Methodology

Revenue recognition rests on one principle: you earn revenue when you deliver the service, not when you invoice it or collect payment. Everything else follows from that. This is the principle codified in ASC 606 (US GAAP) and IFRS 15 (IFRS): recognize revenue as you satisfy your obligation to the customer. Lago’s daily, service-period-based recognition is how that principle plays out for subscriptions and usage-based billing, so your reported revenue holds up under both standards.

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ASC 606 and IFRS 15 in plain language

ASC 606 and IFRS 15 are the same idea written by two standards bodies. They describe a five-step model for turning a customer contract into reported revenue:

1. Identify the contract. The agreement with your customer. In Lago, this is the subscription or plan they’re on.
2. Identify the performance obligations. What you promised to deliver: a month of access, a number of API calls, a seat.
3. Determine the transaction price. What the customer agreed to pay. This is the invoice amount, before tax.
4. Allocate the price to each obligation. Split the price across what you promised. For a subscription, that’s spreading the fee across the service period.
5. Recognize revenue as you satisfy each obligation. Earn the revenue as you deliver, day by day for time-based service, at consumption for usage.

The whole model comes down to one rule: revenue is earned when you deliver, not when you bill or get paid. Steps 1 to 4 are the bookkeeping your plans and invoices already encode. Step 5 is what Lago automates, so you don’t apply the standard by hand.

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Why Lago’s output matches the standards

The compliance isn’t a label. It falls out of how Lago recognizes revenue. Each mechanic maps to something the standards require: The terms deferred revenue and unbilled revenue are Lago’s names for what the standards call a contract liability and a contract asset. Same accounting, plainer labels.

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The recognition model

Lago recognizes revenue in one of three shapes, depending on what kind of charge it is. Most revenue you care about, subscriptions, is the first shape: spread daily across the service period.

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Daily recognition as the base unit

Lago recognizes revenue daily. Monthly, quarterly, and annual figures are simply the daily amounts added up for the days that fall inside the period. Working at the daily level is what lets a single annual invoice report correctly across twelve different months. The formula for time-based charges is:

Daily recognized revenue = invoice amount ÷ number of days in the service period.

The final day of the service period absorbs any rounding remainder, so the daily amounts always add back up to the exact invoice amount.

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A worked example

A customer is invoiced $1,200 on January 1 for a subscription running January 1 to December 31. The service period is 365 days, so Lago recognizes $1,200 ÷ 365 ≈ $3.29 per day. January has 31 days. At the end of January you’ve earned $101.92 of the $1,200. The remaining $1,098.08 is deferred revenue: invoiced, but not yet earned. It will be recognized day by day through December.

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Reports reference the last closed day

Revenue recognition data is always cleaner for past days. A closed day is settled: its usage is final, its events are in, nothing is still moving. Today is not. Usage is still accruing, events are still landing, and any figure for the current day would change minute to minute. So when a report’s date to is a specific day, Lago uses the last closed day as the data reference. The current day is excluded. This means today’s data may not appear in some reports yet. It’s deliberate, to avoid reporting a number that’s still in motion and could be read as final. In practice: close the day, and its data settles into the reports the next day. Report on settled periods and the figures hold.

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Service period, not invoice date

The window Lago spreads revenue across is the service period, the dates the service covers. The invoice date and the payment date don’t move recognition.

• Bill in advance and the amount sits in deferred revenue until each day is earned.
• Bill in arrears and revenue is recognized as the period elapses into unbilled revenue, which becomes a receivable once you invoice.

Either way, the recognized revenue for a given month is the same. Only the balance-sheet account differs.

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Revenue is always pre-tax

Recognized revenue never includes tax. Tax is a liability you owe the tax authority, not revenue you earned. Lago records it separately. See Taxes.

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What this means for your reports

Every billing event becomes one or more balanced journal entries, and those roll up into the recognized and deferred revenue you see in the reports. Recognized revenue plus deferred revenue always reconciles back to what you invoiced.