The act or process of taking on or assuming (incurring) a debt/ liability. It also refers to incurring costs: incurred cost (cost incurred) is the cost that a business has been liable for. Expenses are incurred when an entity becomes legally obliged to pay them. In general, cost incurrence involves the sacrifice of an economic resource available at an entity’s disposal (compare with cost incurrence, in another backdrop).

In a very specific context, incurrence or “incurred” denotes a condition or situation where all transactions, regardless of their cause or nature, must be recognized in the books of an entity when they occur.