Transcription:

Welcome to Training with Visual Lease. This course is designed to provide you with an in-depth understanding of how to configure key system fields and explore various settings and defaults within the Administrator module.  Understanding configuration options and how the various settings impact other areas of the platform will help you set up your VL Platform to best meet the lease management and accounting needs of your business.

By the end of this course, you will know how to:

• Re-label, add or remove lease fields
• Adjust some key lease fields with dropdown and tree list structures
• Set basic platform defaults in System Settings

Please note that although some of the fields discussed in today’s course are not specifically financial in nature, many of them heavily impact financial functionality and reporting.  We’ll expand on these fields later in the course.

Keep in mind, only Administrator users can access the Administrator tool, and therefore they are the only ones that can change the configuration of these lease fields. So if you want to change them based on what you see, feel free to reach out to them!

To access the administrator module, navigate up to the upper right hand corner of the screen to the tools menu and select Administrator.

Before we start, please remember that any changes made in Administrator carry through to your platform immediately, impacting the fields on all leases. For that reason, you should think through the changes you want to make before you make them.

When entering the Administrator Module, you land on the home page.  The logo in the top left corner brings you back to this page from anywhere within the Admin module.

The home page is organized into different sections based on the areas of the platform they correspond with.

The various Administrator functions can be accessed by clicking directly on the links here…

… or through the use of the menus at the top of the screen.

We’ll begin with Field Customizations, located here under Settings & Defaults.

With field customizations, you can show, hide, re-label and configure a number of fields in a lease record. This is particularly powerful because it enables you to tailor the platform to your organization’s unique needs.

You’ll notice the fields are grouped into sections that reflect the area of a lease record to which they correspond:

• General
• Contacts
• Payee
• Financial entries

Each section is then organized into columns.

In the left column, we see ‘VL FIELD NAME,’ which is the default name we’ve given that field.

The next column, ‘FIELD LABEL,’ is how that field shows up in a lease record. By default, the labels in the lease record match these names. Also, there are additional details in the columns to the right.

Let me show you how to relabel a field.

Say your organization wants to track their Business Segments but does not need a field called Brand in the platform. You can repurpose the Brand field to track the Segment instead. To do this, click Edit next to Brand.

Then, remove the current Field Label and enter Segment.

Be careful not to use special characters, such as an asterisk* or ampersand& when re-labeling, as these are not accepted characters. If you hit ‘Save,’ you will see that I relabeled Brand to Segment in this screen, and if I refresh my lease record screen, you will see that this field name updated here as well.

Let’s edit this field again so I can show you a few additional configurable settings. Please note that each field may have slightly different available settings.

Field Required determines whether a field is required within the lease record. In this case, the ability to change this is locked, meaning we cannot adjust this setting.  Therefore, when adding a new lease or editing an existing lease, you will always have to populate the Segment field.

Next is Include in Sidebar – this determines whether the data point should additionally be displayed in the sidebar of a record, so it is easily visible throughout the lease record.

And Sidebar order allows you to change the order that this field appears in the sidebar.

Hide Field allows you to hide this field altogether if you didn’t need it.  This only applies to some fields and in our case, this field cannot be hidden.

Next, Include in QuickSearch indicates whether the field can be used as criteria to find a lease within the QS box.

Now, I’ll click Save…

Please remember that in addition to relabeling or hiding existing fields, you can also add custom fields.

Any field that has a VL Field Name of “Custom” is an additional fields you can leverage.

Overall, there is a lot of flexibility here so make sure you explore the available options and remember that all of these fields can be used as criteria to search for a lease, group a set of leases together or be accessible within reports.

I’ll use the logo in the top left to return to the Administrator home page.

Once you review the labels and settings of your lease fields, depending on the type of field, you may need to do additional configuration within the Company Setup section of the Administrator Module.

First, I want to show you how to set up Record Type, which is the first option you see under Key System Setup and a critical field within your lease record.

Let’s view it within the Lease Record first so you can have some additional context. The record type field is located within the Key Information section of the General tab of a lease record. It classifies the lease’s asset type, such as Real Estate or Equipment, and lease type, such as expense or income.

This field is particularly significant because it controls the types of accounting calculations that can be associated with this record.

Record type offers a drop-down menu of optional values, which should represent the types of records in your lease portfolio. You can only select one of the values in this list per record.

Let’s return to the administrator tool so I can show you how to set up this drop-down list.  First, click on Record Type under Key System Setup.

Here is a table displaying the current list of record types in this account. The first column displays the Record Type name as seen in the Record Type drop-down list. The rest of the columns show additional configured settings.

In the top right corner of the table, you can control how many rows display within the table, and you can use the buttons in the bottom-right to toggle between multiple pages.

Beneath the table are the buttons to Add, Edit and Delete Record Types.

Lastly, in the bottom right, you’ll see an “Export Grid” link, which allows you to easily export the table into an Excel spreadsheet.

You will find that this general layout is pretty consistent for many of the fields in Administrator.

Now, let’s examine the different parameters we can set for record types.  I will use a Real Estate Expense Lease as an example, which represents a real estate lease in which you are the tenant. So I’ll select this from the table and click Edit at the bottom.

First, you’ll want to ensure the Record Type Name is descriptive and clear.

Next, the Record Category field should be set to RealEstate, which reflects the type of asset this represents. It is important to set this up properly because some functionality throughout the platform is only available to certain asset types.

Should you want to capture an additional description for the record type, you can do so here for your own reference behind the scenes. I’m going to leave this blank.

On the right, you’ll see the Financial Type, which is where the record type can be classified as expense or income.  This will later control whether this record type will use lessor or lessee accounting. For this record type, I’ll select Expense.

The minimum and maximum financial entry thresholds limit the amount you can enter within a financial entry on this type of record. These numbers represent the smallest and largest financial entries possible.  I am going to leave this as is, but you may want to change this depending on the normal price range for different types of records.

Next, I will show you the Useful Life fields on the bottom right. This is where you set Useful Life defaults per Record Type. We have split useful life into years and months. You can use just the Years field, just the Months field, or both fields in combination to specify whole and partial years.

You can control whether Short Term and Low Value lease accounting functionality is available for this particular record type:

Short Term, which applies to ASC 842, IFRS 16 and GASB 87 standards, and Low Value, which applies only to IFRS 16. If you don’t elect the low value or short term expedients related to the new lease accounting rules, you should leave these options unchecked.

Since we did not make any changes, I’ll click Cancel to return back to the Record table.

As you can see, it’s important to make sure the record types are configured properly to ensure you’re able to classify and organize your portfolio in a way that is meaningful to your organization.  This also ensures that the appropriate accounting calculations are available on your lease records.

Next, we will take a look at another key field, Organization.  I’ll use the menu in the top right to open this table.

Organization allows you to assign a lease to a business unit, organization or entity within your company. This field is very important because can be exported along with your journal entry details to properly allocate transactions or journal entries to the related entity within your Accounting System.

This field is setup slightly differently and is selected from a tree list rather than a flat drop-down menu within a record.  This means the options appear in a hierarchy, with certain values nested under others in a parent-child structure.

Typically, we see our clients build multiple parent/child levels so that the user can have context when selecting a specific organization.

Now that you see where this is located within a record, let me show you how to configure the organization tree.

