Variable consideration
In accounting, variable consideration means any part of the price that can change — discounts, rebates, refunds, credits, usage, bonuses, penalties — estimated and included only to the extent a significant reversal is not probable.
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- Lexicon
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Authority
This definition follows ASC 606-10-32-5.
Every citation in this system, with the text we read and the date we checked it, is in US GAAP and where these rules come from.
Variable consideration, in use
Quoted from the document that use the word — what it does to an interface, in the spec's own sentence.
Variable consideration and constraints are flagged rather than modeled — the estimate is a judgment, and the UI's job is to make sure it's documented and reviewed, not to compute it.
Schedules, accruals & roll-forwards — 4. Deferred revenue (ASC 606 / IFRS 15)
For founders
The same idea written for a founder: what it costs a startup that ignores it, and what to do in a real month.
- ChargebacksThe reversal of a card payment after the cardholder disputes it with their bank. The disputed amount and a dispute fee are pulled from your processor balance while the card issuer decides.
- Payment terms explained: Net 30, discounts and late feesHow to choose payment terms, count a due date, price an early-payment discount, set lawful late fees and work with enterprise procurement.
- SaaS revenue recognition under ASC 606, step by stepASC 606’s five steps applied to a startup SaaS contract: annual prepay, implementation fees, usage and multi-year deals, with the entries.
What it is not called
Each of these is a real word for a different thing. Using it here is what makes a product read as though it was built by someone who has not done the work.
- estimated revenue
Nearby in the catalog
No component names this concept outright. These are the ones in its part of the system, which is a weaker claim — but a component nothing links to is a component nobody finds.
6Statements
Family specTerms this one depends on
Also in Revenue recognition
Defined in Lexicon. This page is generated from that document, so the two cannot disagree.