Thanks
@sydshare - I think that post from the Chartered Accountant might be been mine - so glad you liked it. Yes Pods is mixing up his cash flows and his P&L.
@pods please refer to my post
27914736 for further detail. Re the cash not being "earned" I am working on the assumption that the bulk of the cost of providing a new video is front ended (signing up the client, filming, editing getting approvals etc). If we go back to the example of a $1,200 payment up front from a customer on June 1, 2017. From a cash flow perspective $1,200 will be recognised in the cash flow statement (as seen in the 4c) but only 1/12th of that will be recognised as revenue in the profit and loss - $100. The balance of the $1,100 will be taken to the balance sheet as deferred revenue.
On the cost side - lets assume it costs $600 to produce the video, edit it, get client approvals etc - this $600 will seen in the cash flow statement in June as an outgoing and will also be seen in the P&L - the upfront cost will
not be amortised over the term of the subscription (like the way revenue works) as accountants need to be conservative!!. On that particular job the P&L in FY17 will show a show $100 of revenue in FY17 and $600 of cost - a loss of $500. The cash flow will show cash receipts of $1,200 and cash outflows of $600 - positive cash of $600. In FY 18 there will be $0 cash received from that job but in the P&L will show $1,100 of revenue in that year. On the cost side we need to make an assumption of what the costs are to serve the video up for the next 11 months in FY18. I am assuming that the costs would be very low as I can only think of hosting costs (maybe $10) - I don't have those facts that is just a best guess - open to everyone's thoughts here. But lets assume that is correct then in FY18 the P&L will show $1,100 of revenue and $10 of cost for a profit of $1,090 in FY18 after the P&L loss of $500 in FY17. The cash flow will show a zero cash receipts in FY18 and $10 of costs - for a $10 loss after a $600 cash surplus in FY17. Given my theory that there is not much cost to the company after the video has been put up on social media etc - you can see why I would not pay to much attention here to the P&L. The operating cash flow shows a much better picture of how the company is going. The 4c in the next few days will give us all much to analyse on how well they are doing on that front. My current guess is they are doing pretty well.
This business will knock it out of the park if clients really like their videos and re-subscibe for another year. If the client signed up for another 12 months then in FY19 they would have accounting revenue of $1,200 and costs of $10 (hosting) for a profit of $1,190 and the cash flow statement for the financial year would show the same result.
Hope that makes sense.
