Large companies often base their financial valuations upon revenues, including the monthly and annual recurring profits in EBITDA (earnings after interest, taxes, and depreciation). Research and development (R&D) is often included in a company’s revenue generation.

Profits from R and D are a company’s best asset, and they can also increase profitability by capitalizing on their revenues. This article will discuss R and D Capitalization, its benefits, and how it differs from realizing expense.

What is R&D cost capitalization?

R&D cost capitalization is an accounting technique that allows R&D costs to be listed as investments rather than expenses. Your company can choose to capitalize on some of its R&D costs. They will not be listed as “losses” on a profit and loss (P&L) sheet immediately but instead as “assets on balance. This would allow the cost of developing software to be amortized over time.
This argument is that the development cost does not always coincide with the revenue earned. Therefore, the price should be matched to future revenues. It’s possible to prove a direct relationship between future revenues and costs. If your company spends $1 million in 2020 to develop a new app that allows time travelers and other users to see the space-time continuum, you might expect to sell lots of that software in 2021. It might be a good business move to account for $1 million in 2021 against any revenues generated beyond 2020.

What does a company do?

It all comes down to business value. Investors assign value to tech companies based on their profits or revenues. Ebitda is the most popular proxy for profits. It stands for earnings before interest tax, depreciation, and amortization. This generally indicates the profitability of running the business. Companies can reduce their Ebitda by capitalizing on R&D expenses and amortizing them over time. This increases profits and thus the company’s value. This could be a huge advantage for startups that have high R&D costs. It will allow them to attract more capital and help them grow.

R&D capitalization can be a legitimate and established practice. It is recognized under GAAP (Generally Accepted Accounting Principles) in the U.S. and the IFRS(International Financial Reporting Standards), which may even mandate it in some cases.

The industry averages 57% of U.S. software companies that capitalize some portion of their R&D spending, with notable names such as Salesforce, and Amazon putting in less than 1%. Why not capitalize more?

What is R&D capitalization?

Capitalizing research and developing turns the expense (or cost) associated with product development and research into an asset. This is based on the likelihood that the product created by R&D will be profitable in the future. Two important factors are required to convert R&D expenses to assets: Expensing R&D following generally accepted accounting principles (GAAP) or in accordance with international financial reporting standards.

R&D capitalization (GAAP) and generally accepted accounting principles
GAAP allows companies to expand their R&D activities in the same fiscal year they incur the cost. This can cause volatility in profits and make it difficult to calculate the return on investments (ROI) and assets. A business that doesn’t capitalize its R&D may have its total assets or invested capital not reflect the amount it invested in R&D. This could impact the return on assets (ROA) and return on invested capital(ROIC) of a business.
R&D capitalization and international financial reporting standards (IFRS).

However, a company may capitalize on its R&D expenses if it can show that its developing asset is a viable product/technology for future revenue generation. The IFRS allows companies to capitalize on their R&D costs by recognizing at least part of these R&D expenses as assets on the balance sheet rather than expenses on the P&L.
Capitalized costs
A company may be able to treat certain R&D expenses as noncurrent assets in certain circumstances. Capitalization is a process that requires that the costs be expensed over a certain number of years. The company amortizes expenses related to tangible assets with a future alternative use over their projected life spans. The company also amortizes capitalized expenses related to intangible assets such as trademarks and patents. R&D does not include some development expenses such as consumer testing and market research.

Capitalizing on R&D costs is a challenge.

As we have already mentioned, capitalizing on R&D and development costs is an argument that can be supported if you can show that those costs are related to future revenues. It’s not easy to predict which projects will bring in future income, which will be profitable and which won’t. How can you accurately and transparently measure the development costs for multiple products or features your software team is working on?

It may take time and research to find a suitable framework to value and capitalize intangible assets similar to yours. This will be done in different ways by different industries, and you may need to find analysts or experts in your industry to assist you.

Although it is possible to address the second issue with the right tools, it is more labor-intensive than you would care for without them. While you could keep a spreadsheet that tracks all engineering activities and ask engineers to log their time (which I wouldn’t recommend), creating an auditable report manually is difficult.

An Engineering management platform (EMP) automates this manual process by measuring engineers’ time on particular tasks and projects using signals from their systems. EMPs should provide an auditable measure of engineering effort spent on capitalizable projects.

R&D cost capitalization is a difficult task but can also be very valuable for growing tech companies with significant development investments and future revenue potential.

R&D capitalization has many advantages

Businesses and organizations have many advantages when they capitalize on R & R&D. A company invested in R&D can qualify for tax benefits. These include the ability to depreciate capitalized assets used in research and development activities. It can be a short-term benefit for businesses to reduce their tax costs and generate revenue that can be used to invest in future growth.

Companies can also spread out expenditures over time to equalize their net income when investing in R&D activities. Capitalizing R&D has another advantage: it can increase a company’s asset balance without impacting its liabilities. Financial analysts can use financial ratios to communicate and measure crucial financial information about organizations.