Cut-off is not a shipping date by another name
Why delivery evidence, customer acceptance, and billing calendars diverge — and how verification teams test the gap.
Ask three people in the same company when revenue for a late-March shipment “happened,” and you may hear three dates: the warehouse despatch stamp, the customer’s goods-received note, and the invoice run that only fires on Fridays.
For revenue recognition verification, cut-off testing starts by naming which event the accounting policy actually uses — then gathering evidence for that event, not for the most convenient stamp in the file.
What we sample
In trading and logistics-heavy groups, we typically sample dispatches either side of period end, match them to customer acknowledgements where acceptance is required, and compare both to the ledger posting date. Where policy is FOB shipping point, a despatch note may be enough; where acceptance clauses linger in the contract, it is not.
Common friction
Sales ops often treat the invoice as the economic event because commissions follow billing. Controllers inherit that habit. Verification work surfaces the mismatch before auditors write it up as a control finding.
If your March close is approaching, bring a week of border-period shipments to a scoping call — even a short review can show whether your evidence pack will hold.