By Jim Staats, Senior Account Manager at Zuora

The effective date for ASC 606 is virtually right around the corner.

Tell us something we don’t know, you’re saying.

How about a refresher of something we’ve mentioned in the past?

As reported in FEI Daily this week, stakeholders for the governing board behind the newly converged accounting standards reminded folks scrambling to deal with the changes of the established and valuable resources already available to them.

Speaking at this week’s Financial Executive International Accounting Change for Financial Leaders Conference in Philadelphia, FASB Chairman Russ Golden reminded attendees of the proven effectiveness of the Transition Resource Group (TRG) created shortly after the new guidance was announced in 2014.

“We knew that, for the standard to be successful, we’d need to be proactive in limiting the extent to which preparers and auditors disagree on how to interpret the standard,” said Golden. “Based on what we learned from previous groups, we decided that the TRG should hold public meetings to allow all stakeholders to follow our discussions and learn from each other about best implementation practices.”

He noted that through the revenue recognition TRG, stakeholders submitted more than 100 implementation issues and approximately 36 were addressed directly, with many more discussed at the mentioned public forums. In addition, Golden said, the TRG has resulted in 50 staff papers addressing additional concerns raised by preparers and investors.

He said the success of this particular TRG program is driving similarly focused efforts in other areas.

“Like our standards, we’re never ‘finished’ improving our TRG process – or how we support implementation in general,” Golden told conference attendees.