When you first arrive on this screen, you will see the current organization tree. The view will default to Tree Mode, as indicated on the top of your screen in the darker grey bar. Tree Mode shows your organization structure in a simplified manner, revealing parent organizations and subsequently any child organizations within them.

I can expand or collapse different organizations by clicking on the small yellow arrows to the left of each organization, or I can use the shortcut in the top right.

One key advantage to viewing these options in tree mode is the ability to drag and drop these organizations to move them under the appropriate parent organization.

So, for example if I want department 2 to be under a different parent, I can easily move it to the appropriate place.

Once I accept the change, the lease record will immediately reflect this change.

On the bottom right side of the screen, you can switch the view to Table Mode. With this view, you can see the same organizations but in a table that exposes various components of these organizations in different columns. You can sort the table by clicking on any of the column headers, which can help you easily find the organization you are looking for.

Above the table on the right of the screen, you can control how many values you can see within the table at a time. On the bottom-right of the screen, you can change which set of records to view (if there are multiple pages of records). Lastly, the link beneath called “Export Grid” allows you to export the table into an Excel Spreadsheet.

I am going to switch back to Tree Mode because it gives me a cleaner way to view my organizations.

Beneath the table, I have the options to Add, Edit and Delete organizations.

To add an organization, you can either click Add Organization, or click on parent organization you want it to roll-up to, and then click Add Organization. By doing this, it will automatically place the new organization underneath the parent organization.

When adding a new organization, you will have to fill out a number of fields to ensure proper setup.

Like other areas of Visual Lease, the red markers indicate required fields that must be filled out in order to save the organization.

Organization Name is the name that will display throughout the platform, and usually reflects the entity or official name within your organizational structure.  It has a 30 character limit.

Next you’ll need to populate the code and abbreviation, which are more commonly used behind-the-scenes as an identifier that represents this organization.

It is worth noting, however, that these values can be used as additional identifiers to help later map the entry to the correct function within your Accounting System, as the code and abbreviation are available to be exported through the Accounting Feed and ad hoc reports.

If you don’t need the fields to serve a particular purpose, you can simply abbreviate the organization name for both fields. Keep in mind these values must also be unique across your Organization list and both of these fields have a 6 character limit.

You can use Sort Order to manually change the order this value has within the total list of Organization values.

Beneath that you can track the Description, which can again help you better describe what this Organization represents.

On the top-right of the window is the Parent organization – this dropdown allows you to manually select the parent group to which this belongs.

Here, you can tie your organization to a particular region. Let’s skip this for now.

The General Ledger field here allows you to link your Organization (and any transaction or journal entry associated with it) to your General Ledger, and subsequently the relevant chart of accounts stored in each General Ledger within Visual Lease.

General Ledgers and Chart of Accounts are areas of the platform that are configured to allow you to map your lease financials to the appropriate codes used in your accounting system, or systems, so your transactions can be imported from Visual Lease. If you have organizations that use a different accounting systems, then you would link that VL General Ledger to the organization here.

Budget center, also known as a Cost Center, is a field designed to identify the code associated with this organization within your Accounting System. This value is available to be exported through the Accounting Feed and ad hoc reports.

If you don’t need the Budget Center, you can simply abbreviate the organization name this field. Keep in mind these values must also be unique across your Organization list and has a 6 character limit.

I’ll click Save to save the new Organization we’ve created – you can see it now displays within the Organization hierarchy.

It is important to make sure that your organizations are kept up-to-date so the platform always reflects your company’s current organizational structure.

I can then easily export this table to Excel using the Export Data link.

Proper configuration of your company’s organizational tree is key as it allows you to keep track of important details related to the business structure.

Now we’ll move on to Region.

Region is a field used to capture a high-level geographic area that you may use internally to identify the physical location of the assets within your portfolio.

Configuring region is similar to configuring Organization, except it is much simpler. The layout of the page is similar, with the regions organized into a hierarchy.  The buttons at the bottom enable you to add, edit and delete regions, as well as toggle between the table and tree mode and export the data to Excel.

You’re required to populate a Name, Code an Abbreviation for each region.  The Parent region is also defined so you can easily choose the correct place within the hierarchy.

I’ll click Cancel to return.

Region is a special field because it can link to Organization. If you have different regional trees for different organizations, you can create a master list within this field, and then link your organizations to the correct region list.

This link makes it easier and faster to select the region associated with the lease when you are updating your lease record.

I’ll return to the Organization field to show you how you can select a roll-up region to associate with your organization.

As you saw when I was working with Organizations, you have the ability to link organizations to specific regions.

Again, this is meant to simplify the process of adding leases, so the region will be defaulted when a specific organization is selected.

It’s important to note, however, that only level 1 region (or parent region) can be linked to organizations.

To demonstrate, I’m going to go back into the organization setup, select an organization, and assign a region.

Now, I’ll toggle back into the lease record and select this organization – you’ll notice the Region has defaulted for me.

Heading back to the Administrator tool, the next key field is Brand.  This field is typically used to capture underlying franchise or special entities associated with the record, but can be relabeled or repurposed as needed.

Remember, we relabeled this to Segment.

I won’t spend too much time here, as the layout of the page mirrors the Region setup, and if I select a value and click Edit, you’ll notice the same details are captured within each.

You are required to populate the name, code, abbreviation and parent within each segment.

I’ll click Cancel to return back to the main page.

The last configurable field under Key System Setup are the Country & State/Provinces values.

Here, you can remove options if you want to simplify what options display in your lease records.

For example, if your lease portfolio only exists in one country, you can remove the other options, so the list only displays applicable choices. Although this field has a similar setup to Region and Brand, this screen requires you to add Countries or States and Provinces using separate buttons.

I’ll use the logo to return back to the Admin Home Page.

In the last section of this course, we’ll review some of the basic platform defaults you can set in System Settings.

When you land in System Settings, you’ll see that the options are broken into 5 sections:

• Database Settings
• Password Settings
• Lease Defaults
• Financial Defaults
• Default Alert Setup

In this course we’re going to review all of the non-financial System Settings, so let’s begin at the top.

Your Database Settings contains your company name, which is where you’ll identify your company name.  This will display in the Main Menu bar throughout your platform.

To the right of that, you’ll specify you company’s Fiscal Year.  We make this simple for you – you only need to select the starting month of your fiscal year and the ending month auto-populates for your convenience.

This setting will flow through to other areas of the system, such as reports that are run based on a fiscal year date range.

The next section is associated with password requirements.  Here, Administrators can configure specific complexity requirements to help maintain a secure platform or match your IT requirements.  When a new user is added or an existing user updates their password, the requirements will be enforced.

For example, you can choose a minimum length, minimum number of alphabetic or numeric characters, add an uppercase or special character requirement or even set a validity date range so that passwords must be changed based on the defined frequency.

Keep in mind that these requirements are enforced with the standard login process.  If you are utilizing SSO, the password complexity requirements do not apply.

Next you’ll set your Lease Defaults.  The options set here impact two areas:

On the left, you can specify the default options to be used for new leases.  This allows for a more efficient process when creating new leases, as the country, currency, lease type and more will be prepopulated based on your selections.

For example, if you know that most of the leases in your portfolio are Real Estate, simply make that selection here.

