Hi Mongu

What the Nominal Accounting boys do with the revenue after they get my journals, I would have to say I do not know the technicalities involved there in depth enough to give you a too detailed discription. Sorry! I supervise one of 7 sections in our Accounts Dept, so my knowledge is limited to my job together with a bit of common sense and initiative.

I hear what you say about bookings taken in one period for travel in another though, and we put all future flights’ revenue into a forward sales suspense account. After the flying month is completed a whole range of reports etc are used to determine the facts of what we have actually earned from the flights. Whether you can answer the question yourself from this, or not, I do not know.

As an aside and not as an argument, the credit cards funds are usually in the bank account within 3 days of the booking being made. Also, in our airline, all sectors are sold individually and not as return fares. A return fare is just made up of two one-ways. So whether or not you could recognise revenue from a booking after just the first sector, I’ll let you decide for yourself.

Hope this helps. I wouldn’t like to be our auditors!