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Journey: Revenue Accountant lays in a three-PO contract and re-estimates variable consideration

Persona: Revenue Accountant in a Dutch mid-market SaaS business, responsible for IFRS 15 contract entry, SSP allocation, variable-consideration estimation under the IFRS 15.56 constraint, and the monthly contract-balance review. Spec: bookkeeping-ifrs15-revenue (REQ-IFRS15-001, REQ-IFRS15-002, REQ-IFRS15-003, REQ-IFRS15-004, REQ-IFRS15-007)

Goal​

Enter a brand-new 36-month SaaS contract with three performance obligations (subscription, implementation, usage-based add-on), confirm the relative-SSP allocation, capture a variable-consideration estimate with its IFRS 15.56 constraint reason, and inspect the resulting contract-asset / contract-liability balance at month-end.

Steps​

  1. Open Bookkeeping → Revenue Recognition (IFRS 15) → Contracts and click Add contract. Fill in:

    • contractNumber: C-2026-001
    • customerId: ABC SaaS BV (picked from the Nextcloud contact list — no bespoke customer entity per ADR-022)
    • signedAt: 2026-01-01, startDate: 2026-01-01, endDate: 2028-12-31
    • fixedConsideration: EUR 360,000
    • currency: EUR
    • quoteOrderReference: the originating sales order from the quote-to-cash module (REQ-IFRS15-001 contract origination).
    • lifecycleState: draft.

  2. Switch to Performance Obligations and add three rows under the contract:

    • PO-1 SaaS Subscription — satisfactionPattern over-time, outputMethod time-elapsed, sspAmount EUR 300,000.
    • PO-2 Implementation Service — satisfactionPattern point-in-time, sspAmount EUR 40,000, planned completion 2026-02-28.
    • PO-3 Usage-based Add-on — satisfactionPattern over-time, outputMethod units-delivered, sspAmount EUR 80,000.

  3. Allocate the transaction price. The Price Allocation view fills in the relative-SSP allocation automatically per REQ-IFRS15-004 (PO-1 EUR 257,143 / PO-2 EUR 34,286 / PO-3 EUR 68,571; total 360,000). Confirm each row matches the spec example.

  4. Record variable consideration for PO-3. Open Add Variable Consideration from the contract detail and enter:

    • priorEstimate: 0
    • newEstimate: 30000 (expected value of historical customer usage)
    • constraintAmount: 30000
    • constraintReason: "Probability of reversal >20% based on market volatility; constrained to 30K per IFRS 15.56". The captured VariableConsiderationAdjustment row links to the operator's Nextcloud user (REQ-IFRS15-003) so the constraint is auditable.

  5. Sign and move to delivery. Use the Sign lifecycle action on the contract; the state moves draft → signed. The first RevenueRecognitionEvent is posted by the materialisation on RevenueRecognitionEvent when PO-2 completes on 2026-02-28.

  6. Month-end balance review. At 30 June 2026 the revenue accountant opens Contract Balances, filters on C-2026-001, and reads the contract-liability of EUR 857 (billed EUR 90,000, recognised EUR 89,143). The number ties back to the GET /api/revenue/cutoff?period_end=2026-06-30 output and to the spec example.

Outcome​

The revenue accountant has a single, audit-ready record of:

  • the contract and its three POs;
  • the relative-SSP allocation tying back to the EUR 360,000 transaction price;
  • a documented variable-consideration estimate with constraint reason and operator;
  • the period-end contract liability ready for the auditor's review (auditor-revenue-assertion.md) and the controller's IFRS 15 close-out (controller-ifrs15-closeout.md).

All four IFRS 15 personas (CFO, Revenue Accountant, Controller, Auditor) now have a corresponding journey document under docs/journeys/.