For instance, if the company has $60,000 of sales in December, the company will pay commissions of $6,000 on January 15. For instance, Radius Cloud runs a one-month advertising campaign with upfront expenses, but the resulting revenue from increased product sales is realized over several months as customers respond to the campaign. The mismatch in timing makes the implementation of the matching principle difficult. When running a marketing campaign, a company incurs upfront expenses for advertising, promotions, and creative development. However, the revenue generated from the campaign may be realized over an extended period as customers gradually respond to the marketing efforts and make purchases. This delay makes it difficult to accurately align the timing of expenses with the corresponding revenue.

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Obviously, the general manager’s salary and those of other administrative staff cannot be related to a specific product. Accordingly, they are charged as expenses in the income statement of the accounting period in which the salaries are paid. Consequently, the first step must be to determine the revenues earned during a particular accounting period and then to identify the expenses incurred, thereby determining the revenues earned during that accounting period. In such cases, the careful determination of such expenses has to be made and appropriate adjustments will be required in order to determine the proper profits (or loss) for the current accounting period.

If the business decides that its accounting period is one year and it sells 8,000 units in that year, then the revenue recognized is 80,000 (8,000 units x 10.00). The usual accounting practice is that any expenses that cannot be traced to specific revenue-generating goods or services are charged as expenses in the income statement of the accounting period in which they are incurred. Sometimes, expenditures are incurred either in advance or subsequent to the accounting period even though they relate to expenses for goods or services sold during the current accounting period. Most businesses record their revenues and expenses on an annual basis, which happens regardless of the time of receipts of payments. It should be mentioned though that it’s important to look at the cash flow statement in conjunction with the income statement.

This means that the matching principle is ignored when you use the cash basis of accounting. Non-cash items such as depreciation, amortization, and stock-based compensation don’t involve actual cash outflows or inflows, making it difficult to match them precisely with the related revenues. Similarly, non-monetary transactions, such as barter exchanges or transactions involving assets other than cash, further complicate the matching process. Revenue recognition is complex due to factors such as project completion timing and revenue allocation for different product parts. Note that although the sales commission is not paid until April, based on the matching principle, the sales commission is an expense for the month of March as it has been matched to revenue recognized in that month.

Accrued expenses

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The matching principle also states that expenses should be recognized in a “rational and systematic” manner. This is the key concept behind depreciation where an asset’s cost is recognized over many periods. Businesses primarily follow the matching principle to ensure consistency in financial statements. The principle is at the core of the accrual basis of accounting and adjusting entries.

In short, the matching principle states that where expenses can be matched with revenues, we should do so because the benefits of an asset or revenue should be linked to the costs of that asset or revenue. A marketing team crafts messages to entice potential customers to visit a business website. It’s not always possible to directly correlate revenue to spending in these cases. Expenses for online search ads appear in the expense period instead of dispersing over time. A company acquires production equipment for $100,000 that has a projected useful life of 10 years. It should charge the cost of the equipment to depreciation expense at the rate of $10,000 per year for ten years, so that the expense is recognized over the entirety of its useful life.

This approach avoids charging the entire $100,000 in the first year and none in the subsequent nine years. The matching principle applies to depreciation by allocating the cost of long-term assets over their useful lives. Instead of expensing the entire cost upfront, depreciation spreads the expense across multiple periods, matching it with the revenue the asset generates over time, ensuring accurate financial reporting. For example, Radius Cloud sold $10,000 worth of products in December 2022 but incurred $5,000 in related expenses in January 2023. Without the matching principle, their financial statements would have been inconsistent.

Period costs, such as office salaries or selling expenses, are immediately recognized as expenses and offset against revenues of the accounting period. Unpaid period costs are recorded as accrued expenses (liabilities) to ensure these costs do not falsely offset period revenues and create a fictitious profit. The commission is recorded as accrued expenses in the sale period to prevent a fictitious profit. It is then deducted from accrued expenses in the subsequent period to prevent a fictitious loss when the representative is compensated. There are situations in which using the matching principle can be a disadvantage.

The company should recognize the entire $2,000 cost as expense in the same reporting period as the sale, since the recognition of revenue and the cost of goods sold are tightly linked. HighRadius offers a cloud-based Record to Report Software that helps accounting professionals streamline and automate the financial close process for businesses. We have what are accounting advisory services helped accounting teams from around the globe with month-end closing, reconciliations, journal entry management, intercompany accounting, and financial reporting. Administrative salaries, for example, cannot be matched to any specific revenue stream. For example, accountants must analyze contracts, change orders, and project progress reports to accurately determine when to recognize revenue and expenses. Suppose a business has a product which sells for 10.00 a unit and costs 4.00 a unit.

The matching principle states that expenses should be recognized and recorded when those expenses can be matched with the revenues those expenses helped to generate. In this sense, the matching principle recognizes expenses as the revenue recognition principle recognizes income. Prepaid expenses are not recognised as expenses but as assets until one of the qualifying conditions is met, which then results in their recognition as expenses. If no connection with revenues can be established, costs are recognised immediately as expenses (e.g., general administrative and research and development costs). If the costs are expected to have no future benefit beyond the current accounting period then the full amount should be immediately recognized as an expense.

The matching principle  requires that revenues and any related expenses be recognized together in the same reporting period. Thus, if there is a cause-and-effect relationship between revenue and certain expenses, then record them at the same time. In some cases, it will be necessary to conduct a systematic allocation of a cost across multiple reporting periods, such as when the purchase cost of a fixed asset is depreciated over several years. If there is no cause-and-effect relationship, then charge the cost to expense at once. The matching principle links expenses to the related revenues, while the revenue recognition principle requires revenue to be recognized when it’s earned.

1. In February 2019, when the bonus is paid out there is no impact on the income statement.
2. This practice prevents the expense from being recorded as a fictitious loss in the payment period and as a fictitious profit in the period when the goods or services are received.
3. Since there is an expected future benefit from the use of the asset the matching principle requires that the cost of the asset is spread over its useful life.
4. Obviously, the general manager’s salary and those of other administrative staff cannot be related to a specific product.

In other words, the earnings or revenues and the expenses shown in an income statement must both refer to the same goods transferred or services rendered to customers during the accounting period. The realization and accrual concepts are essentially derived from the need to match expenses with revenues earned during an accounting period. For example, if the office costs $10 million and is expected to last 10 years, the company would allocate $1 million of straight-line depreciation expense per year for 10 years. The expense will continue regardless of whether revenues are generated or not.

Under a bonus plan, an employee earns a $50,000 bonus based on measurable aspects of her performance within a year. You should record the bonus expense within the year when the employee earned it. For example, Radius Cloud receives stock as payment, making revenue recognition tricky. Valuing the stock is complicated by its fluctuating value, requiring judgment and estimation. The stock may need gross margin accounting to be held for a certain period before its value can be realized. An adjusting entry would now be used to record the rent expense and corresponding reduction in the rent prepayment in June.

Each subsequent month, 1/12 of this cost is recognized as an expense, rather than recording the entire amount in the month it was billed. The remaining portion of the cost, not yet recognized, stays as prepayments (assets) to prevent it from becoming a fictitious loss in the billing month and a fictitious profit in other months. The revenue recognition principle mandates that revenue should be recorded when it is earned, regardless of when payment is received. This means recognizing revenue when goods or services are delivered, ensuring that financial statements accurately reflect a company’s financial performance. Together with the time period assumption and the revenue recognition principle the matching principle forms a necessary part of the accrual basis of accounting. The alternative method of accounting is the cash basis in which revenue is recorded when received and expenses are recorded when paid.