Lease Accounting: Building confidence in compliance efforts

On-demand webinar summary 

Lease accounting is an incredibly time-consuming, complex endeavor that involves a lot of initial preparation, cross-departmental collaboration and ongoing maintenance. So, how can businesses ensure their lease accounting remains reliable and accurate?  

In our recent webinar, Lease Accounting: Building confidence in compliance efforts, Joe Fitzgerald, SVP of Lease Market Strategy at Visual Lease, and Denise Hinkle, Principal of Business Development at Scribcor Global, covered how businesses can successfully prepare for lease accounting and offered tips about how to feel confident about compliance Many companies struggle to feel confident in their lease accounting compliance efforts with the new standards (ASC 842, IFRS 16 and GASB 87). 

High-level takeaways from the webinar include: 

What makes lease accounting so complex?

There are multiple factors that make lease accounting difficult to both achieve and maintain. Besides the complex calculations required, leases themselves are lengthy and intricate. Typically, lease contracts are detailed documents with critical information such as obligations, clauses, options and dates. If your lease contracts are in different offices or handled by different departments, they may be difficult to locate and identify. 

Further, any changes within your leases must be represented on the balance sheet, or you risk misreporting your company’s lease information.  

Misreporting lease financials can result in increased audit fees and fines, along with damage to your company’s reputation and the risk of legal action. It’s important to keep this in mind as you prepare for lease accounting.

How to prepare for lease accounting success

There are steps you can take that have been proven to set you up for success. In this webinar, you will learn about each one, including but not limited to: 

• Establishing a dedicated team
  • Who needs to be involved?
  • What are they responsible for?
  • Which departments need to be consulted?

• Identifying your leases
  • What are best practices to do this?
  • Where do you begin?

• Determining a reliable process
  • What will it take to adopt and maintain the lease accounting standard?
  • What are the risks of your identified solution?
  • What should you (and should you not) do?

• Creating a post-adoption plan
  • How will you account for ongoing lease data maintenance?
  • Who will be responsible, and for what?
  • What will your processes look like?

For more information about how to be confident in your lease accounting compliance efforts, view our on-demand webinar, Lease Accounting: Building confidence in compliance efforts.