process, called disaggregation, helps show how different factors—like the economy or market trends—impact your sales and cash flow. You should categorize your revenue in ways that make sense for your business. Common examples include breaking it down by product lines, service types, geographic regions, or even by sales channels. The goal is to provide enough detail for someone to see the moving parts of your revenue engine and truly understand your company’s performance.

Changes in Contract Assets and Liabilities

This part of the disclosure tracks the flow of money and obligations between you and your customers. You need to clearly show the beginning and ending balances for your contract assets (work you’ve completed but can't invoice yet) and contract liabilities (payments received from customers for work you haven't done yet). You also have to explain any significant changes that happened during the period. For instance, you’ll need to disclose how much revenue you recognized in the current period that came from your opening contract liability balance. This gives a clear view of how pre-payments and ongoing projects contribute to your revenue over time.

The Nature of Your Performance Obligations

Your disclosure needs to describe the promises you’ve made to your customers. For each type of contract, explain what goods or services you are committed to delivering. This includes clarifying when you typically satisfy these obligations—for example, upon shipment of a product, over the course of a subscription period, or upon completion of a service. You should also detail your standard payment terms, whether there are any financing components, and if the price is subject to change. This information helps outsiders understand the fundamental commitments that drive your revenue and the timeline for fulfilling them, which is a core part of ASC 606 compliance.

Important Payment Terms

Transparency is key when it comes to the judgments you make in your accounting. Your disclosure must explain the significant decisions that affect the amount and timing of your revenue recognition. This is where you clarify how you apply the rules to your specific situation. For example, you need to describe the methods you use to determine the transaction price, especially if it includes variable amounts or noncash considerations. You should also explain how you allocate that price to different performance obligations within a contract. Outlining these judgments shows that you have a consistent and thoughtful process for your revenue accounting.

When to Recognize Revenue

A core element of your disclosure is explaining when you actually record revenue. Under ASC 606, revenue is recognized when you satisfy a performance obligation by transferring control of a good or service to a customer. You need to specify whether you typically do this at a single point in time (like when a customer buys a product in a store) or over time (like with a monthly software subscription). Detailing your policies for each revenue stream provides a clear framework for how and when your company officially earns its money, which is fundamental to understanding your financial statements.

Best Practices for a Smooth Implementation

Getting your ASC 606 disclosures right doesn't have to be a headache. With a clear plan, you can make the implementation process much smoother. It all comes down to being proactive and methodical. These essential practices will set you up for success and help you avoid common roadblocks.

Collect the Right Data

The foundation of strong disclosures is solid data. Provide clear notes about contracts, performance obligations, and any significant judgments made when recognizing revenue. This gives investors a transparent view of how your company earns money. Create a system to capture this information consistently for every contract, telling the financial story of each customer relationship from the start.

Streamline Your Documentation

Once you have the data, present it clearly. Many companies create a dedicated revenue section in their financial reports, breaking it down into categories like product line or region. The goal is to make your disclosures easy to read. An investor should be able to quickly grasp where your revenue comes from without having to piece together information from different places.

Update and Integrate Your Systems

Spreadsheets and outdated software likely won't cut it for ASC 606. The standard’s requirements are complex, and manual processes can lead to errors. Upgrading your accounting systems is often necessary to handle the new rules. Having seamless integrations between your CRM, ERP, and accounting platforms is key to creating a single source of truth for your revenue data.

Train Your Team

ASC 606 compliance is a team sport. It impacts more than just accounting—your sales, legal, and operations teams all play a role. They need to understand how their decisions affect revenue recognition. Provide clear training on the standard’s requirements and how your company applies them. It’s also wise to consult with experts to ensure everyone understands the specific rules for your business.

Put Quality Control in Place

Finally, establish a strong quality control process to ensure your disclosures are always accurate. This involves setting up regular reviews to catch mistakes before reports are finalized. Specialized software can automate checks and flag inconsistencies, giving you more confidence in your reporting. A reliable system lets you spend less time on compliance and more time making strategic business decisions.

How to Handle Common Disclosure Challenges

Let's be honest: implementing ASC 606 isn't always a walk in the park. Even with a solid checklist, you're likely to run into a few common hurdles that can make disclosures feel complicated. The good news is that these challenges are well-known, and with the right approach, you can manage them effectively. From untangling complex contracts to getting your internal systems up to speed, the key is to address these issues head-on with clear processes and the right tools.

