After the Financial Accounting Standards Board spent months working through amendments to the revenue recognition standard that is set to take effect in 2018, it turns out there are still more small changes coming.

FASB issued another proposed Accounting Standards Update, open for comment only through July 2, to provide nine separate technical corrections and improvements to the massive new revenue recognition standard. That’s in addition to four earlier updates to delay the effective date by one year and to answer questions on identifying performance obligations, licensing, principal versus agent considerations, and others.

The changes “affect narrow aspects” of the original guidance contained in Accounting Standards Update No. 2014-09, FASB says. The board decided to batch them into an update to the accounting guidance both to expedite improvements to the original standard and to “increase stakeholders’ awareness,” of the issues, the proposal says. FASB learned of the various issues through continued implementation activity with the Transition Resource Group, through technical inquiries, and through the online feedback mechanism built into the Accounting Standards Codification.

The technical corrections include:

clarification to guidance on preproduction costs related to long-term supply arrangements;

clarification on what an entity should consider and include when performing impairment testing on contract costs;

a clarification that impairment testing is first performed on assets outside the scope of Topic 340 on other assets and deferred costs;

a requirement that provision for losses must be determined at least at the contract level;

an edit to assure the standard is clear that all matters addressed under insurance guidance are scoped out of the revenue recognition guidance;

a practical expedient to the disclosure requirement for remaining performance obligations under certain situations;

new language to clear up any perceived inconsistencies in an example on how to apply the new guidance to contract modifications;

scope exceptions involving fixed-odds wagering contracts and derivatives guidance;

alignment of the cost-capitalization guidance for advisors of both public funds and private funds in Topic 946.

Companies are working through the details of the new revenue guidance to determine how it will affect their financial results and how they will modify their systems and controls to adopt the new requirements.

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