An exceptional item is a charge incurred that must be noted on a company's balance sheet, in accordance with GAAP principles. Even though exceptional items are considered to be part of ordinary business charges, they must be disclosed due to their sheer size or frequency.
Don't confuse exceptional items with extraordinary items: the latter is not part of a company's ordinary business dealings. Exceptional items, on the other hand, are material and need to be documented to provide investors and regulators with accurate and informative financial statements.
As an example, in early 2016, the British engine manufacturer announced they would be taking an exceptional restructuring charge of GBP 75 million to GBP 100 million to account for measures to shore up their balance sheets through job cuts. As a special charge, these don’t rise to the standard of extraordinary but do add financial statement transparency as exceptional charges.
Excluding Items refers to the common practice of leaving certain factors out of an overall calculation to remove the volatility that might otherwise impact its comparability or distort long-term forecasting.
A big ticket item is a high-cost item, such as a house or car, as well as an expensive product such as an appliance, home theater system and furniture.