Other Short-Term Liabilities

Category

Balance Sheet

Units

Currency

US-GAAP elements

OtherLiabilitiesCurrentOtherSundryLiabilitiesCurrent

Reference

Regulation S-X Rule 5-02.20 (Other current liabilities)

Source

Reported in SEC EDGAR filings (US-GAAP XBRL taxonomy)

Other short-term liabilities are obligations a company expects to settle within a year (or its operating cycle, if longer) that it does not report under a more specific current caption such as accounts payable, accrued expenses, short-term debt, or deferred revenue. The line collects the remaining current obligations into one amount.

Its contents differ from company to company. Typical items include customer deposits, dividends declared but unpaid, current derivative liabilities, amounts owed on acquisitions, current portions of legal or restructuring reserves, and short-term operating lease liabilities when they are not shown separately.

Regulation S-X Rule 5-02.20 defines the caption for other current liabilities on a commercial company's balance sheet. It requires companies to identify separately, either on the face of the balance sheet or in a note, any item larger than 5 percent of total current liabilities, and names accrued payroll, accrued interest, taxes, and the current portion of long-term debt as examples. The remaining smaller items can be shown as one amount. In XBRL, the residual is usually tagged OtherLiabilitiesCurrent, with OtherSundryLiabilitiesCurrent used for items that are not itemized anywhere.

Because the same obligation may be presented on its own line by one filer and folded into this bucket by another, the caption alone says little. The footnote on accrued and other current liabilities normally lists the main components and is the place to start when the balance is large.

Other current liabilities feed into total current liabilities, so they reduce working capital and the current ratio. Most are operating obligations rather than borrowings, and debt measures generally exclude them. The exception is any interest-bearing item, such as a short-term financing arrangement, that a company has placed here, which analysts may choose to add to short-term debt after reading the notes.