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Note 4 - Accounts Receivable, Transit Accounts Receivable and Transit Accounts Payable | 9 Months Ended
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Sep. 26, 2020
Notes to Financial Statements |
Loans, Notes, Trade and Other Receivables Disclosure [Text Block] |
4. | Accounts Receivable, Transit Accounts Receivable and Transit Accounts Payable
The Company's accounts receivable are comprised as follows:
|  | September 26, 2020 |  |  | December 28, 2019 |
Billed |  | $ | 20,553 |  |  | $ | 29,214 |
Accrued and unbilled |  |  | 10,424 |  |  |  | 13,824 |
Work-in-progress |  |  | 3,759 |  |  |  | 4,352 |
Accounts receivable subject to arbitration |  |  | - |  |  |  | 14,095 |
Allowance for sales discounts and doubtful accounts |  |  | (1,750 | ) |  |  | (1,725 | )
Accounts receivable, net |  | $ | 32,986 |  |  | $ | 59,760 |
Unbilled receivables primarily represent revenue earned whereby those services are ready to be billed as of the balance sheet ending date. Work-in-progress primarily represents revenue earned under contracts which the Company contractually invoices at future dates. From time to time, the Company's Engineering segment enters into agreements to provide, among other things, construction management and engineering services. Pursuant to these agreements, the Company a) may engage subcontractors to provide construction or other services; b) typically earns a fixed percentage of the total project value; and c) assumes no ownership or risks of inventory. Under the terms of the agreements, the Company is typically not required to pay the subcontractor until after the corresponding payment from the Company's end-client is received. Upon invoicing the end-client on behalf of the subcontractor or staffing agency the Company records this amount simultaneously as both a “transit account receivable” and “transit account payable” as the amount when paid to the Company is due to and generally paid to the subcontractor within a few days. The Company typically does not pay a given transit account payable until the related transit account receivable is collected. The Company is typically obligated to pay the subcontractor or staffing agency whether or not the client pays the Company. The Company's transit accounts payable generally exceeds the Company's transit accounts receivable but absolute amounts and spreads fluctuate significantly from quarter to quarter in the normal course of business. The transit accounts receivable was $0.2 million and related transit accounts payable was $0.9 million, for a net payable of $0.7 million, as of September 26, 2020. The transit accounts receivable was $4.9 million and related transit accounts payable was $4.6 million, for a net receivable of $0.3 million, as of December 28, 2019. The Company had a dispute with a customer that is a major utility in the United States. Both parties agreed in fiscal 2017 to resolve this dispute through binding arbitration. Arbitration hearings with this customer started in fiscal 2018. Essentially, the customer did not pay the balance of accounts receivable the Company believes were owed for certain disputed projects. As of December 28, 2019, the total amount of recorded receivables from this customer on these disputed projects was $14.1 million. Additionally, as part of the arbitration process, the customer asserted counter-claims of $10.3 million. The arbitrator rendered a decision in this dispute in April 2020, awarding the Company $7.4 million, and the arbitration award was paid during the thirteen week period ended September 26, 2020. The counter-claims asserted against the Company of $10.3 million were denied in their entirety. For the thirty-nine week period ended September 26, 2020, the Company recorded a charge of $8.4 million, including $6.7 million constituting the portion of the accounts receivable relating to the disputed projects that was not awarded by the arbitrator, $0.7 million from other projects with this customer that were not part of the arbitration, $0.8 million in professional fees related to the dispute and arbitration, and $0.2 million of transit accounts receivable associated with disputed projects that were part of the arbitration. The Company decided to write off the $0.7 million of accounts receivable from other projects not part of the arbitration for business reasons.

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- Definition The entire disclosure for claims held for amounts due a entity, excluding financing receivables. Examples include, but are not limited to, trade accounts receivables, notes receivables, loans receivables. Includes disclosure for allowance for credit losses. + References Reference 1: http://www.xbrl.org/2009/role/commonPracticeRef -Publisher FASB -Name Accounting Standards Codification -Topic 310 -SubTopic 10 -URI http://asc.fasb.org/subtopic&trid=2196772 + Details
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