The Accounting Review Vol. 27 No. 3 1952
ACCOUNTING FOR SUBSCRIPTION INCOME.
Abstract
The problem of apportioning revenue and costs to the proper time period is one of the most difficult problems in accounting-some persons would claim that it is the only important accounting problem. Most of the discussion in this area is concerned with what cost should be apportioned to what time period. There are fewer instances in which the issue is what part of total revenue should be apportioned to what period. This article reports practice with respect to such a problem, the apportionment of revenue received from magazine subscriptions. The practices as reported here are based on information obtained from 16 companies which publish magazines of large, national circulation and which sell a considerable fraction of these magazines on a subscription basis. This group includes nearly all the large magazine publishers. Subscriptions commit the publisher to deliver the magazine to the subscriber for a specified period in the future, usually one, two, or three yeas. Generally speaking, longer subscriptions bring in more money per subscription, but less money per copy, than shorter subscriptions.
- DOI
- 10.2308/tar-7085583
- Volume
- 27
- Issue
- 3
- Pages
- 324-328
- Language
- en
- Sources
- openalex crossref