Remember that these are just the default though – you can still change these on a lease-by-lease basis as you’re working on updating or adding new records.

The checkboxes on the right are associated with the ‘Save As’ functionality, which allows you to create a copy of an existing lease record.   This is often used when key lease details are shared between the two records, such as a lease and a sublease.

The options you have selected here determine what details will be copied from the original lease to the new lease by default.  Again, these are not set in stone—you can still update these options when you use the ‘Save As’ action within the platform.

The next section allows you to set Lease Financial defaults, which we will not be covering in this course.

We’ll move on to the last section: Default Alert Setup.  Alerts provide a means of notifying your team members of important dates captured throughout lease records, that if missed, could result in significant penalties.

There are three classifications of critical dates:

• Lease Dates, which include key dates such as Expirations
• Clause Dates, which include a variety of dates like option exercise deadlines
• Financial Dates, which include dates like rent escalations

Using the options in this section, you can specify the default number of days prior to a critical date that a contact will receive the email notification by default.

For example, if you know you’d want a contact to receive a notification 90 days prior to a lease expiring, you can specify that here.

That concludes our Configuring Key System Fields and System Settings course.

We reviewed how to:

• Relabel, add or hide fields
• Adjust dropdown and tree list values in key fields
• Set basic platform defaults in System Settings

You should now feel more equipped to tailor your account to meet your lease management and accounting needs.

Thank you for attending this course – any questions, suggestions or feedback can be sent to training@visuallease.com.

Transcription:

Welcome to training with Visual Lease. This course is designed to give you an in-depth understanding of how to setup commonly used fields that capture key characteristics about your leases.

By the end of the course, you will know how to adjust the values that appear in commonly used fields found on various tabs of the lease record.  This will enable you to setup your account, so it looks and feels familiar to you and organization.

Throughout this training, I will toggle between the lease record screen, which all of your users will be able to access, and the Visual Lease Administrator Tool. The Administrator tool is only accessible by your account’s Administrator.  This will help you understand what these fields are and how they display within the platform.

To begin, I will open a lease record in a new tab using my Recently Opened window.  I will also navigate up to the tools menu and select Administrator to open the Administrator module.

The Administrator module is used to manage various components of your Visual Lease platform.

It is important to remember that the changes made here will carry through to your account immediately, impacting the fields on all leases. For that reason, you should carefully consider any changes before you make them.

When entering the Administrator Module, you land on the Administrator home page.  The logo in the top left corner brings you back to this page from anywhere within the Admin tool.

The home page is organized into different sections based on the areas of the platform they correspond with.

The various Administrator functions can be accessed by clicking directly on the links here…

… or through the use of the menus at the top.

In this training, we are going to focus on Lease Setup under the Company Setup section. This is where you can configure the values that populate drop-down fields throughout the lease record.

Let’s start with some of the fields that appear in the Key Information and Location sections of the General tab of the lease record.

When you edit this section, you can see single-select dropdowns for the Classification, Group, Manager and Rent Type fields which appear under the Record Type Field.

You can use these fields as intended or relabel them to capture additional lease administration details, accounting identifier stratification or reporting purposes.

When you edit the Location section, you can see single-select dropdowns for Property Type and Building Type, which help provide more information for property leases as they may help identify what they are used for. Keep in mind that some of these fields, like the ones above, may have been relabeled in your account.

We’ll begin with Classification, so I’ll jump back into the Administrator module.

This field can be relabeled to further classify or categorize the lease record beyond the Record Type, but here we’ve left it as Classification.

The Classification table is fairly simple and shows the current values that display in the dropdown menu within the lease record.

Beneath the table are the buttons to Add, Edit and Delete values from the tale.

In the top right of the screen, you can control how many values you can see within the table at a time.

On the bottom-right of the screen, you can change the screen (if there are multiple).

Lastly, the link beneath called “Export Grid” allows you to export the table you see into an Excel Spreadsheet.

You will find that this general layout is consistent for many of the fields we will be looking at.

When adding a new classification, you only need to enter a Classification Name.  I’ll create a new type for “Truck.”

As I mentioned, configuration changes made within the Administrator module take immediate effect, so when I jump into the Lease Record…

… and edit the Key Info section, the new classification will display in the dropdown menu for a user to select.

Next, we’ll take a look at Group, which provides another means of categorizing your leases.

This screen looks the same as Classification, with the buttons along the bottom to Add, Edit or Delete values from the table.

When you click Add, the only major difference is that you will also have to add a code and abbreviation. While users primarily see the name while working in the platform, the code and abbreviation are still required and are used behind-the-scenes.

We recommend simply abbreviating the field name and then using the same value for Code and Abbreviation. Keep in mind these values must also be unique within this list.

Now I’ll use the logo to return back to the Administrator home page.

Adjusting the dropdowns for the Manager, Rent Type, Property Type and Building Type fields involves the same steps, so I am not going to walk you through it.

However, I would like to note that Rent Type is a special field because it’s tied to functionality with the CAM/OpEx module. It is designed to allow you to track different ways operating expenses can be treated in the lease, so you’ll want to take care when adjusting these options.

Now let’s discuss how to configure other fields that are not on the general tab.

Let’s start with the Contact Role field on the Contacts tab.

The contacts tab is where you store key lease parties and associated contacts. The only type of contact not tracked on this tab is the Payee, which is tracked within the Financials tab. Don’t worry, we will cover that in a moment.

When looking at this page, the top sections represent major lease parties. Here you’ll be listing the landlord, tenant and payor of the lease.

And down below you can add in all other contacts you want to associate with the lease. You can track an unlimited list of contacts here.

Visual Lease allows you to configure a list of commonly used contact types called ‘Contact Roles’ so that you can better organize the types of associated contacts.

For example, you may want to track notice parties, accounting points of contact, Property Managers or brokers.  You can then configure your Contact Roles list to include those types of contacts so each associated contact has a defined role.

To set up a contact role, let’s return to the Administrator tool.

Here you can see that the process of Adding a Contact role is the same as for the previous fields covered in this course.

Now, let’s revisit the topic of the Payee.

As I mentioned, the Payee resides in the Financials tab of a lease record.  This area holds all of your lease financial information.  Across the top of the screen, you’ll see several subtabs for the various modules that can help allocate, analyze and calculate your financials.  Payees are held in one of these subtabs.

The Payee is stored in the financial tab of the lease so it can be easily linked to expense or income financial entries.  In addition, those with financial editing rights can easily access and edit payees within this tab.

Here, you should store all financial parties of the lease that relate to your expense or income entries. Each payee can have a designated ‘payee type,’ which makes it easier to classify the type of payee.

For example, you may want to include a payee type of Landlord, Utility Provider or Contractor so you or your colleagues can easily identify its relationship to the lease at first glance.

To add or edit these types, go back to the Admin tool. The Payee Type field is actually found under the Financial and Accounting section of the Administrator tool. (click it). As you can see, the process of adding, editing or deleting a payee type involves the same steps as the prior fields we covered.

Now we’ll move onto another configurable field that resides in the Documents tab.

The Documents tab is where you’ll upload all of your important lease documentation so you’re able to organize and maintain these documents over time.  You will have the opportunity to track various characteristics about the Document which appear in various columns. The Document Type is a configurable field that is used to quickly identify the document, so you do not need to solely depend on the document name.

