Revenue Recognition settings

Access the Revenue Recognition settings on the settings page to customize how revenue is recognized specifically for your business.

When completed, all Revenue Recognition charts and reports reflect the settings within 24 hours.

Accounting period

Use accounting period control to configure how to close accounting periods. You can either manually close the books with all checks and adjustments finished each month, or you can let Stripe automate closing the books.

You can also reopen past accounting periods using accounting period control. This is useful when you first start using Revenue Recognition because it allows you to make adjustments to past data without creating corrections in the current period. For example, when you apply rules to fit Revenue Recognition with your own business model, it changes the history of closed accounting periods. You can decide to reopen closed accounting periods or make adjustments in the current accounting period.

Amortization granularity

Amortization refers to the process of gradually recognizing revenue over the duration of a service period. By default, Revenue Recognition recognizes revenue by the millisecond. We also support recognizing revenue by the day, or by the month with different treatment options for handling the first and last months of the service period.

Adjusting this configuration affects all of your journal entries within Revenue Recognition. If you want to avoid creating corrections in the current period, we recommend that you open all accounting periods prior to the adjustment.

Catch-up revenue

Revenue Recognition primarily recognizes revenue based on the service period attached to transactions. However, when the service period begins before the booked date (the finalization date for an invoice, the creation date or imported booked date for a standalone charge), the revenue from the prior periods is instead recognized entirely in the month of the booked date to avoid making changes to the past. We refer to this type of revenue as catch-up revenue.

To disable or enable this behavior, toggle Apply catch-up revenue.

Toggling this configuration affects any applicable journal entries you have within Revenue Recognition. If you want to avoid creating corrections in the current period, we recommend that you open all accounting periods prior to the adjustment.

Record recovered revenue as gains

By default, Revenue Recognition recognizes recovered revenue from unpaid invoices, refund failures, and resolved disputes as gains.

We also support the treatment of recovered revenue as a resumption of the previous revenue recognition schedule. If the recovery occurs before the service period ends, Revenue Recognition reverses any recorded bad debt, immediately recognizes revenue for past periods in the current month, and resumes revenue recognition of deferred revenue for the remainder of the service period. If the recovery occurs after the service period ends, Revenue Recognition reserves any recorded bad debt and immediately recognizes revenue for all the past periods in the current month. Adjusting this configuration affects all your recovered revenue related to unpaid invoices, refund failures, and resolved disputes.

If you want to avoid creating corrections in the current period, we recommend that you open all accounting periods prior to the adjustment.