Separate customer contracts may need one IFRS revenue assessment

One customer arrangement can be divided among a master agreement, product order and implementation contract. Before creating separate revenue schedules, ask whether the documents were negotiated together and how they depend on one another. The legal document count and the accounting unit of assessment can differ.

IFRS 15 requires combination in specified circumstances for contracts entered at or near the same time with the same customer or its related parties. Relevant criteria concern a single commercial package, dependent consideration or promises forming one performance obligation. The accountant should assess the actual arrangement; common customer ownership alone does not resolve every condition.

Collect the versions of proposals and orders that explain how the final deal was reached. Identify linked discounts, conditions that one order depends on another and approvals that considered the package together. Preserve the dates without assuming that documents signed on different days were negotiated independently.

Ask the commercial owner to identify side letters, emails or customary commitments relevant to the promises and pricing. Have legal advisers address enforceability questions where needed. Finance should not discard a relevant commitment because the billing platform holds only one of the documents.

Record whether the price or payment under one agreement changes according to another agreement's outcome. Identify whether either component would have been sold on the same terms without the other. Give the reviewer concrete clauses and approved commercial explanations instead of a broad note saying the deals are related.

A hypothetical customer signs a software order and a deployment agreement during the same negotiation, with a rebate on the software conditional on buying deployment. The dependency is a fact requiring assessment. It does not by itself decide how many performance obligations exist or how the total price should be allocated after the combination question is answered.

Maintain a common accounting reference for documents the reviewer concludes should be combined. Preserve their separate legal and billing identifiers so receivables staff can still trace invoices and payments. Combining the accounting assessment should not erase which entity contracted, which invoice is overdue or which delivery team owns a promise.

Reconcile the combined consideration to the underlying documents and identify amounts excluded or still uncertain. Have the accountant approve performance obligations, allocation and recognition schedules under the applicable requirements. If another document is added later, assess whether it is a modification or a separate arrangement rather than adding it automatically to the original group.

Add a question about related orders and negotiations to the contract handoff. Let sales operations flag dependencies without asking it to make the accounting conclusion. Save the approved combination memo with the complete document set, including the reason when similar-looking agreements remain separate, so the next reviewer can understand the boundary used.