In a video from 2017, CiviAccounts and the accruals accounting feature/deferred revenue are explained quite well: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bNIHXBA6EEg (starting from minute 39). According to the video, the feature was supposed to be new in 2017. What it does is, instead of creating one transaction for an annual membership, it should basically break it up into twelve monthly transactions.
In a test installation, I am now trying to set this up. I.e. when someone purchases an annual membership on July 1, half of the revenue shall be recognized within the current year, the other half in the following year.
Although I enabled the check box in the settings of CiviContribute ('Enable Deferred Revenue') and set up the deferred revenue account under the financial type 'Member Dues', I absolutely cannot get this feature to work. - According to the video, nothing else needs to be done.
Unfortunately, I cannot find anything about this in the User Guide or in the System Administrator Guide. Also google reveals only very little information, e.g. 'CRM-16189 Deferred Revenue Support', but this did not really help me in configuring my system.
This leads me to two questions:
- Does this feature actually exist or has it never been completed or removed?
- Am I missing any obvious or hidden settings that I need to tweak in order to make deferred revenue work?
Any help is much appreciated!
Edit: I am using CiviCRM 5.11.0 with Wordpress