Please help! Say this year a company incurs development costs (paid in cash) which need to be capitalised. However, the asset will only be ready for use in 2 years time, so because of the accruals concept the company cannot amortise the asset until 2017.
In the 2015 and 2016 SFP, would this not be somewhat misleading to have excluded this development cost, whilst the asset value in the 2015 SPF will have been deducted?
The development cost is not excluded – it will appear as an intangible asset (Cr Cash; Dr Asset). It is just that we will not start amortising it until the asset starts generating income.