practical expedient

ASC 326-10 is the Overall subtopic of the credit losses Topic: it states the Topic's purpose (how an entity measures credit losses on financial instruments), identifies its three subtopics (Overall; Measured at Amortized Cost; Available-for-Sale Debt Securities), and applies to all entities. Its substantive content today is largely scope plus the transition/effective-date paragraphs in Section 65 for recent ASUs, since the CECL-adoption transition paragraphs from ASU 2016-13 and related updates were superseded on 06/21/2024 once the transition period ended.

This subtopic gives franchisors that are not public business entities a practical expedient for identifying performance obligations under Topic 606. Rather than applying the general distinct analysis to the franchise license, a private franchisor may treat listed pre-opening services (site selection, facility assistance, training, manuals, bookkeeping/IT/advisory, quality control) as distinct from the franchise license, and may further elect as an accounting policy to treat all such pre-opening services as a single performance obligation. The expedient affects only step 2 of the model; allocation of transaction price and timing of recognition still follow Topic 606.