As the Financial Accounting Standards Board puts the finishing touches on a sweeping new standard for revenue recognition, it also is circulating a draft accounting standards update to amend references to revenue recognition throughout Generally Accepted Accounting Principles.

FASB has published a 243-page exposure draft, titled Revenue Recognition (Topic 605) Revenue from Contracts with Customers – Proposed Amendments to the FASB Accounting Standards Codification to shore up a huge list of references to revenue recognition guidance scattered throughout the Accounting Standards Codification. Despite the strikingly similar title, it is a companion, not a replacement, for the earlier exposure draft published in November to overhaul revenue recognition accounting and make it more comparable with International Financial Reporting Standards.

“This companion document includes both the proposed amendments that codify the guidance in the proposed Update on revenue recognition and the proposed amendments to Subtopics that will be consequentially affected by this proposed Update,” says FASB spokesman Christine Klimek. The document begins with a 20-page list of the topics and subtopics in the Codification that would be added, deleted or amended as a result of the new standard on revenue recognition.

FASB is in the final stages of a long-running process to improve the accounting for revenue recognition and converge it with revenue recognition rules in IFRS. The board first published a discussion paper in 2008 followed by an initial proposal in 2010 and a revised proposal in late 2011. When finalized later this year, as the board hopes, the new standard is expected to provide a consistent framework for addressing revenue recognition issues across all industries, making the accounting more comparable across companies, industries, and capital markets around the globe.

In response to more than 1,000 comment letters, a series of roundtables, and various additional outreach activities, FASB and the International Accounting Standards Board revised the original proposal to add more guidance for when a good or service is transferred over a long-term arrangement with a customer and simplify elements such as determining transaction price and accounting for warranties.

The comment period for both the revenue recognition standard and the companion standard to amend the Codification are open for study and comment through March 13. FASB and the IASB have not yet decided when new stanards for revenue recognition would take effect, except that it will not happen before Jan. 1, 2015, and that nonpublic entities will have one year more than public companies to adopt it.