Think of this section as your guide to the trickiest parts of ASC 606 compliance. We'll break down the most frequent pain points we see businesses encounter and give you actionable steps to solve them. By anticipating these challenges, you can build a more resilient and accurate revenue recognition process that stands up to scrutiny and supports your company's growth. For more deep dives into financial topics, you can always find helpful articles on the HubiFi blog.

Dealing with Complex Performance Obligations

One of the first places teams get stuck is identifying performance obligations, especially in contracts with multiple deliverables. A single contract might include software access, implementation services, training, and ongoing support. The challenge is figuring out if these are distinct promises that should be accounted for separately. Companies must carefully analyze each contract to ensure that all obligations are recognized appropriately.

To tackle this, break down every contract into its individual promises. Ask yourself: Can the customer benefit from this good or service on its own? Is this promise separately identifiable from other promises in the contract? Documenting your reasoning is crucial here. Clearly explain why you’ve bundled or separated certain obligations. This creates a clear audit trail and ensures consistency across similar contracts.

Estimating Variable Consideration

Estimating variable consideration is another common hurdle. This is any part of a transaction price that isn't fixed, like bonuses, rebates, discounts, or performance incentives. The difficulty lies in accurately predicting these amounts at the start of a contract, which can lead to discrepancies in revenue recognition down the line.

Your best bet is to use a consistent, data-driven approach. The standard allows for two methods: the "expected value" (a weighted average of possible outcomes) or the "most likely amount." Use historical data from similar contracts to inform your estimates. The key is to not just "set it and forget it." You should review and update your estimates every reporting period as new information becomes available. Make sure you document your methodology and the data you used to support your initial estimate.

Working Around System Limitations

Many accounting systems simply weren't designed to handle the complexities of ASC 606. They may struggle to track revenue over time, manage multiple performance obligations, or adjust for contract modifications. This often forces finance teams into a maze of manual spreadsheets, which are not only time-consuming but also a major source of errors.

If your current software is holding you back, it’s time to assess your options. Can your system be updated, or do you need a more specialized solution? Modern revenue recognition platforms are built to automate these complex calculations and can integrate with your existing tools like your ERP and CRM. This eliminates manual work, reduces the risk of errors, and gives you real-time visibility into your revenue streams.

Getting Teams to Work Together

Revenue recognition is a team sport. It’s not just a task for the finance department. Cross-departmental collaboration is essential because decisions made by sales, legal, and operations directly impact how revenue is recognized. For example, the way a sales rep structures a deal or the specific terms the legal team includes in a contract can create major accounting headaches if they aren't aligned with ASC 606 principles.

To get everyone on the same page, establish a cross-functional team to oversee your revenue recognition process. Create standardized contract templates that sales can use and provide training on how different terms affect financial reporting. When your sales, legal, and finance teams are communicating effectively, you can structure contracts that are both customer-friendly and compliant from the start, saving you from difficult clean-up work later.

Closing Documentation Gaps

If it isn’t documented, it didn’t happen—at least in the eyes of an auditor. Regulatory bodies are increasingly demanding that companies provide clear, detailed explanations of their revenue recognition policies. This means you need to justify how you categorize revenue and recognize it as you transfer goods or services. Vague or missing documentation is a huge red flag during an audit and can undermine confidence in your financial statements.

Make documentation a non-negotiable step in your process. For every significant judgment you make—from defining performance obligations to estimating variable consideration—document the "what, why, and how" of your decision. Your disclosures should tell a clear story that an outside party can understand. Strong disclosures explain the relationship between revenue recognized and the transfer of goods or services, which is exactly what auditors want to see.

Find the Right Tools and Resources for Compliance

Getting your ASC 606 disclosures right isn't something you have to do alone or from scratch. The right tools and resources can make the difference between a stressful, error-prone process and a smooth, confident one. From automation software that handles the heavy lifting to professional guidelines that keep you on track, building a strong support system is key. Think of it as creating a compliance toolkit that not only helps you meet the requirements but also gives you clearer insight into your own revenue streams. By leaning on the right resources, you can turn a complex accounting standard into a manageable part of your financial operations.

