Glossary entry

German term or phrase:

abgegrenzte Aufwendungen

English translation:

prepaid expenses

Added to glossary by Steffen Walter
Jan 22, 2016 16:50
8 yrs ago
9 viewers *
German term

Abgegrenzte Aufwendungen

German to English Bus/Financial Accounting IFRS statement of financial position
A customer is querying some terminology in a translation done three months ago...

In an IFRS statement of financial position I had written "Prepayments" for "Abgegrenzte Aufwendungen" and "Deferred revenue" for Abgegrenzte Erträge" based on what I found in Ernst & Young illustrative financial statements.

The customer wants to know whether "Abgegrenzte Aufwendungen" should be "Accrued expenses". Based on the explanation in the notes (see below), I think Prepayments is ok, but what do others think (Robin, Ted?)?

"Es handelt sich um Aufwendungen, deren Gegenleistungen in zukünftigen Dienstleistungen bestehen und innerhalb des kommenden Jahres verrechnet werden. Die Bewertung erfolgt zum Marktwert. Im Vorjahr erfolgte der Ausweis inhaltsgleich unter der Bezeichnung „Übrige Vermögenswerte“."
Change log

Jan 24, 2016 10:30: Steffen Walter changed "Edited KOG entry" from "<a href="/profile/52401">nruddy's</a> old entry - "Abgegrenzte Aufwendungen"" to ""prepaid expenses""

Discussion

Edgar Bettridge Jan 24, 2016:
horse's mouth: the most authoritative source for IFRS financial statements is the IFRS website, which also includes texts of the standards in several different languages and an online glossary. If, however, you are looking for HGB translations, it is not so relevant.
nruddy (asker) Jan 24, 2016:
Thanks, Robin! That's a very helpful answer. Maybe you or Ted could recommend reliable sources specifically for financial statements? The abra search function doesn't have everything that comes up and the notes don't always give specific IFRS references to check. Statements of cash flows are often more difficult in this regard.
RobinB Jan 23, 2016:
Rather confusing German terminology Niamh: There can be little doubt that these are "prepaid expenses", as in "aktivische RAP", in other words expenditures in the reporting period that represent recognised expenses in the following period. This is also evident from the statement that these were reported as "other assets" in the prior period, which is the standard IFRS practice for presenting prepaid expenses.

You should avoid using "prepayments" here, because this is the term normally reserved for prepayments on assets, i.e. "geleistete Anzahlungen" in German GAAP.

The client seems to have found "accrued expenses" as a back-translation of IAS 12 IEC3, where "Accrued expenses will never be deductible for tax purposes." is translated in the German Bound Volume as "Abgegrenzte Aufwendungen werden niemals steuerlich abzugsfähig." But this appears only once in the entire corpus of IFRSs, and represents a very different context in any case, and must therefore be rejected as not relevant for your purposes.

BTW, I agree with Ted about EY's illustrative FS. This also applies to all the Big Four illustrative IFRS FS: potentially very useful for translating En->De, but of little practical help for translating German IFRS FS.
Edgar Bettridge Jan 22, 2016:
IMO you are on pretty strong ground look back to the note on "Übrige Vermögenswerte" in the 2013 Foris accounts: "Es handelt sich um Vorauszahlungen, deren Gegenleistungen in zukünftigen Dienstleistungen bestehen. Die Bewertung erfolgt zum Marktwert. " The official eIFRS glossary entry for "Vorauszahlungen" is "prepayments" which is what you put. It also makes sense from a common sense perspective. I.e. the company paid up front for (presumably legal) services to be received in subsequent periods.
nruddy (asker) Jan 22, 2016:
Thanks a million, Ted! That's a big help. In this case they are prepayments made.
Ted Wozniak Jan 22, 2016:
How much effort do you want to spend on this? :-) Abgrenzungen under assets (previous year unter der Bezeichnung „Übrige Vermögenswerte“.") would be prepaid expenses (or deferred expenses under very old US-GAAP terminology). Accrued expenses are liability items. Care needs to be taken with "prepayments" so that it is clear whether they are prepayments made or prepayments received (on account of orders). And take E&Y English translations with a small grain of salt. They are often written by native German speakers and can sometimes be a bit "off".

Proposed translations

+3
12 mins
Selected

prepaid expenses

... was my first thought when opening this question (the 'classic' German equivalent being 'aktive Rechnungsabgrenzungsposten' - I suspect the German is some sort of back-translation of the English term). I'd be reluctant to using 'accrued' here because this could be mistaken for 'Rückstellungen' - cf. http://www.proz.com/kudoz/english_to_german/accounting/23145...
Peer comment(s):

agree Ted Wozniak
3 hrs
agree Henry Schroeder
5 hrs
agree RobinB : See also my comment in the discussion entry.
18 hrs
Thank you for backing this up.
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4 KudoZ points awarded for this answer. Comment: "Thanks everyone!"
26 mins

(AmE) allocated > (BrE) apportioned > expenses

pace Robin B. and Ted W., I don't believe - despite the explanation in the notes - this can be speculatively narrowed down to prospectively prepaid or retrospectively accrued.
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1 day 9 hrs

Prepayments

I am submitting this because a number of other answers and discussion entries are not answering your question, or answering it in the negative, when I think they are just saying "I would have done this differently".

So, to your question: "is Prepayments ok". My answer, yes absolutely fine. Why? -

1) Vorauszahlung is translated in the eIFRS glossary as prepayment, see my discussion entry as to why this is relevant;
2) prepayments and prepaid expenses are used interchangeably by a number of practitioners - see example sentence from IFRS clarification on long term prepayments for inventory supply contracts (i.e. prepayments are equated here to prepaid expenses to explain why they are not included in financial assets) and CIMA link below;
3) Oxford dictionary of accounting definition of prepayment: A payment made for goods or services before they are received;
4) Ted makes a good point about prepayments: "Care needs to be taken with "prepayments" so that it is clear whether they are prepayments made or prepayments received" - True, but your example is from the notes to the asset side of the balance sheet, so the context makes it obvious;
5) inconclusive point this - a number of large UK companies do not use "prepaid expenses" anywhere in their annual reports, but do use "prepayments" - eg Tesco and Sainsbury.

This is not to say that "prepaid expenses" is not a better answer, it probably is. Also, some caution is warranted as I do not understand RobinB's point that "You should avoid using "prepayments" here, because this is the term normally reserved for prepayments on assets, i.e. "geleistete Anzahlungen" in German GAAP." - this goes against my understanding (e.g. see points 1,2 and 3 above), but I could be wrong so it would be interesting to hear more on this. (Besides, even supposing RobinB is right here - and he usually is - his use of "normally" suggests that you could be justified in putting something else, he would just do it differently, which brings me back to my reasons for writing this answer...)
Example sentence:

prepayments are not financial instruments (IAS 32 AG11) and are scoped out from IAS 39 Financial Instruments: recognition and Measurement for measurement purposes...

...IAS 32 AG11 Assets (such as prepaid expenses) for which the future economic benefit is the receipt of goods or services, rather than the right to receive cash or another financial asset, are not financial assets.

Note from asker:
Edgar: Thanks for taking the time to explain your point. As regards what UK companies do or don't do, that isn't always relevant to German companies IMHO. A lot of German companies are very much influenced by HGB so I think drawing a parallel with aktivistische RAP is valid.
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Reference comments

12 mins
Reference:

This says "accrued"

... though the terminology may have changed.
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