Track service, recognition and payment as separate events.
Review an earned advance, used prepaid cover, an unpaid current expense and collection of an earlier receivable.
The count describes four selected tasks under their stated simplified assumptions. It is not a professional qualification, hiring threshold or estimate of overall accounting competence. Every count opens all explanations and this complete guide.
Read the recognition assumptions first
These four original scenarios explicitly state their simplified accrual model, completed service portion, coverage period or earlier correct revenue recording. That matters because the date cash moves is not always the date the exercise recognises income or expense. The tasks do not ask you to interpret a complex real contract or apply every jurisdiction’s standards. Use the supplied conditions before importing a remembered rule from a different accounting problem.
An advance can cover unfinished work
Consider a fictional CU1,800 advance for three equal sessions. The exercise rule recognises CU600 when each session is completed, with no additional conditions. After one completed session, CU600 is earned in that period and CU1,200 remains for undelivered sessions under the model. Cash was received at the start, but that fact alone does not make every session completed. This is a deliberately stated model, not a universal conclusion about all service contracts.
Do not record old revenue again on collection
If an earlier receivable arose from correctly recorded revenue, its later collection swaps the receivable for cash when the question excludes new service, fees and interest. Conversely, a current-period service cost can create an expense before its cash payment. A prepaid cost needs the specified allocation of used coverage. Check the period, amount and exclusions in each case; neither cash-first intuition nor an automatic payment-date rule fits all four tasks.
Draw a short timeline with invented facts
Write service completion, cash receipt and reporting date on separate lines. Give each a fictional date and amount. State the recognition rule before calculating the period’s revenue or expense, then mark the remaining receivable, payable or prepaid amount. Move only the cash date in a second version and explain which result does and does not change under that same rule. Use paper or a disposable private sheet rather than editing actual closing records.
Simplified timing is not compliance advice
Four answers cannot certify revenue recognition, contract analysis or financial reporting for a real entity. Tax accounting, multiple performance conditions, estimates and other adjustments sit outside the explicit scenarios. The original contexts and amounts are not adapted textbook exercises or a professional examination bank. Exact arithmetic checks the stated portions; the accounting interpretation and bilingual wording remain author-reviewed rather than independently reviewed by an accountant. Repeated exposure can change the count through memory.