Summary of Significant Accounting Policies, Recently Issued and Recently Adopted Accounting Standards (Tables)

12 Months Ended

Apr. 30, 2021

Summary of Significant Accounting Policies, Recently Issued, and Recently Adopted Accounting Standards [Abstract]

Net Sales Return Reserves by Balance Sheet Account

The reserves are reflected in the following accounts of the Consolidated Statements of Financial Position as of April 30:

	2021			2020
Increase in Inventories, net	$	10,886		$	8,686
Decrease in Accrued royalties	$	(4,949	)	$	(4,441	)
Increase in Contract liabilities	$	38,034		$	32,769
Print book sales return reserve net liability balance	$	(22,199	)	$	(19,642	)

Advertising and Marketing Costs

Advertising and marketing costs are expensed as incurred. These costs are reflected in the Consolidated Statements of Income (Loss) as follows:

	For the Years Ended April 30,
	2021		2020		2019
Advertising and marketing costs	$	93.6	$	103.1	$	89.5
Cost of sales (1)		57.0		65.8		53.7
Operating and administrative expenses		36.6		37.3		35.8

⁽¹⁾ This includes certain advertising and marketing costs incurred by our Education Services business to fulfill performance obligations from contracts with educational institutions.

Change in Provision for Credit Losses

The following table presents the change in provision for credit losses, which is presented net in Accounts receivable on our Consolidated Statements of Financial Position for the period indicated:

	Provision for Credit Losses
Balance as of April 30, 2020	$	18,335
Adjustment due to adoption of new credit losses standard recorded as an adjustment to retained earnings		1,776
Current period provision		6,957
Amounts written off, less recoveries		(4,463	)
Foreign exchange translation adjustments and other		(1,131	)
Balance as of April 30, 2021	$	21,474

Intangibles-Goodwill and Other-Internal-Use Software: Customer’s Accounting for Implementation Costs Incurred in a Cloud Computing Arrangement That is a Service Contract

In August 2018, the FASB issued ASU 2018-15, “Intangibles-Goodwill and Other-Internal-Use Software (Subtopic 350-40): Customer’s Accounting for Implementation Costs Incurred in a Cloud Computing Arrangement That is a Service Contract.” ASU 2018-15 aligns the requirements for capitalizing implementation costs incurred in a hosting arrangement that is a service contract with the requirements for capitalizing implementation costs incurred to develop or obtain internal-use software. We adopted ASU 2018-15 on May 1, 2020 on a prospective basis. There was no impact to our consolidated financial statements at the date of adoption.

Changes to the Disclosure Requirements for Fair Value Measurement

In August 2018, the FASB issued ASU 2018-13, “Fair Value Measurement (Topic 820): Disclosure Framework-Changes to the Disclosure Requirements for Fair Value Measurement.” ASU 2018-13 removes, modifies, and adds disclosures. We adopted ASU 2018-13 on May 1, 2020. There was no impact to our consolidated financial statements or disclosures as a result of adoption.

Leases

In February 2016, the FASB issued ASU 2016-02, “Leases (Topic 842)” and issued subsequent amendments to the initial guidance thereafter. ASU 2016-02 requires an entity to recognize a right-of-use asset (ROU) and lease liability for all leases with terms of more than 12 months and provide enhanced disclosures. Recognition, measurement, and presentation of expenses depends on classification as a finance or operating lease. Similar modifications have been made to lessor accounting in-line with revenue recognition guidance.

The new standard provides a number of optional practical expedients in transition. We elected the practical expedients to forgo a reassessment of (1) whether any expired or existing contracts are or contain leases, (2) the lease classification for any expired or existing leases, and (3) initial direct costs.  We did not elect the practical expedient allowing the use-of-hindsight which would have required us to reassess the lease term of our leases based on all facts and circumstances through the effective date.  In addition, we did not elect the practical expedient pertaining to land easements.

In addition, the new standard provides as a practical expedient, certain policy elections for ongoing lease accounting which we elected at the date of adoption and included the following, (i) to not separate nonlease components from the associated lease component if certain conditions are met, and (ii) to not recognize ROU assets and lease liabilities for leases that qualify as short-term.

A modified retrospective transition approach was required, applying the standard to all leases existing at the date of initial application. A company could choose to use either (1) its effective date or (2) the beginning of the earliest comparative period presented in the financial statements as of its date of initial application. We adopted the new standard on May 1, 2019 and used the effective date as the date of initial application. Accordingly, previously reported financial information was not updated, and the disclosures required under the new standard will not be provided for dates and periods before May 1, 2019. 

At adoption, we recognized operating lease liabilities of $178 million based on the present value of the remaining minimum rental payments for existing operating leases and ROU assets of $142 million on our Consolidated Statement of Financial Position. The difference between the ROU assets and operating lease liabilities represents the existing deferred rent liabilities, prepaid rent balances, and applicable restructuring liabilities, which were reclassified upon adoption to reduce the measurement of the ROU assets. The adoption of the standard did not have an impact on our Consolidated Statement of Shareholders’ Equity, Consolidated Statement of Income (Loss) or Consolidated Statement of Cash Flow. See Note 12, “Operating Leases”, for further details on our operating leases.