The document types should be set up to reflect the types of documents you are interested in gathering for your lease portfolio. Common document types include lease agreement, amendment, floorplan, commencement letter, photo and more. It is also good to note that you can filter your documents using the top-right drop-down. This allows you to easily isolate documents of a certain type.

Adding to the list of document types is straight-forward – simply input the name, which is what users will see when assigning the type within the record, the code and abbreviation, as well as any additional details you wish to store.

Next, we’ll take a look at Clauses, which is one of the most configurable areas of the platform.

Not only can you include unlimited clauses, but you can choose the type of field each clause represents as well as how they are grouped together.  These fields are designed to enable you to track summaries of terms or clauses within your leases that are most relevant or important to your business. Many of our users also configure this section to capture any miscellaneous characteristics related to the lease.

Before I demonstrate how to configure clauses, let me explain the different types of clauses available in the platform.

First is a Text clause – this type of clause allows you to track summaries of lease language.  As you can see, the text box is large and enables you to input a significant amount of detail for easy reference.

The next type of clause is a Date clause – this enables you to track key dates relevant to your lease, which can be flagged as Critical Dates and viewed in your Critical Date Report and other areas of the platform.

Moving on, the next type is a Number clause, which allows you to input significant numeric details.

Beneath that is a List Clause, which serves as a checklist where you can select multiple options.  Here I’ve demonstrated the functionality by simply checking the applicable items from the list and entering additional detail in the box below.

Next is Option – this allows you to track a list of your lease’s options and their attributes so they can be leveraged for lease accounting and general lease management purposes. You should only set up one option clause on your account in which you list all of your options.

The responsibility type allows you to track a responsible party, a threshold amount and a text box. This is commonly used to summarize facilities obligations of the tenant or landlord.

The last type of clause is a Single-Select List.  This allows you to track both a list of options and a text box, but unlike the other List type, you will only be able to select one option at a time.

Now let’s jump back into the Administrator tool and review how to set these up.

Once again you see the clause groups – you can click the arrows to expand each group and view all the clauses within that group. If you want to move clauses to different groups, you can easily drag and drop them like this.

When configuring your clauses, you’ll first want to ensure you have all of the groups added first.  You’ll click Add Clause Group at the bottom and enter the name of the group.

Once your groups have been setup, you’ll add all of your clauses to their respective groups using Add Clause at the bottom.

When adding a clause, you enter the name, code and abbreviation like you did on other fields. Next select the type you want from the available drop-down list. Let’s select Text for now.

If you select ‘Add Dates,’ this makes the Action and Alert dates on this clause reportable to our Ad Hoc reporting tool.

The description for the clause field is significant as this is visible within the clause on the lease record.  The description can often help different users understand what the clause is intended to capture.

The Sort Order field enables you to change the order of the clause in the clause group.

Now, if we change the Type to List or Single-Select List, you will see an added section that allows you to add the different items on the list.

I’ll enter Yes and No here as options.

You can also delete them or relabel them by clicking on the selected item and clicking delete or clear selection.

As you can see, you have flexibility when it comes to capturing importing lease clauses and other information through Clauses.

The last field we’ll be covering is Notes Category.

The Notes tab allows you to track any internal notes related to the lease. You may find it’s helpful to use this area to track things like interactions with the landlord, problems or experiences with the lease, plans around exercising options, etc. Users can use it to get additional background or working notes that better understand what is going on with the lease in question.

When adding or editing a note, the Notes Categories dropdown will allow you to classify the type of note you are adding. This can help you later search or report on your notes.

When adding a new category in Admin, simply input the name.

You’ll notice a checkbox for “Is Active” which determines whether users are able to select this category when adding or editing a note.

If you have a note category you no longer want to use, uncheck the box.  This allows you to still report on notes with that category, while preventing users from assigning that to new notes.

That concludes our course on configuring commonly used lease fields. You should now be able to add, edit or delete the dropdowns for the fields that are found on different tabs of the lease record to ensure your account is set up to meet your lease management needs.

As a reminder, any configurations that are needed can be completed by any Administrator user.

Thank you for attending this course – any questions, suggestions or feedback can be sent to training@visuallease.com.

Transcription:

INTRODUCTION:  Hello. Welcome to Training with Visual Lease. 

• • My name is Sara and this course is designed to show you an overview of the many configurable fields Visual Lease has to offer. 
  • By the end of this course, you’ll have an understanding of the types of fields that are configurable throughout the Visual Lease platform.
  • Keep in mind, only Administrator users can actually make changes to the configuration of the fields we are about to discuss, so if you want to make any changes to your existing configuration based on what you see, feel free to reach out to them! 
  • Before we get started, I want to clarify what I mean by “configurable.” The fields that are configurable are ones that can be altered to better match your needs. Examples of types of configuration include relabeling a field, hiding a field, changing the way a field appears within a screen, whether it is required or the type of information the field can capture.  Some configuration capabilities are simple and straight-forward, while others may be more complex because their configuration may impact or link to functionality throughout the platform.
  • Please note that all of the fields we are about to review are not only configurable, but they are also reportable, providing you with even more accessibility to information that is relevant to your business.

 

GENERAL: Let’s start with the General tab.

• • Description of the tab – The General tab presents some of the most important lease data that you want to see at a glance. This tab provides a quick overview and description of what the record is and offers many configuring options, enabling you to change the fields so they reflect your business structure and lease portfolio composition. Many of these fields are later leveraged throughout our platform to help you find a lease you are looking for or report on leases within a particular group or subset of your portfolio. 
  •  Layout of the tab – This tab is broken out into 5 sections: Key Information, Location, Dates, Area, and Description. Let’s talk about the configuration capabilities you have within each section. 

• • • Beginning with Key information, this section outlines high level, yet important details of the lease record.
      • Configurable fields that live within this section include Record Type, Classification, Organization, Region, and so on. 
        • Let’s start with the first field on the middle column of fields: Record Type
          • Record Type is a dropdown field that you can configure to capture the types of leases you have in your business. This field is used to classify the type of asset (like an equipment or real estate lease) and also the type of lease (like an expense lease or an income lease). Popular values that live within this field are Real Estate Expense, Vehicle Expense, or Equipment Income.
            • It is important to note that this field is linked to other important functionality throughout the platform. For example, it will later determine the type of accounting calculations and schedules that are generated in the Lease Accounting module for that lease. 
          • Many of the other fields in this column have configurable drop-downs but additionally, they also have the ability to be relabeled entirely. Relabeling fields enable you to repurpose what the field can be used for. For now, let’s stick with Classification, Group and Manager. 
            • Sometimes, you will notice that you can additionally configure whether a field can be required, or not. Like in many other platforms, in Visual Lease a required field forces you to populate the field before saving it. If it is not required, you will have the option to leave it blank. 
          • Then, we see the Rent Type field. This field also has a configurable drop-down, but what makes it special is that this field is tied to functionality with the CAM/OpEx module.
          • Common values include Gross Lease No OpEx and Modified Gross with Base Year which represents different ways operating expenses can be treated in the lease. 
          • Lastly, we see Key Info Custom 1. This field, along with Key Info Custom 2 to its right, is there if you need it. You can use this field and relabel it, depending on if you want a simple open text field available in this section of the Lease. You also have the ability to hide this field altogether if you do not need it.
        • In the third column within this section, we will see a new field type: a tree field. This type of field enables you to see a hierarchy of options, unlike the flat drop-downs you have seen before. 
          • Let’s start with Organization. Organization enables you to assign the lease to a group within your business. This field type enables you to configure a hierarchical tree that matches your business’s hierarchical organization. Typically, we see clients include their legal entities as a level 1, business units as level 2, and then lastly Cost Centers as level 3. Sometimes this field is relabeled to better match the terminology in your business.
            • It is important to note that if you plan on utilizing the Allocations module to allocate space or financial transactions, the data built within this field will flow in to that module. 
          • Next, we see Region and Brand. Both are additional hierarchy type fields that can be relabeled, as well. The Brand field can also be made hidden if it is not needed.
          • Lastly, we see Currency. The values within this field can capture the lease currency. Configuring this fields mean including or excluding certain currencies that you regularly need within your lease portfolio.

