Deferred revenues

Deferred revenues, or unearned revenues, are invoices addressed to customers for goods yet to be delivered or services yet to be rendered.

The company cannot report them on the current profit and loss statement, or income statement, since the goods and services will be effectively delivered/rendered in the future.

These future revenues must be deferred on the company’s balance sheet among the current liabilities until they can be recognized, at once or over a defined period, on the profit and loss statement.

For example, let’s say a business sells a software license of $1200 for 1 year. They immediately invoice it to the customer but can’t consider it earned yet, as the future months of licensing have not yet been delivered. Therefore, they post this new revenue in a deferred revenue account and recognize it on a monthly basis. Each month, for the next 12 months, $100 will be recognized as revenue.

Odoo Accounting handles deferred revenues by spreading them in multiple entries that are posted periodically.

Note

The server checks once a day if an entry must be posted. It might then take up to 24 hours before you see a change from Draft to Posted.

Configuration

Make sure the default settings are correctly configured for your business. To do so, go to Accounting ‣ Configuration ‣ Settings. The following options are available:

Journal

The deferral entries are posted in this journal.

Deferred Revenue

Revenues are deferred on this Current Liability account until they are recognized.

Generate Entries

By default, Odoo automatically generates the deferral entries when you post a customer invoice. However, you can also choose to generate them manually by selecting the Manually & Grouped option instead.

Based on

Suppose an invoice of $1200 must be deferred over 12 months. The Months computation accounts for $100 each month, while the Days computation accounts for different amounts depending on the number of days in each month.

Generate deferral entries on validation

Tip

Make sure the Start Date and End Date fields are visible in the Invoice Lines tab. In most cases, the Start Date should be in the same month as the Invoice Date. Deferred revenue entries are posted from the invoice date and are displayed in the report accordingly.

For each line of the invoice that should be deferred, specify the start and end dates of the deferral period.

If the Generate Entries field in the Settings is set to On invoice/bill validation, Odoo automatically generates the deferral entries when the invoice is validated. Click the Deferred Entries smart button to see them.

One entry, dated on the same day as the invoice’s accounting date, moves the invoice amounts from the income account to the deferred account. The other entries are deferral entries which, month after month, move the invoice amounts from the deferred account to the income account to recognize the revenue.

Example

You can defer a January invoice of $1200 over 12 months by specifying a start date of 01/01/2023 and an end date of 12/31/2023. At the end of August, $800 is recognized as an income, whereas $400 remains on the deferred account.

Reporting

The deferred revenue report computes an overview of the necessary deferral entries for each account. To access it, go to Accounting ‣ Reporting ‣ Deferred Revenue.

To view the journal items of each account, click on the account name and then Journal Items.

Deferred revenue report

Note

Only invoices whose accounting date is before the end of the period of the report are taken into account.

Generate grouped deferral entries manually

If you have a lot of deferred revenues and wish to reduce the number of journal entries created, you can generate deferral entries manually. To do so, set the Generate Entries field in the Settings to Manually & Grouped. Odoo then aggregates the deferred amounts in a single entry.

At the end of each month, go to Accounting ‣ Reporting ‣ Deferred Revenue and click the Generate Entries button. This generates two deferral entries:

  • One dated at the end of the month which aggregates, for each account, all the deferred amounts of that month. This means that a part of the deferred revenue is recognized at the end of that period.

  • The reversal of this created entry, dated on the following day (i.e., the first day of the next month) to cancel the previous entry.

Example

There are two invoices:

  • Invoice A: $1200 to be deferred from 01/01/2023 to 12/31/2023

  • Invoice B: $600 to be deferred from 01/01/2023 to 12/31/2023

In January

At the end of January, after clicking the Generate Entries button, there are the following entries:

  • Entry 1 dated on the 31st January:

    • Line 1: Expense account -1200 -600 = -1800 (cancelling the total of both invoices)

    • Line 2: Expense account 100 + 50 = 150 (recognizing 1/12 of invoice A and invoice B)

    • Line 3: Deferred account 1800 - 150 = 1650 (amount that has yet to be deferred later on)

  • Entry 2 dated on the 1st February, the reversal of the previous entry:

    • Line 1: Expense account 1800

    • Line 2: Deferred account -150

    • Line 3: Expense account -1650

In February

At the end of February, after clicking the Generate Entries button, there are the following entries:

  • Entry 1 dated on the 28th February:

    • Line 1: Expense account -1200 -600 = -1800 (cancelling the total of both invoices)

    • Line 2: Expense account 200 + 100 = 300 (recognizing 2/12 of invoice A and invoice B)

    • Line 3: Deferred account 1800 - 300 = 1500 (amount that has yet to be deferred later on)

  • Entry 2 dated on the 1st March, the reversal of the previous entry.

From March to October

The same computation is done for each month until October.

In November

At the end of November, after clicking the Generate Entries button, there are the following entries:

  • Entry 1 dated on the 30th November:

    • Line 1: Expense account -1200 -600 = -1800 (cancelling the total of both invoices)

    • Line 2: Expense account 1100 + 550 = 1650 (recognizing 11/12 of invoice A and invoice B)

    • Line 3: Deferred account 1800 - 1650 = 150 (amount that has yet to be deferred later on)

  • Entry 2 dated on the 1st December, the reversal of the previous entry.

In December

There is no need to generate entries in December. Indeed, if we do the computation for December, we have an amount of 0 to be deferred.

In total

If we aggregate everything, we would have:

  • invoice A and invoice B

  • two entries (one for the deferral and one for the reversal) for each month from January to November

Therefore, at the end of December, invoices A and B are fully recognized as income only once in spite of all the created entries thanks to the reversal mechanism.