For accounting purposes, Braithwaite’s transfer fee is divided by the number of years he has on his contract, meaning that Barcelona are considered to buy him in a certain number of payments over an extended period of time.
As he signed a four-and-a-half year contract, the €18m that Barca spent on him is split up into 4.5 payments – one for each year of his deal. These are worth €4m per season.
Working along this logic, since Braithwaite has been with Barcelona for one-and-a-half season, the Camp Nou side are considered to have paid €6m of his transfer fee in their accounts.
They still have an outstanding debt of €12m as far as their accounts are concerned, but if they sell him for anything more than that, it becomes profit.
If Braithwaite were to move to Wolves, for example, for €15m, this would equate to a precious €3m profit for Barcelona.