in europe you can choose to put it on the balance sheet or treat it like an expense. it goes under intangible assets. i think goodwill is just for some kind of intangible quality of the business like reputation.

source code or patents are actual hard assets regardless of whatever rules were made up. it is typical for bankers or acountants to dismiss the assets engineers create. imagine engineers did the same and reason that bonds are worthless because it is just paper or that your client base is worth nothing?

if you do not put IP on your balance sheet and keep expensing it eventually you end up with negative net worth which makes your business look very unattractive and unhealthy. been there done that. if you incurr expenses and in return create an asset it should be on the balance sheet. i cannot imagine diamond mining operations not putting the diamonds on the balance sheet….