Why Automation Is a Game-Changer

Manually tracking contracts, performance obligations, and revenue recognition is a recipe for headaches and human error. Automation changes the entire dynamic. Using specialized software for revenue recognition takes the manual guesswork out of the equation, drastically reducing mistakes and giving you more confidence in your financial reports. Instead of spending weeks buried in spreadsheets, your team can focus on analysis and strategy. An automated system ensures consistency, handles complex calculations instantly, and creates a clear audit trail. It’s the most effective way to manage the detailed requirements of ASC 606 without getting overwhelmed. If you're ready to see how this works, you can schedule a demo to explore an automated solution.

Following Professional Guidelines

The detailed disclosure requirements of ASC 606 are there for a reason: to provide clarity and transparency. Professional guidelines from bodies like the Financial Accounting Standards Board (FASB) are your roadmap. These standards require companies to provide detailed notes about their contracts, performance obligations, and any significant judgments made when recognizing revenue. This isn't just about checking a box; it's about giving investors, auditors, and other stakeholders a clear picture of how your company earns money and what risks are involved. Following these guidelines helps build trust and credibility in your financial statements, showing that you’re committed to accurate and transparent reporting.

Using Disclosure Management Platforms

Disclosure management platforms are designed to simplify the entire reporting process. Think of them as a central command center for collecting, organizing, checking, and sharing your financial data. These tools are built to handle the complexities of standards like ASC 606, pulling information from different systems into one cohesive report. This is especially helpful for ensuring all your disclosures are consistent and accurate. A good platform will also offer seamless integrations with HubiFi and your existing ERPs and CRMs, making it easier to gather the necessary data without disrupting your current workflows. This creates a more efficient and reliable reporting cycle from start to finish.

Finding Helpful Reporting Templates

You don’t have to reinvent the wheel when creating your disclosures. Professional organizations offer resources to help you get started. For instance, the AICPA & CIMA provides example reports and illustrative disclosures specifically for ASC 606. These templates are an incredible starting point, showing you what a compliant disclosure looks like and helping you understand the level of detail required. Using these examples can save you time and ensure you don’t miss any critical components. They provide a solid framework that you can adapt to fit the specific nature of your business and its revenue streams, giving you a head start on drafting your own notes.

Choosing the Right Compliance Software

To keep up with ASC 606, many companies find they need to upgrade their accounting software and internal processes. The old ways of doing things often can't handle the new rules for revenue recognition, especially for businesses with high transaction volumes. When choosing software, look for a solution that can manage complex contracts, automate revenue allocation, and provide real-time analytics. The right system should be more than just a compliance tool; it should be an investment that gives you better visibility into your financial health. As you evaluate your options, consider how different platforms handle data integration and what their pricing information looks like to find the best fit for your company’s needs.

How to Maintain Compliance Year After Year

Getting through your initial ASC 606 implementation is a huge milestone, but the work doesn’t stop there. Compliance is an ongoing process, not a one-time project. As your business evolves with new products, contracts, and sales strategies, your revenue recognition practices need to keep pace. The key is to build a sustainable system that makes year-over-year compliance feel less like a scramble and more like a routine. By embedding the right processes and controls into your operations, you can stay on top of the requirements and produce accurate financials consistently. A solid framework not only keeps you compliant but also provides valuable insights for making strategic business decisions.

Establish Strong Internal Controls

Think of internal controls as the guardrails for your revenue recognition process. They are the specific, repeatable actions your team takes to ensure financial data is accurate and reliable. The main goal here is transparency. Anyone looking at your financial reports should be able to understand where your revenue is coming from, how much there is, and when you expect to receive it. This means having a system that captures all contract details, automates complex calculations, and includes checks and balances to prevent errors. Implementing automated revenue recognition is one of the most effective ways to build these controls directly into your workflow, reducing manual effort and the risk of mistakes.

Schedule Regular Reviews and Updates

Your business isn’t static, and your ASC 606 compliance process shouldn’t be either. It’s crucial to regularly review your contracts and accounting judgments. Don't wait until the year-end audit to discover that a new type of sales contract requires a different accounting treatment. Set up a recurring meeting—quarterly is a good cadence—with your finance, sales, and legal teams to discuss any changes. Use this time to review new contract templates, pricing structures, or commission plans. Documenting these discussions and the resulting decisions creates a clear audit trail and ensures everyone is aligned on how to apply the revenue standard consistently.

