There are sometimes terms as ‘extraordinary’ and ‘ordinary’ used in accounting frameworks. Let us define them both and the difference between them. 

An ordinary item on your income statement is something that happens on regular basis, you’ve agreed to it either by signing a contract, budgeting for the expense or revenue and you can estimate the amounts from it. You can estimate the impact of it to your company’s results.

On the contrary an ordinary item, you cannot predict extraordinary items on your statements. They happen either due to litigations, claims, due to need to sell properties, due to opportunities to get rid of assets and so on. It can be that you need to restructure immediately due to adverse changes on the market and you need to lay off people. Such expenses are extraordinary on your statements as they were not strategically planned but rather rush necessary acts to desperate times.

It is important to distinguish those two since one can be considered part of your regular process from your business and the other not so much. In fact, extraordinary items are always excluded when giving someone an overview of your regular business performance.