Cost Savings and Seamless Implementation for Revenue Recognition Consulting Project

Business Challenge

The accounting department of a multinational publicly traded software company faced a huge volume of work — almost double — when new ASC 606 revenue recognition guidelines were released. The guidelines impacted how they recognized contract revenue, which meant broad ramifications for how business transactions were performed across the entire organization. To maintain compliance, they would have to re-evaluate nearly 10,000 contracts and create new standards for contract creation.

The company needed help evaluating existing contracts and in creating new ones. And since the new revenue recognition guidelines affected all businesses that enter into contracts with customers to transfer goods or services, the customer was competing with many companies that needed similar talent to help with implementation.

The customer was partnering with multiple Big 4 firms to create an action plan, but the labor-intensive implementation meant that partnering with these firms to complete all work would be extremely costly. To complete the contract analysis without paying Big 4 billing rates, the customer required a staffing partner that could provide qualified contract talent with the technical expertise to implement the plan.

Contract talent would be responsible for analyzing the changes in standards and the resulting impact on accounting for existing revenue streams, company financial statements and current systems and software applications.

Our Solution

Aston Carter engaged our national teams to source talent from similar projects and uncover best practices from successful, comparable implementations.

We sourced five qualified revenue recognition consultants, including two contract review personnel, two internal controls / SOX personnel and one project manager, who ensured the work was done on time and in alignment with the project plan. The revenue recognition consultants provided support for contract review and analysis, guided by the new revenue recognition framework the Big 4 firms identified. The framework provided guidance for retrospective adoption and the additional disclosures required.