• • • • • Within the location section, there are a number of text fields that can be repurposed to capture the important location detail you require. This section also holds two dropdown fields where Administrator users are able to configure the dropdown values and the field label themselves. Currently, you see Property Type and Building Type as our dropdown fields here. 

• This section enables you to track important dates related to your lease. You have flexibility in this section to repurpose and make fields required based on your needs.
• While all the date fields can be relabeled, the Commencement and Expiration date fields hold additional functionality within the financial tab, including the accounting module.   This should be considered if you choose to relabel them. For example, your lease commencement will be the start date for your lease accounting calculation by default.
• • • • Lastly on the General tab, we see Area. Please note that this section does not appear for Equipment leases or other assets that do not have an area-component within the lease.

• The Measurement Unit and Land Area Unit fields are configurable as well, allowing you to list units that are relevant to your portfolio. 
• This section can hold important area information such as Rentable, Usable, and building area. 
• The Rentable Area field impacts the Allocations feature and rolls up into a price per rentable area calculation on the financial entries page. 
• You have the ability to add additional open text fields in this section should you need them. 

• •  Description/Layout of the tab – The Contacts tab allows you to see all contacts related to your lease, other than Payees. In this section, the user can input and track key lease parties such as the Landlord, Tenant and Payor. It also allows you to track Associated Contacts, which can be other important contacts such as brokers, internal managers or notice parties.
  • Within the Associated Contacts section, you have the ability to assign Contact Roles to individuals or entities, so you can easily classify the kind of contact they are.
    • The types of contact roles can be configured, so you can only include the types of contacts you want to track in Visual Lease. 

 

• Description of the tab – This is the tab where you will be storing all of your key financial data and tracking your expenses and income for each lease. 
• Layout of the tab – This tab enables you to access a lot of different functionality, accessible through the various subtabs you see here. The two subtabs we will be focusing on today are Payees and Entries. 
• • • • Description of the tab – The payees subtab enables you to track the payees or financial parties related to any lease expense or income entry for a particular record. 
        • We enable you to configure the type of Payee or financial party using the Payee Type dropdown. 
      • Description/layout of the tab – This tab enables you to enter one-time, monthly, quarterly, semi-annual or annual payables and receivables. These records are the source for lease accounting schedules and journal entry calculations and can flow to your accounting feeds and other reports. 
        • When adding or editing a record on this screen, users have the ability to select the financial category associated with the entry.  Financial categories are a fully configurable tree that gives you a place to identify the payable and receivable entries that are related to a lease or a project record, and may later tie to the General Ledger or Chart of Accounts used by your business. 
        • There are also an additional 5 text fields and one date field that can be utilized within this section. They are hidden by default and can be made visible by an administrator if you wish to use them. Example fields such as Invoice Number and Invoice Date can be captured on an entry level.

• Description of the tab – The Documents section provides the user with the ability to upload all pertinent lease documentation such as: leases, amendments, agreements, subleases, and letters. Users also have the option to note the document title, type, date, and add comments, which are all helpful from a reporting standpoint.
• Layout of the tab- Once uploaded, users can view the list of documents attached to a particular lease in the main section of the screen. 
• • • If you add a document, you will see that the Document Type is a dropdown. This is also configurable. Administrators have the ability to change this list to reflect the types of Documents you want to store within Visual Lease so you can easily classify your documents as you upload them. 

• Description of the tab – In the Clauses section of Visual Lease, the user can enter and edit key abstracted legal clauses (or other financial or operational fields) and reference where they are found within the documents they came from. These fields are the most configurable, as we allow you to add and remove an unlimited number of clauses and choose from a variety of different field types. 
• Layout of the tab – Users have the ability to put clauses into different groups to enable you to better organize these fields into sections of the screen. Each group can be expanded and collapsed.
• • • The Clause Types Administrators have the ability to create are:
      • Text
      • Date
      • Number
      • List (multi-select)
      • Responsibility
      • Single-select list
      • And Option List.

 

• Description of the tab – The Notes section allows you to track any notes related to the lease. It can help you provide additional background or working notes that help all of your users better understand what is going on with the lease in question. 

• When adding or editing a note, the Note Categories dropdown can be configured to capture the specific categories you require.  This way, your notes are organized and tracked in an appropriate fashion to assist with reporting.

 

CONCLUSION:

• That concludes our basic overview of the configurable fields within the platform. I hope you now have an idea of the various options you have to configuring fields throughout your platform so it can look and feel more familiar and appropriate for your business. As a reminder, any configurations that are needed can be completed by any Administrator user.
• Thank you for attending this course – any questions, suggestions or feedback can be sent to training@visuallease.com. 

Transcription:

Welcome to Training with Visual Lease.  This course is designed to explore the process of setting up and maintaining  users so they can access and interact with the platform.

By the end of this course, you will know

• how to add or modify Visual Lease users
• understand different permissions that impact what a user can do in the platform
• understand how to restrict the leases a user can access
• review tools, tips and tricks to manage your users over time

Keep in mind, only your platform Administrator can actually make changes to your platform users. If you want to make any changes to your or another’s user access, feel free to reach out to your Administrator.

User maintenance is a key administrative function that controls not only who has access to the platform, but what they will have access to do within the platform.

To access the User Table, navigate to the Administrator module within the Tools menu in the top right of the screen.

When entering the Administrator Module, you land on the Administrator home page.  The logo in the top left corner brings you back to this page from anywhere within the Administrator tool.

The Administrator home page is organized into different sections based on the areas of the platform they correspond with.

The various Administrator functions can be accessed by clicking directly on the link here…

…or through the use of the menus here at the top.

Our main focus will be on Manage Users under the Users section.

When you land on the Users page, you’ll see a table that displays user information organized into columns.  These columns include User ID, User Group, First and Last Name, and more user details.

In the top right of the table, you can change the number of rows to display – the default is 20 records, but you can choose a larger number if you’d prefer to see more users at a time.

At the bottom right of the table, you will be able to click through the pages of users you may have.

Underneath that, you will see a link called Export Grid. Here you can easily export the user table by clicking Export Grid – this will allow you to download and review the data in an Excel sheet.

Beneath the table on the left side of the screen, you’ll find buttons to Add, Edit and Delete Users, as well as several additional options we’ll take a look at momentarily.