Set Up Monitoring Procedures

Effective monitoring gives you a real-time view of your financial position. Specifically, you need to keep a close eye on your contract assets and liabilities. These balances change as you deliver services and as customers make payments, and you need to be able to explain why they fluctuate. For example, you should understand how the timing of your work relates to your payment schedules. Setting up monitoring procedures means having a dashboard or report that tracks the progress of your performance obligations against payments received. This gives you the data you need to produce accurate disclosures and answer any questions about how you’re managing your contractual commitments.

Prepare for Audits with Confidence

Audits don’t have to be stressful if you’re prepared. The best way to get ready is to maintain clear, comprehensive documentation throughout the year. Your records should tell the complete story of each contract, from the initial agreement to the final revenue recognized. If you use any of the practical expedients, or shortcuts, allowed under ASC 606, be sure to document which ones you’ve applied and why. This level of transparency shows auditors that you have a thoughtful and robust process, which can help streamline their review. When your documentation is in order, you can approach audits with confidence, knowing you have the evidence to support your financial statements.

Keep Your Policies Current

Your internal ASC 606 policy is the central guide for your revenue recognition practices. It shouldn’t be a document that you write once and forget about. The disclosure requirements under the new standard are far more extensive than they used to be, and they apply every single year. Make it a habit to review and update your policy annually, or whenever a significant change occurs in your business. If you launch a new subscription model, start bundling products, or change your sales commission structure, your policy needs to reflect how you’ll account for these scenarios under ASC 606. A current policy ensures consistency and serves as a vital training tool for your team.

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Frequently Asked Questions

Why are ASC 606 disclosures so much more detailed than the old rules? The main reason for the extra detail is to create consistency and transparency. Before ASC 606, revenue rules varied by industry, which made it difficult for investors to compare the financial health of two different companies. The new standard requires everyone to follow the same five-step model and "show their work." This means explaining the judgments you made and breaking down revenue into clearer categories so anyone reading your financial statements can get a true picture of how your business makes money.

Can I manage ASC 606 disclosures with just spreadsheets? While it might seem possible for a very small business with simple contracts, it's a risky approach that doesn't scale. Spreadsheets are prone to human error, difficult to audit, and become incredibly cumbersome as your business grows or your contracts become more complex. An automated system is built to handle these complexities, ensuring your calculations are accurate and your documentation is centralized. This frees you from manual data entry and gives you a reliable process you can count on.

What's the most important first step to get started with compliance? The best place to begin is by thoroughly reviewing and documenting your existing customer contracts. You can't properly disclose your revenue until you have a crystal-clear understanding of every promise you've made to your customers. Take the time to map out your different revenue streams and identify the specific performance obligations within each type of contract. This foundational work will make every subsequent step, from allocating transaction prices to writing the actual disclosures, much more straightforward.

What if my contracts bundle multiple services together? How do I disclose that? This is a very common scenario. The key is to determine if the bundled items are "distinct" performance obligations, meaning the customer can benefit from them separately. For example, a software license and a one-time training session are likely distinct. Your disclosure needs to explain how you identified these separate promises and, just as importantly, how you allocated the total contract price among them. Being transparent about this judgment is a core requirement of the standard.

Once my company is compliant with ASC 606, is the work finished? Think of compliance as an ongoing practice, not a one-time project. Your business is always evolving—you might launch new products, change your pricing, or introduce new contract terms. Whenever these changes happen, you need to review and update your revenue recognition policies to match. It's a good idea to schedule regular reviews with your sales, legal, and finance teams to ensure your disclosures always reflect how your business operates now, not how it operated last year.

Jason Berwanger

Former Root, EVP of Finance/Data at multiple FinTech startups

Jason Kyle Berwanger: An accomplished two-time entrepreneur, polyglot in finance, data & tech with 15 years of expertise. Builder, practitioner, leader—pioneering multiple ERP implementations and data solutions. Catalyst behind a 6% gross margin improvement with a sub-90-day IPO at Root insurance, powered by his vision & platform. Having held virtually every role from accountant to finance systems to finance exec, he brings a rare and noteworthy perspective in rethinking the finance tooling landscape.