SOFTWARE DEVELOPMENT

3 Months Ended

Mar. 31, 2022

Software development costs are accounted for in accordance with ASC 350-40, Internal-Use Software. We capitalize incurred labor costs for software development from the time the preliminary project phase is completed until the software is available for general release. Research and development costs and other computer software maintenance costs related to software development are expensed as incurred. We estimate the useful life of our capitalized software and amortize its value on a straight-line basis over that estimated life, which is estimated to be five years. If the actual life of the asset is deemed to be impaired, a write-down of the value of the asset may be recorded as a charge to earnings. Amortization begins when the related software features are placed in service.

During the second quarter of 2021, our ongoing monitoring activities associated with the capitalization of software development costs and the related correlation between capitalization rates and operational metrics designed to reflect the distribution of work revealed that our then-current labor capitalization methodology did not fully reflect all of the critical activities necessary to develop software assets. Consequently, during the second quarter of 2021, we elected to change our method of estimating the labor costs incurred in developing software assets. Prior to this change, we estimated the associated labor costs using an estimated time-equivalent for workload metrics commonly utilized within agile software development environments. With this change, we now estimate these labor costs using the distribution of these agile workload metrics between capitalizable and non-capitalizable units of work. We believe this change is preferable as the new methodology better estimates capitalizable labor costs and is consistent with industry best practices. We have determined that this change in accounting for software development costs is a change in accounting estimate effected by a change in accounting principle and, as such, has been accounted for on a prospective basis. In connection with this change, we capitalized software development costs of $8.8 million during the year ended December 31, 2021. We estimate that the effect of this change was to increase capitalized amounts by approximately $4.6 million for the year ended December 31, 2021, with a corresponding decrease to product development costs.

Software development costs, net was comprised of the following at March 31, 2022 and December 31, 2021:


(In thousands)	March 31, 2022		December 31, 2021
Software development costs	$	16,984	$	12,693
Less: accumulated amortization	(1,575)		(1,049)
Software development costs, net	$	15,409	$	11,644