Now that you are oriented within the layout of the screen, let’s take a look at how to add a new user and talk about the different capabilities users may have.

Within the window, you’ll notice a number of fields intended to capture various user details.

Certain fields are required, meaning in order to save the record, you’ll need to populate AT LEAST those fields – these are indicated by a red line.

Each user will have a unique identifier called the User ID, which is found here. You can assign any user id, as long as it is unique and has at least 5 characters. You may want to set up your user ids to have a consistent format so they are easy to identify. One common layout is the first initial + last name.

Remember that you can only accept alphanumeric characters– this field does not accept special characters.

Overall, please be mindful of how you set this up because once the User ID is established, it cannot be changed.

The next few fields make it easy for you to contact the user should you need to for any reason.

First Name should capture the employee’s full first name.

Similarly, Last Name should capture the user’s full last name. The user’s full first and last name will display at the top of Visual Lease when you are logged in.

You can also add the user’s middle initial if you’d like to store that as well, though it’s not required.

Next is Department – here you’ll enter the user’s department and/or title for easy reference.

Below that, you’ll enter the phone number and cell numbers into the respective fields.

Moving over to the top right, you can assign the user to a User Group, which controls their permissions level within the platform. Many of these user groups bundle together different types of capabilities—like whether you can edit certain areas of the lease record like financials. Or whether you can access the accounting feed, which provides an export of transaction, journal entry and other accounting details from Visual Lease to be imported into your accounting system. These groups may also restrict your ability to save custom ad hoc reports.

It is important to choose the User Group carefully as this can heavily impact the user’s use of the platform.

Let’s take a look at the user group definitions.

The first four user groups listed here are the most frequently used.  Let’s review their permissions:

• Administrator– this user group has the most capabilities, as they are responsible for maintaining your platform from an administrative perspective.  They can access the Administrator module, where they will manage the setup and configuration of your platform. In addition, these users will also have full lease edit rights, including the ability to delete leases.  Administrators can also generate Accounting Feeds. We recommend limiting the number of Administrators to keep tight controls over your platform setup.
• Power User – this user group has extensive capabilities like an Administrator, but does not have access to the Administrator module. This user will be able to edit all areas of a lease, delete leases, manage Projects and generate Accounting Feeds.
• Read All/Edit All– this user group is very commonly used, as it enables users to view and edit all sections of a lease, as well as save Ad Hoc reports.
• Read All/Edit None – this user group provides read-only access to leases so the user can view all areas of a lease, but is prohibited by making changes to it.  They can also save private Ad Hoc reports. This is useful for users around your business that want to easily refer to details of your lease portfolio.

Here are some of the less common User Groups available in the platform:

• Read All/Edit Finance– users in this group can view all aspects of a lease on a read-only basis but can only edit fields within the Financials tab.
• Read All/Edit Lease– users with this access can see all lease tabs, but can only edit non-financial tabs on a lease record.
• Read All/Edit Lease/No Create– users with this access can also see all lease tabs and can only edit non-financial tabs, but they also are restricted from creating lease records and saving Ad Hoc reports.
• Read Lease/Edit None– this allows users to only view non-financial fields within a lease. The Financials Tab will be hidden entirely.  This group can also save Ad Hoc reports.
• Read All/Edit None/No Notes– this restricts a user’s access so they are able to read all tabs on a lease except the Notes tab.  This user group could be used when you want to give platform access to third parties but do not want them to see internal notes regarding the lease.
• Read Lease/Edit Notes– users can view all non-financial aspects of a lease, but cannot edit anything other than the Notes tab.
• Abstractor– this user group is often used when outsourcing your lease abstracting, or data entry work, to a third party. You can set up your service provider with these rights, which gives them access to only edit Pending leases records. They can only view Active, Expired or Archived leases and do not have the ability to create new leases or delete existing ones.
• Execute A/P Feed– this enables users to generate Accounting Feeds, while providing read-only access to other areas of the platform.  These users cannot save Ad Hoc reports.
• Project Manager– this is ideal for project managers who primarily need to manage lease projects.  It provides expanded access and capabilities throughout the Visual Lease project module, as well as read-only access to lease records.
• Read All/Edit Project– users in this group can view all areas of a lease on a read-only basis and can edit existing Project records.
• Read All/Edit Payments– this user group restricts the ability to edit financial entries, while giving the ability to enter payments on the Payments module. This group can also edit non-financial areas of lease records.

Should you wish to reference these user groups and their permissions in the future, they are available in an article in the Community as well as within the User Manual.

Now, let’s revisit our user record and move on to email address.  This field is a key field as it provides a means for Visual Lease to send important communications to our users and is used to receive automated lease alerts down the road.

Next is Status.  There are 3 statuses to choose from:

1. Active– this is the default status assigned to new users and grants them access to the platform
2. Inactive– any user who has been marked inactive will not be able to access VL.  Also, if a user has not logged into VL for 365 days, they will automatically marked as inactive. Don’t worry, you can reactivate a user at any point so they can resume platform access.
3. Terminated– this is used to differentiate between inactive users and those that are terminated.  Similarly, the user will not be able to access Visual Lease once marked as terminated.

If an employee is terminated, you can track their termination date for record-keeping purposes.

You can also enter a future date into this field, so that at that point the user’s status will be automatically updated to Terminated and their access will be revoked.

Below that is Employment Commencement – this can be populated should you wish to reference this information in the future.

Now, let’s cover a few settings that are more granular. The Allow Import setting allows you to enable or disable this user’s ability to mass-import information into your platform.  If you want the user to have this access, set it to Yes. Please note that if the user has a user group that cannot make platform edits generally, this setting will be disabled. Also, this does not enable a user to import lease financial entries.

To do that, you need to select import financial data. If you do not see this, reach out to Visual Lease support so they can enable this setting for you.

To the right, you can control whether a user has access to the Projects Module.  If the user should have access, set this to Yes.

At the bottom is where you will set the user’s password.

First, you’ll see a description of the password complexity requirements, such as minimum length or special character requirements.  These complexity settings can be changed by Administrators within System Settings, which is in another section of the Administrator module.

Then you’ll enter and confirm the password in the two boxes at the bottom.

Once you set the initial password for the user, we recommend advising the user to update their password to something more secure once they login through their User Settings.

Once you have populated the required fields, as well as any additional details you wish to store, click Save to create the user profile.  This will bring you back to the main user table, where you should see the user in the grid.  By default, the grid is organized alphabetically by first name, so don’t worry if you cannot find the user you just added on the first page!

If you need to edit an existing user, simply select their user information in the table and click Edit User at the bottom.

Most of fields we reviewed when adding the user are visible when in edit mode, with two exceptions:

1. The User ID field is greyed out, as it is not editable after the profile has been saved.
2. The password section does not display at the bottom.

So again, you’ll make the changes you need, such as updating the user Group Access or phone number, then make sure you save your changes.

The next option we’ll review is deleting users. You should only delete a user if you made a mistake when adding them to the platform.  For example, if you misspelled their UserID, feel free to delete them and re-enter it correctly.

Once a user is active, they may create and save filters, ad hoc reports or perform various actions throughout the platform. If the user is deleted, their saved Lease List filters and saved ad hoc reports will be deleted with them. This is why we always recommending making users inactive when they should no longer have access to your platform.

