Technical Accounting Glossary
Short, direct answers to the terms that come up most in technical accounting work — written by CPAs, cited to the guidance, and kept current as standards are amended.
Lease Accounting (ASC 842)
- What Is Lease Accounting?Lease accounting is how a company records its leases — real estate, equipment, vehicles — on the financial statements, and documents the judgment behind how each lease is classi…
- What Is ASC 842?ASC 842 is the FASB standard governing lease accounting under U.S. GAAP. It replaced ASC 840 and requires lessees to recognize a right-of-use asset and a lease liability for sub…
- What Does Lease Accounting Software Do?Lease accounting software helps a company apply ASC 842 to a portfolio of leases — abstracting contract terms, classifying each lease as finance or operating, calculating the ri…
- What Is a Lease Abstract?A lease abstract is a structured summary of the contract terms that drive lease accounting: the parties, the asset, commencement date, lease term and options, payments, and any …
Revenue Recognition (ASC 606)
- What Is Revenue Recognition?Revenue recognition is the accounting principle that determines when and how much revenue a company records for a transaction — not necessarily when cash changes hands. Under AS…
- What Is Deferred Revenue?Deferred revenue is a liability representing payment a company has received for goods or services it has not yet delivered. Under ASC 606 the formal balance-sheet caption is a c…
- What Does an ASC 606 Revenue Recognition Memo Include?An ASC 606 memo documents the five-step revenue recognition analysis for a specific contract or class of contracts: how the performance obligations were identified and whether t…
Purchase Accounting (ASC 805)
- What Is Purchase Price Allocation?Purchase price allocation (PPA) is the process of assigning the total consideration paid in an acquisition to the identifiable assets acquired and liabilities assumed, at fair v…
- What Is ASC 805?ASC 805 is the FASB standard governing business combinations. It requires an acquirer to recognize the identifiable assets acquired, liabilities assumed, and any noncontrolling …
- What Is a Business Combination?A business combination is a transaction in which an acquirer obtains control of one or more businesses — not merely a group of assets. ASC 805's acquisition-method accounting ap…
SEC Reporting
- What Is XBRL?XBRL (eXtensible Business Reporting Language) is the structured data format the SEC requires public companies to use when tagging their financial statements for electronic filin…
- 10-K vs. 10-Q: What's the Difference?A 10-K is a public company's audited annual report to the SEC — full financial statements, business and risk discussion, and MD&A. A 10-Q is the quarterly counterpart: unaudited…
- What Is a Disclosure Checklist?A disclosure checklist is a structured list of every disclosure a given filing requires, used to confirm nothing required is missing before the filing goes out. It pairs each it…
- What Does EDGAR Full-Text Search Do?EDGAR full-text search lets you search the actual text of SEC filings — not just metadata like company name or filing date — across filings from 2001 to the present. Accountants…
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