Loopfour
Finance playbooks

Prepare revenue recognition entries

Set up a workflow that builds a monthly revenue schedule from your contracts or subscriptions and posts the entries after your review.

The job

Each month you work out how much contract revenue to recognize and how much stays deferred. The schedule often lives in a spreadsheet. Someone updates it, books the entries, and tells the controller the numbers are ready.

By hand

Read new contracts for value, term and start date, extend the schedule, calculate the month's release, key the journal entry and email the controller.

With Loopfour

On the first of the month the workflow reads signed contracts, builds the monthly schedule, waits for your approval, posts the entries and sends a close-ready summary.

Developer setup needed before you run this

The templates are starting points, not ready-to-run revenue calculations. Their Transform steps do not execute the calculation written in them. Ask your developer to replace those steps with Code, connect the inputs and outputs, and verify the schedule against your spreadsheet. Also correct the posting step as described below.

How the workflow runs

  1. TriggerFirst of the month
    The templates run monthly on a schedule.
  2. StepList signed contracts
    From DocuSign or PandaDoc.
  3. StepExtract billing terms
    The AI Agent step reads contract value, term length, billing frequency and start date.
  4. StepCompute the revenue schedule
    Contract value spread evenly over the months of the term.
  5. ApprovalController reviews the schedule
    You add this step. A rejection stops the run before anything posts.
  6. OutputPost entries and send the summary
    Entries go to your ledger. A close-ready note goes to Slack, Gmail or Outlook.

What you need

  • Templates: Revenue recognition works from signed contracts. Deferred revenue schedule works from active subscriptions in Stripe, or invoices in QuickBooks. Both are in the RevRec area of Workflows > Templates.
  • Systems to connect: DocuSign or PandaDoc for contracts, or Stripe for subscriptions. Your ledger for the entries. Slack, Gmail or Outlook for the summary.
  • Who approves: the controller or revenue accountant who signs off the month's revenue.

Set it up

Open the template

Go to Workflows, open the Templates tab and choose RevRec. Select Revenue recognition, or Deferred revenue schedule if you bill by subscription.

Choose your systems

In the Recipe view, choose where contracts come from, which ledger receives the entries and where the summary goes. When you change a system, select Duplicate & edit to save your own copy. Then select Flow to see the steps.

Create the workflow

Select Run workflow. Studio opens chat, checks your connections and asks for any settings it needs before it creates your workflow.

Fix and check the calculation

Ask your developer to replace the calculation step with Code. Check a sample contract's monthly amounts before connecting it to posting. Transform only renames fields or filters lists; it does not calculate revenue.

Add the review before posting

Neither template pauses before it posts. Ask chat to add an Approval step before the posting step, with your controller as approver. See Add an approval step.

Check the posting step and the summary

Open the posting step and set the revenue and deferred revenue accounts you use. If the summary goes by email, change the recipient to your controller's address.

Deploy, then test

Select Deploy, then Run. Check the schedule against your spreadsheet and reject the approval so the test entries are not posted. See Deploy, test and change a workflow.

Run works only when the workflow is Active. Deploying also switches on its trigger; choose a safe schedule or test source before deploying. Runs make real changes in connected systems.

Check what the posting step creates for your ledger. NetSuite, Sage Intacct and Rillet receive a journal entry. With QuickBooks, the template's posting step creates a bill, so ask chat to change it to a QuickBooks journal entry. With Xero, the deferred revenue template creates an invoice, and Loopfour has no Xero journal entry step, so remove the posting step and book the entry yourself from the schedule.

What you review

  • The schedule: the request waits under Approvals. Open its run to see the terms read from each contract and the monthly amounts before you approve. See Approve or reject a request.
  • Extracted terms: check the AI Agent step's figures against the contracts on the first few months, especially start dates and term lengths. See Read a run.
  • Who did what: the Audit trail tab under Runs records who approved and who changed the workflow. See Export the audit trail.

Adapt it

  • Keep the schedule in a table: save each contract's monthly amounts to a table, so you have a running revenue schedule to tie out.
  • Only new contracts: ask chat to read contracts signed since the last run and add them to the table, instead of reading all contracts each month.
  • Different patterns: if some contracts are not recognized evenly, flag them for manual review rather than posting them.

Reconcile intercompany balances

Build a workflow that compares both sides of each intercompany balance in NetSuite at month end and lists the differences for your team to resolve.

Prepare accruals at month end

Build a workflow that drafts accrual entries at month end from open purchase orders and recurring costs, and posts them only after approval.

On this page

The jobHow the workflow runsWhat you needSet it upOpen the templateChoose your systemsCreate the workflowFix and check the calculationAdd the review before postingCheck the posting step and the summaryDeploy, then testWhat you reviewAdapt it