Heading back to the user table, the next button at the bottom is Change Password.

If you need to reset a user’s password for them, select their name then click Change Password, then have them update this via User Settings once they are logged in.

This is helpful if you are also the Administrator on another platform, and you want to copy that user and their permissions from one platform to another. For example, let’s say your company uses multiple databases – one for real estate and one for equipment – if you are the Administrator of both, you can copy a user from one to another without having to re-create the entire profile from scratch.

The last button along the bottom is Lease Security.

Lease security is important because this allows you to restrict the user so they can only access a subset of leases from your portfolio when they login.

For example, if you have a user from a particular country like Australia and you only want them to see and access leases in Australia, you can set this up here.

This works by connecting a saved list of leases to the user profile. You can pick from a saved filter of leases within this dropdown in the center of the screen, or click the “View Saved Searches” link to see more details about each saved filter before you select it.

If you do not already have a saved filter, create one by clicking on Create New Search.

This opens Lease List, which allows you to create a saved filter that groups together your leases. On the left, you can see a sidebar where you can choose to build a filter based on shared lease criteria, such as asset class or geographical location, or add individual leases to a fixed list. The top-center of the screen summarizes the selected filter criteria, and the filter results table displays the leases in your filter.

I am going to update the criteria to include expired and archived leases, and under the Location section I am going to click on the Country tree and select Australia.

Once you finish selecting your criteria, click Save this Filter.  You’ll want to ensure you save it as an Administrator Only filter, as these are the only filters that can be used for Lease Security.

Remember, if you saved the filter based on the criteria you selected, you are actually saving the criteria and not the list of leases. That means that the results of these filters will update as your portfolio changes, allowing your users to always access a dynamic list of leases that meet that criteria as they are added, edited or removed from your portfolio.

So now, when you return to your user table, refresh your screen to see the latest filters and apply to a specific user, so that user will only see Australia leases.  As you can see, this is an effective and flexible way to limit what leases are accessible to your users in your platform.

Now that I covered the User table and functionality in detail, I wanted to share some helpful tools that can help you better manage them.

If you click on Tools > Import Users, you will be able to access a tool that allows you to bulk add or update users.

You have two options on this page – if you’d like to use the template to add multiple users at once, you would download a blank template which you can find closer to the center of the screen.

If instead you are looking to update existing users in bulk, then select the option on the left to have it prepopulated with current user information.

I’ll download a blank template for demonstration purposes.

The template is in line with our other imports in that the first tab is where you’ll populate your data. You’ll notice the columns are color-coded. The Blue columns indicate fields that are required for the import, while the gray ones are not required for the import.

Along the bottom you have the reference tabs, which help you see the possible options for certain columns.

For example, in the import template you must make sure that you refer to the User Group in a specific way for it to upload smoothly. We of course do not expect you to memorize all of the available user groups.  Instead, we provide you with the available User Group options in the User Group tab so you can easily copy and paste the desired value to the applicable column on the main tab.

Once you populate the main tab and are ready to create the users, simply save the file, jump back into the platform and upload the file so it can be processed by VL.

As an Administrator, you also have access to the User Login Report, which is a tool that allows you to monitor when your users accessed your platform. If you navigate back to the Visual Lease platform and select Tools > only Administrators will see the User Login Report.

The screen has a large table in the center with user login information. If you want to filter the table for a certain date range and user, adjust the date range on the top-right of the screen and select the User’s name from the User Name dropdown. The links on the bottom right allow you to export your table to Excel or a PDF.

That concludes our User Access course –

• we reviewed how to add, edit and maintain Visual Lease users
• we took a look at the various settings that impact their ability to access the platform or specific leases in your lease portfolio
• We also reviewed tools like the Import User template and User Login report to help better manage your users

Thank you for attending this course.  Any questions, suggestions or feedback can be sent to training@visuallease.com.

Transcription:

Welcome to General Ledger & Chart of Accounts Administrator training with VLU.

By the end of this course, VL platform Administrators should be able to:

• Explain the relationship between the VL platform General Ledger and Chart of Accounts and your internal ERP system.
• Recall the steps to add, modify, or delete a General Ledger from the platform.
• Recall the steps, and best practices, for mapping your financial categories to the appropriate GL Account numbers.

Please take a moment to review the course agenda. If you are looking for a specific topic, feel free to jump to the corresponding timestamp.

In this video, we will introduce the General Ledger and Chart of Accounts as they relate to the Visual Lease platform.

For those who may not be familiar with the accounting side of lease management, the General Ledger is the primary accounting record of a business or organization.

General Ledger Accounts – also known as GL’s, Cost Elements, or Commitment Items depending on your Accounting System or ERP – are account numbers used to categorize distinct types of financial transactions.

The GL acts as a “top-level” grouping that will correspond to a chart of accounts. A general ledger is then assigned to each organization to easily track and allocate financial transactions to the correct ERP system.

The Visual Lease platform requires a minimum of one general ledger; however, we can support multiple ledgers for clients who have multiple accounting systems.

A chart of accounts, or COA, is a complete listing of every account within the General Ledger. Your VL chart of accounts can map each of your configured financial categories to the corresponding GL account number.

Typically, each digit within the account number corresponds to a particular transaction type, category, and sub-category in your General Ledger. For example: all account numbers starting with 5 may be mapped to expenses, while those that start with 6 map to income. Each digit that follows will map to smaller, more detailed categories within. Alternatively, you may be using each block of digits within the account number to separately identify a cost center, suborganization, or department within your organization.

Regardless of how your account numbers are configured, the VL platform allows you to customize a COA for each General Ledger you have. This enables you to map your financial categories to any number of GL Accounts based on your allocations or organizations.

Remember – You will need 1 General Ledger and 1 Chart of Accounts for each ERP system within your company.

This configuration makes the process of creating the tie between Visual Lease and your ERP systems easier.

Let’s review the steps to create a new General Ledger and assign it to the associated organization(s).

We’ll begin on the Administrator landing page.

Remember, you must have Administrator access to configure the General Ledger.

Select General Ledgers from the Financial and Accounting section.

From here, you will see the General Ledger table. This table displays the name, abbreviation, code, and description of the default GL that is available in the platform.

As a best practice, we recommend modifying this default GL to meet your needs before creating any addition GL’s.

To modify it, just click on the GL to highlight it and select the Edit General Ledger button found here.

The Edit General Ledger dialogue box will open.

Replace the GL placeholder name with something meaningful to you. This may be the name of the ERP provider, or some other identifiable name.

The abbreviation field is not required but recommended as an additional method of identification.

The GL code is a required field; however, it is used on the back end of the platform and is not typically seen in any reports. Generally, we recommend using the same code and abbreviation, so that’s what I’ll enter here.

The name field has a 30 character limit while Abbr & Code both have 5 character limits. All fields support alphanumeric characters as well as symbols.

If you would like to include a description to provide more detail, such as the organization or organizations that should be assigned to this GL, feel free to do so here in the Description section.

When you’re done, simply click save to apply the changes.

To add more general ledgers, simply click the Add General Ledger button and repeat these steps as needed.

To delete a General Ledger, click on the GL and select the Delete General Ledger button.

