I am gathering details on  how best to add Deferred Revenue to our application.

I have an understanding of what deferred revenue is and I suspect we will need some configuration settings but I wanted to open this up to you all who are the experts in Deferred Revenue.

Please provide your ideas of what we need to add to the system. Do we need to add a second set of GL Code fields so you can define the Revenue GL and its Deferred GL?  Do we need to store these values in the system or is this just a matter of having some way to calculate how much to recognize based on invoice data, fiscal date, and current date?

I will not hesitate to reach out via a conference call with you if that is what we need.

I look forward to your feedback.

 

Brian Weaver

Product Manager

I have received several samples of how an invoice would be deferred over time and I appreciate you all who have contributed.

I have been working backwards by determining the output needed each month and output needed for auditing purposes.  We will provide a way to run a report that will tell you how much to move from deferred to revenue in the month the report is run.  This most likely will not be a custom report rather an ouput that you run in a specific part of the application somewhere in the Ecommerce menu hive.

 Store orders and Dues will be separate actions within the backend as the calculation is different and it is better for our coding efforts to keep them separate.

For store orders we are proposing adding a field to the backend product page where you tell us when to recognize the revenue for the product.

Example: Your fiscal year runs Jan to December. You have an event coming up in March 2017. You have 3 possible event tickets added to the event.  You can set the Recognize Revenue Date field to 3/1/2017 for the three tickets.  You are also selling advertisement through that event but the ad will be placed on your website on December 1, 2016. You can set the Recognize Revenue Date for the ad product to 12/1/2016.

By giving you a date field in which to recognize revenue on the product level we do not have to worry about setting up options for you to choose from as for when to recognize revenue. You tell us the date and we will use that date.

How does this sound so far? 

Hi Brian -

Because we have anniversary expiration dates rather than calendar, we break dues down by 12th's and code it either current or deferred ie so someone who renews in June, 6 months dues go to current year and 6 months are deferred. All deferred revenue is recognized in January when the fiscal year begins. I hope that makes sense. I know this is a huge issue for our accounting department. I'd love to discuss this more to really get a good solution for this.

Heather,

I would love to touch base with you and your accounting department to get some clarification on this feature. If you would like to setup some available times for your accounting team I will see what I have available as well.

Thanks Heather.

Hi Brian (and Heather),

Here's a company that really has revenue recognition nailed - and they have two-way sync with QB and Salesforce! If YM isn't their customer, perhaps it should be - you could certainly pass along to us their rev rec and other SaaS reports to YM (like MRR, Churn, Lifetime value, etc.)
http://saasoptics.com/deferred_revenue_recognition/deferred_revenue_recognition.html

I believe it would benefit membership associations to run more like SaaS companies (especially in the reporting, etc.)

I'm curious to hear your thoughts.

Thanks for sharing this with us Jeff. I will certainly set aside some time to look into this site.

Hi Brian,

I wasn't able to attend the discussions you had last month on deferred revenue so I was wondering if I could get an update as to where this enhancement currently sits.

Thanks!

Ditto what C. Cooper posted, any updates you can share?

thanks,

Tim

Hi everyone, I am in the process of discovery for how we should solve for deferred revenue. Please join the group where I will place all of the mockups and topics for discussion. http://unity.site-ym.com/members/member_engagement/groups.aspx?id=183697 . I am working with my Business Analyst to scope out the output and then we will work backwards to solve for how to attain the end solution. if you would like to have a quick chat about where we are so far feel free to email me at bweaver@yourmembership.com and I will schedule a call with you to go over our current mind set. Thanks.

I am having a difficult time getting an idea of how many customers are truly waiting on a Deferred Revenue feature. I emailed the Deferred Revenue group and received only 2 replies to which stated it was not a priority and they had other updates that were more important. If YM adds one new feature to the system this year should it be some type of Deferred Revenue feature?