Accrued @ Terakru

Definition

Accrual (accumulation) of something is, in finance, the adding together of interest or different investments over a period of time. It holds specific meanings in accounting, where it can refer to accounts on a balance sheet that represent liabilities and non-cash-based assets used in accrual-based accounting. These types of accounts include, among others, accounts payable, accounts receivable, goodwill, deferred tax liability and future interest expense.

Unfortunately, the term accrual is also often used as an abbreviation for the terms accrued expense and accrued revenue that share the common name word, but they have the opposite economic / accounting characteristics.

# Accrued revenue: Revenue is recognized before cash is received.
# Accrued expense: Expense is recognized before cash is paid out.

Accrued revenue (or accrued assets) is an asset, such as unpaid proceeds from a delivery of goods or services, when such income is earned and a related revenue item is recognized, while cash is to be received in a latter period, when the amount is deducted from accrued revenues.

In the rental industry, there are specialized revenue accruals for rental income which crosses month end boundaries. These are normally utilized by rental companies who charge in arrears, based on an anniversary of a contract date. For example a rental contract which began on 15 January, being invoiced on a recurring monthly basis will not generate its first invoice until 14 February. Therefore at the end of the January financial period an accrual must be raised for 16 days worth of the monthly charge. This may be a simple pro-rata basis (e.g. 16/31 of the monthly charge) or may be more complex if only week days are being charged or a standardized month is being used (e.g. 28 days, 30 days etc.).

Accrued expense, in contrast, is a liability with an uncertain timing or amount, but where the uncertainty is not significant enough to qualify it as a provision. An example is a pending obligation to pay for goods or services received from a counterpart, while cash is to be paid out in a latter accounting period when the amount is deducted from accrued expenses.