Consider that your company manufactures a commodity ‘X’. It has the capacity to manufacture 2,000-3,000 products in a day. However, due to an uprise and liking of the product, the sales increase suddenly up to about 4,000 each day. It becomes difficult to cater to and produce this number each day. This causes a backlog of 1,000 products every day until the production increases.
This is where the role of backlog accounting comes in the picture. It is important to analyze the backlog of products and meet the demands. The financial statements example does not completely cater to calculate the sales backlog ratio. It is important to have an internal financial report example assessment to calculate it.
A real-life example of the backlog happened with Apple. In 2017, during the launch of iPhone-X in October, the brand was overflowed with pre-bookings of the phone. The overwhelming demand led to week-long delays and backlogs. Some people who pre-booked the phone got it in December leading to disappointment among the customers. This caused poor sales and forecasting for the brand.