When you invoice a customer for a season or a year up front, you have collected the money but you have not yet earned it. Accounting practice is to hold that amount as deferred income — a liability — and recognize it as revenue month by month as the stay is delivered. The Deferred Income report shows those schedules: what has been deferred, over which period, and which portions have been recognized.
This article assumes you already know the basics of the Sharper reporting module — the Name, Token, Subtotal, column picker, and filter fields. For a full walkthrough of the reporting form itself, see the Sharper Reporting Reference Guide. For how deferred schedules are set up and recognized in the first place, see Accounting - Deferred Schedule Configuration and Recognition. This article only covers the report.
Why This Report Matters
Marinas and parks collect a lot of money in advance — annual slip contracts, seasonal sites, winter storage billed in October for work delivered through April. Recognizing all of that in the month it was invoiced overstates that month's revenue and understates every month after it. The Deferred Income report is how you check the schedule is doing its job, and it is the report your accountant or auditor will want when they ask what is sitting in deferred revenue. Use it to:
See the full deferral schedule behind an invoice — start date, end date, and each scheduled recognition
Confirm which scheduled amounts have been posted and which are still pending
Total the balance still held as deferred at a point in the year
Verify that deferred amounts are hitting the intended debit and credit accounts
Why the Report Can Come Back Empty
Deferred Income is a settings-dependent report, and an empty result is far more often a configuration gap than a reporting problem. A row exists only where a deferral schedule has actually been created against an invoice item. In practice that means:
The item must have deferred income enabled on it, or its schedule must already be posted — an invoice for an annual contract does not defer just because it spans a year
Voided invoices are excluded entirely, so a corrected-and-reissued invoice will only show under its replacement
The report is scoped to the outlet you are signed in to unless All Outlets is turned on
If a contract you expected to see is missing, the usual cause is that deferred income was never switched on for that product or invoice item — not that the report filtered it out. Check the item on the invoice before assuming the report is wrong. Adding the Is Deferred Income column makes this obvious at a glance.
Building a Deferred Income Report
Go to Reports → Accounting → Deferred Income in the left sidebar.
If a shipped report is close to what you need, use the ⋯ menu → Copy first — shipped reports can only be edited by the Sharper team.
Otherwise click + New and give it a Name, such as "Deferred Revenue Schedule."
Add the columns below from the Available panel.
Set Subtotal to Amount so the report totals the deferred value.
Turn on All Outlets if you are reporting deferred revenue across the whole company.
Click Save, then Get Report to run it.
Recommended Columns
Field | What It Shows |
Invoice, Invoice Date, Invoice Status, Invoice Total | The invoice the deferral came from |
Customer Name, Cust Email | Who was invoiced |
Product Name, Product SKU | What was sold — the slip contract, storage, or seasonal site being deferred |
Is Deferred Income | Whether deferral is switched on for this item — the first thing to check when something is missing |
Deferred Start Date, Deferred End Date | The period the income is spread across |
Deferred Scheduled Date | The date this particular portion is scheduled to be recognized. There is normally one row per scheduled recognition. |
Deferred Scheduled Date YYYYMM, Deferred End Date YYYYMM | The same dates as a year-and-month value — much easier to group or subtotal on for a monthly recognition summary |
Deferred Is Posted | Whether that portion has been recognized yet. Filtering on No gives you the balance still held. |
Deferred Debit Account, Deferred Credit Account | The accounts the recognition posts between — worth reviewing when deferred entries are landing somewhere unexpected |
Amount | The value of this scheduled portion — the column to subtotal |
Reservation ID, Booking ID | The reservation behind the charge, where the deferral came from a stay |
User Display Name | Who created the deferral entry |
Note: The debit and credit accounts shown are resolved from the most specific setting available — the invoice item first, then the reservation, then the product. If two similar contracts are posting to different accounts, the difference is usually an override at the item or reservation level rather than a change to the product.
Useful Filters
On the Report Run page (after clicking Get Report), add filter rows for the view you want:
Deferred balance still to be recognized: Field Deferred Is Posted, set to No, subtotalled on Amount.
What should recognize this month: Field Deferred Scheduled Date, operator Between, covering the month.
A monthly recognition summary: Subtotal on Amount and group by Deferred Scheduled Date YYYYMM.
Schedules running past year end: Field Deferred End Date, operator >, entering your year end date.
One customer's deferrals: Field Customer Name, set to the customer.
A saved report filtered to Deferred Is Posted = No, subtotalled on Amount, is the quickest month-end check that your deferred revenue balance is what you expect it to be.