3.13 Capitalization of Compensation Cost

SAB Topic 14.I, Capitalization of Compensation Cost Related to Share-Based Payment Arrangements

Facts: Company K is a manufacturing company that grants share options to its production employees. Company K has determined that the cost of the production employees’ service is an inventoriable cost. As such, Company K is required to initially capitalize the cost of the share option grants to these production employees as inventory and later recognize the cost in the income statement when the inventory is consumed.85

Question: If Company K elects to adjust its period end inventory balance for the allocable amount of share-option cost through a period end adjustment to its financial statements, instead of incorporating the share-option cost through its inventory costing system, would this be considered a deficiency in internal controls?

Interpretive Response: No. FASB ASC Topic 718, Compensation — Stock Compensation, does not prescribe the mechanism a company should use to incorporate a portion of share-option costs in an inventory-costing system. The staff believes Company K may accomplish this through a period end adjustment to its financial statements. Company K should establish appropriate controls surrounding the calculation and recording of this period end adjustment, as it would any other period end adjustment. The fact that the entry is recorded as a period end adjustment, by itself, should not impact management’s ability to determine that the internal control over financial reporting, as defined by the SEC’s rules implementing Section 404 of the Sarbanes-Oxley Act of 2002,86 is effective.

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85 FASB ASC paragraph 718-10-25-2A.

86 Release No. 34-47986, June 5, 2003, Management’s Report on Internal Control Over Financial Reporting and Certification of Disclosure in Exchange Act Period Reports.