I think an auditor who suggests that any one piece of evidence, particularly one that is so easily faked (by intention or innocent mistake) like the penned signature date, should somehow be dispositive to the question is misleading his client.

At least Eric’s suggestion of ‘what date did it arrive at the revenue recognizer’s finance department’ is a bit more likely to lead to a truthful answer, since it would require outright fraud instead of just an innocent error. (On the other hand, I’m sure the sales guys who get their contracts ’signed’ by the customer at 11:59 PM on the last day of the quarter would never stand for such a rule if they ruled the world.)

Like any question of law that depends on a particular fact, we must resign ourselves to marshalling many perceived truths of the date the deal became somehow an ‘arrangement.’ Those perceptions will come from any number of sources, and may well be contradictory. Then we must make a determination of credibility of all of them and ultimately take our chances on which allegations should actually rule the day (or rule the date, so to speak).

Auditors who look for simple ways out of that mess, which mess could never have a simple answer, deserve some degree of scrutiny in my humble opinion. And, I have confidence that the auditing profession already demonstrates an ability to ferret out truths from contradictory pools of evidence in other instances of interpreting GAAP, so why this one should somehow be different is beyond me. (I, of course, do not believe that ALL auditors say these things.)

I tried to do away with dating the signatures, but the auditors required us to put it back in. I suppose they think it’s an extra measure of control to ensure we aren’t playing games with revenue recognition, although in truth there are many times when the person signing for the customer does not date his or her signature, and there’s certainly no guarantee that the date inserted is the actual date of signature.

Our contracts do not reference the signature dates and therefore (I think) do not give those dates any legal effect. We would have a real problem with the auditors if a contract stated that it is effective as of the date of the last signature, but one or both parties neglected to date it. David

Unless there is a reason to have a contract dated on a specific day, our contracts administration people insert the date of the last signature as the date of the contract in the introductory clause.

Having a date in the introductory clause makes it easier to refer to and locate contracts. It’s awkward to refer to a contract that was signed by X on date 1 and by Y on date 2, and it requires the reader to look through the contract to find the signatures to determine if he or she is looking at the contract that’s being referred to. Much easier to simply refer to the ABC agreement between X and Y dated MM DD, YYYY.