How do you solve a problem like ghost revenue?

If you're the SEC you ignore it. But if you're FASB, you take requests from analysts and an accounting firm and quickly change the guidance that's holding some companies back.

The SEC said again, at a virtual conference sponsored by the AICPA this past December, that it’s ramping up its chronic crack down on companies that abuse non-GAAP metrics, especially adjusted revenue metrics. FASB, the accounting standards-setter, wants to make that task easier by quietly getting rid of one egregious variation of adjusted revenue: defe…