Mr. Schultz, the managing partner of an accounting firm, is concerned by some specific rules of revenue recognition adopted by some of his clients. The following list contains some of the rules he found in their Notes to financial statements:
(a) DPS Business School Inc. (DPSBS Inc.) invoices its students at the beginning of each quarter for the quarterly tuition fees. DPSBS Inc. recognizes revenue only when tuition is actually paid by the students (or whomever, on their behalf). The first quarter X2 tuition invoices were mailed on 1 December X1 and all the tuition fee payments have been received in full by 15 December X1. No adjusting entry has been recorded.
(b) The Commercial Times is a newspaper, which receives payment for subscriptions. Commercial Times has a daily circulation of 750,000 copies and sells over three-quarters of these through annual subscription. Readers subscribe at any time during the year and there seems to be no clear seasonality in new subscriptions or cancellations. The Commercial Times’ accountant is in the habit of recognizing as revenue for any year half of the cash received for annual subscriptions in that year plus half the subscriptions payments received in the previous year.
(c) A bridge club invoices a membership fee to its members who receive in return the magazine
‘Bridge Forever’ and are entitled to specially discounted prices on other magazines produced by the same publisher. The club, in order to simplify its recording of fees, spreads the fee revenue on a straight-line basis over the period of membership.
(d) A seller (shipper) transfers goods to a buyer (recipient) who undertakes to sell the goods on behalf of the seller (consignment sales). The shipper recognizes the revenue at the time of delivery to the buyer.

Required
Evaluate whether the policies adopted by each firm are acceptable or not. In the latter case, which policy should have been adopted?