| Webcasting has now become one of the most rapidly developing emerging businesses in the Internet industry,which is different from the traditional industry,and its complex transaction model brings challenges to the accounting practice treatment of revenue recognition and measurement,although the Ministry of Finance has issued a new revenue standard in 2018 according to the development of the situation to provide standardized guidance on revenue recognition and measurement of enterprises,there are still some challenges.This study first explores the types of live broadcasting and revenue sources in the live broadcasting industry,dividing the more common live broadcasting businesses into four categories: i.e.,game,show,universal and live with goods;and decomposing the live broadcasting revenue into four types: i.e.,virtual currency revenue,advertising revenue,other value-added revenue and business revenue;and discussing the characteristics of different categories of live broadcasting businesses as well as revenue.Secondly,this study takes Inke Livestreaming company,a listed company that launched live streaming business earlier,as the research object,analyzes the composition and characteristics of its business revenue,and explores the problems of Inke Livestreaming in revenue recognition and measurement based on the concepts of contract assets,contract liabilities and variable consideration proposed in the current revenue guidelines issued by the Ministry of Finance in 2018,and finds that the revenue recognition of Inke Livestreaming has the In addition,it was found that the following problems exist in the measurement of virtual currency and advertising revenue of screencast:(1)unclear allocation of advertising performance obligations over time,and(2)inaccurate calculation model of revenue measurement among activities.To address these problems,this study analyzes the causes of the problems in terms of both the market environment and the internal aspects of Inke Livestreaming.Finally,this study proposes optimization suggestions for the existing problems,taking into account the business model and profitability characteristics of Inke Livestreaming,including:(1)reasonable apportionment of virtual currency gifts among total revenues,(2)separate treatment of virtual currency revenues for different business activities,(3)reasonable allocation of revenues according to the performance schedule,(4)reasonable estimation of the possibility of long-term unused virtual currency before recognizing it as revenue,and(5)reasonable estimation of the possibility of long-term unused virtual currency before recognizing it as revenue.possibility before recognizing it as revenue,and(5)improving the transparency of corporate information disclosure and training high-level accounting staff.This study also discusses future optimization measures that can be taken by the regulator.This paper hopes that the study of the case company will help readers to deepen their understanding of the revenue characteristics of the webcasting business,while debating the current revenue recognition policy of this business.The results of this study are useful for fundamental research on the webcasting business as well as for financial analysis. |
