The Khai Ventures would debit warranty expense and credit accumulated warranty, which is a liability on the balance sheet, to record the liability. The goal of this is to record the warranty cost while the revenue is recognized. If this journal entry is not made in the January period, both total liabilities on the balance sheet and costs on the income statement will be underestimated by $8,000. If the contingent liability is probable and inestimable, it is likely to occur but cannot be reasonably estimated. In this case, a note disclosure is required in financial statements, but a journal entry and financial recognition should not occur until a reasonable estimate is possible.

This is especially useful when other products in the industry are similar to those sold by the company. The extended warranties are called service-type warranties and are regulated under IFRS 15. These give the buyer additional assurance of the product’s service and maintenance. The company needs to make provision for warranty when it sells the product with the warranty attached to customers. This is due to the warranty will give rise to the liability that the company needs to settle in the future by fulfilling the warranty clause. The company needs to make journal entry by debiting prepaid expenses and credit cash of $ 1,200.

The extended warranties purchased separately do not relate to the functionality or intended use of the asset. When the customer comes for repair or maintenance of the product, the revenue is realized, and the revenue earned is made. In other words, the warranty of merchantability means that the product will fulfill the buyer’s intended purpose.

• The warranty expense journal entry can be used to compare the actual cost of the warranty against the estimated cost.
• The accounting treatment for the extended warranty is similar to the accounting for insurance.
• However, if the business needs to incur expenses under Warranty, it’s allowed and reduces taxable income.
• On December 31, we have made a total sales of $500,000 from 1,000 units of products sold during the year.
• If you’ve ever needed to use your warranty, you know what a relief it is—and certainly worth the cost of having spent extra money on it when you bought your product.

A provision for the warranties is credited, which goes under the liabilities in the balance sheet. The accounting treatment for the extended warranty is similar to the accounting for insurance. We need to record prepayment and reclass it to expense over the period of the extended warranty period.

Financial Accounting

Estimations should be changed at the point that new data provide a clearer vision of future events. Therefore, for the entities purchasing extended warranties, it will be recorded as a normal operating cost. In terms of accounting, such a warranty is called an assurance kind of warranty regulated under the IFRS 15 and IAS 37.

Since the outcome is possible, the contingent liability is disclosed in Sierra Sports’ financial statement notes. In any period in which a repair must be made, the expense is recognized as incurred because revenue from this warranty contract is also being reported. To illustrate, assume that on August 8, Year Two, a slight adjustment must be made to the television at a cost of $9. The product is under warranty so there is no charge to the customer for this service. The expense recognized below is matched with the Year Two revenue recognized above.

Warranty Expense

It will also provide an understanding of the financial impact of the warranty expense and how it affects the bottom line. An extended warranty is the cost that customers spend to insure the products after a normal warranty. It also what is a stakeholder ensures that the product will be repaired by a certified technician who has enough knowledge of the product. For example, Apple Care, we will confident over the repair service as it performs by Apple-authorized partners only.

Benefits of availing warranty as a customer

You probably saw that the company offering the warranty said they would repair or replace your item if anything were to go wrong within a certain amount of time after purchase. At the end of the warranty extended period, the prepaid expense will be zero, and the total warranty expense will be $ 1,200. A prepaid expense is the current assets that will be present on balance sheet, it has not yet impacted the income statement. Extended Warranty is the warranty that company provides in addition to the normal warranty. The company sells additional warranty to the customer to insure over any damage raised from accidents over the factory warranty.

How to Record Warranty Liability Journal Entry?

The resources used in the warranty repair work could have included several options, such as parts and labor, but to keep it simple we allocated all of the expenses to repair parts inventory. Since the company’s inventory of supply parts (an asset) went down by $2,800, the reduction is reflected with a credit entry to repair parts inventory. First, following is the necessary journal entry to record the expense in 2019.

Early in the following month, it receives a warranty claim to replace a blue widget. For our purposes, assume that Sierra Sports has a line of soccer goals that sell for $800, and the company anticipates selling 500 goals this year (2019). Past experience for the goals that the company has sold is that 5% of them will need to be repaired under their three-year warranty program, and the cost of the average repair is $200. To simplify our example, we concentrate strictly on the journal entries for the warranty expense recognition and the application of the warranty repair pool.

Based on past experience, the average cost of the repairs over the warranty period is estimated to be 8% of the sale price. Warranty liability is the type of contingent liability that the company usually needs to record and disclose as this liability is usually probable and can be reasonably estimated. Likewise, the company usually can reasonably estimate how much the warranty expense will incur based on its past experience. Later, when the company provides the repairs under warranty for its customers, it can make the journal entry by the debit of warranty payable and the credit of repair parts.

Four Potential Treatments for Contingent Liabilities

Companies must ensure that they are accurately estimating the cost of warranty expenses in order to minimize their tax liability. The warranty expense journal entry is an important part of the financial records and helps provide a complete picture of the financial performance of a business. It is important to ensure accuracy and completeness of the journal entry to ensure that the financial statements accurately reflect the true financial position of the business.

What will be the journal entry when we receive the faulty products from the customer? Or we we have to value the faulty product at the point of return and then recorder into the inventory as damage material. My concern is if i want to keep track on faulty return what will be right accounting and valuation. On February 1, Hydration-on-the-Go received 14 water bottles in the mail that had been returned by customers to be replaced under warranty. It might seem a little strange to ask a company to record an expense when it hasn’t occurred yet but we have done this many times in accounting. Remember when we recorded Bad Debt Expense under the allowance method and had to estimate the expense at the time of the sale?

In addition, the matching principle states that expenses should be recorded in the same period as the revenues they help generate. The revenue from the sale of the refrigerators is recognized in Year One so the warranty expense resulting from those revenues is also included at that time. This journal entry is made when we honor the warranty contract, by repairing the broken goods or replacing the defective products. In this journal entry, both total expenses on the income statement and total liabilities on the balance sheet increase by the same amount. Even though it may make our accounting record look worse, it is usually still necessary to make this journal entry in order to comply with the accounting rule.