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A comment on Financial Misstatements. Parent comment

Re:Financial Misstatements by patmcc on Friday August 21, 2015 @07:07PM (#10100793)
If someone invests in you because of a revenue claim when no one else in the room would agree with your definition of revenue, you might end up getting sued. That's pretty reasonable. If it's in a casual conversation, they should have plenty of time to look over the books later, so it's not a big deal.

That said, why not use appropriate GAAP values? You should already know them, assuming you're keeping proper books, so it should be the easiest value to give.

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Re:Financial Misstatements by stevewepay on Saturday August 22, 2015 @01:06AM (#10101584)
You could get sued, but in the US you can get sued for anything. But you would win the lawsuit.

"Revenue" can mean anything. Look up the term online, for example http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/revenue, and you'll see 6 different definitions. One of them is: "an amount of money regularly coming in". How is this definition of revenue wrong, or how could it result you getting sued? The answer is you won't.

Sure it could cause misunderstanding, but that happens all the time. As long as you don't misrepresent it as "GAAP revenue", you're perfectly fine using it in any reasonable way. Unlike what Sam Altman says, it's not a felony. My wife is a CPA and she laughed out loud when she read that.

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