Bookings

This is sort of a stupid question, but can someone give me an explanation on "bookings"? I'm pretty sure every company has them, but I haven't really been able to get a grasp on exactly what bookings mean. Is it contracted revenue for services that will be performed in future periods? Is it subscription/recurring revenue that the company expects to get in the future periods?

I ask because we are advising a company on the acquisition of a target, and the target and its bankers are trying to get the company valued on forward bookings rather than revenue (which is ridiculous, IMO). I was speaking with the target CFO and he wasn't even able to get his arms around his own bookings, which was reasonably absurd given that he was pushing valuation on it (it's a smaller company and I'm pretty certain the management team is done as soon as the company is sold).

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