It is important to note: Deleting a General Ledger will remove all associated mappings created in the Chart of Accounts for that GL. And the platform will restrict you from deleting a GL if it is assigned to an organization.

Once you have created all of the necessary GL’s, make sure that the proper GL is assigned to the proper organization.

To navigate to the organization settings, hover over Company Setup and select Organization from the Key System Setup section.

I find that the fastest and easiest way to view and edit all my organizations is by switching to Table Mode.

From here, I can quickly see which GL is assigned to each organization. To update the GL, simply select the organization and click the Edit Organization button. Choose the correct GL from the dropdown and click save. It is important to ensure that every parent and child organization in your configuration has an assigned GL to accurately track and aggregate your financial transactions.

Let’s review the process for mapping your financial entries to their corresponding general ledger accounts…

Once you have created your organization structure, configured your financial categories, and set up the General Ledgers you require – you are ready to map your Chart of Accounts.

Remember, the Chart of Accounts – or COA – houses your ERP’s GL Account numbers for each financial category.

From the Administrator landing page, select Chart of Accounts from the Financial and Accounting section.

At the top of the page is a General Ledger drop down. Each of the GL’s you create will be available in this dropdown list. There is a 1:1 GL to COA ratio – meaning each general ledger can have one chart of accounts associated with it.

In order to send the details of a particular financial category to your Accounting Feed, it must be added to the COA.

As a rule, a financial category can be mapped to one GL Account per General Ledger. As an example, for my Oracle GL, my Base Rent Expense for Real Estate is mapped to GL account 231100. This is the only GL account that can be assigned to this category on this GL.

However, you may map multiple financial categories within a GL to the same account. This enables you to track more granular financial categories in Visual Lease than your Accounting System was meant to accommodate.

For example: your Accounting System may code all types of Base Rent Expenses the same. If you want to track, analyze, and manage the various components of Base Rent Expenses – like parking, storage, cpi increases or other expenses – you can do this in the VL platform.

In this example, you can see that both Real Estate Base Rent expense and CPI Increase share the same GL Account. This means that I can track and report on these 2 expenses separately within VL and, when they are exported to my ERP, they will be combined and added to their shared GL account for total base rent expenses.

If I switch to my newly created SAP General Ledger, notice that the chart of accounts disappears. As a new and separate GL, this chart of accounts has not been mapped yet.

To begin mapping, select the Add GL Mapping Entry button.

A new dialogue box opens with a couple required fields and some additional optional ones.

First, choose the financial category to be mapped from the VL Financial Code dropdown. All of my base level and rollup financial categories are found in this dropdown list.

When I select the category to map, in this case, Base Rent Expense for Real Estate, the name, rollup code and rollup name will auto populate with the information set up in the financial category configuration.

Notice that these fields are locked down and cannot be edited here.

Of the remaining 4 fields, only one – the GL Account – is required. Enter the GL account number from your ERP that corresponds with the selected financial category.

Should you choose, you may enter the GL account name here.

The optional offset account and offset account name fields can be used to capture the other side of a category’s debit/credit relationship.

In this example, my base rent expense is a debit of the expense account I map it to. If I opt to include the offset account, I will then enter the number of the GL account that would be credited, often a cash account.

When you’re done, click save to complete the mapping.

Once a financial category is mapped, it will no longer display in the VL Financial Code dropdown list.

Repeat this process for every financial category. As a general rule, VL recommends that you map all categories in each GL you have, even if that category isn’t current being used. This protects and prepares your platform for the future and protects against accounting feed errors.

To edit or delete an existing mapped entry, simply click on the entry to highlight it and select either the edit or delete GL mapping entry button.

Make and save your changes or confirm the mapping deletion.

Remember: If the financial category is in use as a financial entry on a lease or project record, or a Journal Entry is in use on a lease accounting calculation – that category cannot be deleted

Once your financial categories have been correctly mapped to each of your general ledgers, you will be one step closer to creating the tie between Visual Lease and your ERP systems.

That concludes our course on configuring General Ledgers and the Chart of Accounts.

Remember…

• The Visual Lease platform requires at least one General Ledger to generate a GL file but is able to support multiple GL’s for organizations with more than one ERP system.
• You must map your chart of accounts for each GL in order to match your financial categories to your ERP using our Accounting Feeds.
• Each financial category can be mapped to only one GL Account per General Ledger – once mapped it will no longer appear in the VL Financial Code drop down.
• However, multiple financial categories can share the same GL Account number – as Visual Lease allows you to track smaller financial components than the typical ERP configuration.

Thank you for your time. Questions, suggestions, or feedback can be sent to support@visuallease.com

Transcription:

Welcome to Financial Categories training with VLU. This course is designed to assist Administrator Users with the initial set up and configuration of your platform’s financial categories.

By the end of the course, you should be able to:

• Identify the data points found within the Financial Categories section of the Administrator.
• Recall the steps to create a new financial category within the hierarchy.
• Define the standard financial category types and possible sub-types.
• And…Explain the relationship of each standard inclusion type that is included in your lease accounting calculations.

Please take a moment to review the course agenda. If you are looking for a specific topic, feel free to jump to the corresponding timestamp.

In this section, I will introduce you to the Financial Categories section of the Administrator and the key data points found within.

Visual Lease allows you to track financials related to real estate, equipment, and other assets.

Income and expense categories are used to create your lease financial entries and typically flow through to your AP & AR feeds, while Journal Entry categories are found in the lease accounting schedule as a result of your income and expense configurations.

The platform comes pre-configured with industry best practice financial categories for income, expenses, and journal entries.

During your implementation, you can specify which categories apply to your business, and remove, repurpose, or ignore those that do not.

Your financial category configuration will determine the treatment of your lease accounting calculations and impacts your GL feeds and Accounts Payable and Receivable exports.

We’ll begin on the Administrator landing page. Remember: configuration of financial categories requires Administrator access, please contact your VL platform administrator if you are unable to access the Administrator within the Tools dropdown.

Financial Categories is found under the Financial and Accounting section of the Administrator.

The first time you access this area, the categories listed here will be the best practice defaults that we provide to every client. For easy viewing, the Financial Categories default to a view call Tree Mode.

Tree Mode displays the financial categories in a hierarchal view with the highest level, or Top Level, rollup categories displayed.

To expand one level down, click on the caret icon directly next to that category. You can continue this until you reach the category or group you are looking for. Alternatively, you can use the “Expand Selected” and “Collapse Selected” options to expand and collapse any or all categories from top level to base level.

As you can see, the top-level categories of the tree structure are broad. As I move down each level, I see the category groups get more and more specific until I reach the base level categories of each roll up group.

Having well defined rollup categories enables you to view and report on the sum of the transactions within each group throughout the platform. The financial calendar is a good example of this functionality in action.

To move or rearrange a category in tree mode, simply click and drag the category to your desired location. Dragging in between 2 categories will move the category to that location, while dragging a category on top of another will move the category into a rollup group.

Click Switch to Table Mode to change the view from a hierarchal tree to a detailed table – exposing additional details of each category in columns.

By default, the table is sorted in ascending alphabetical order by the Category Name. Click on any column header to change the sorted view. The group that each individual category rolls up to is listed in the first column, labeled Rollup To.

Customize the number of records displayed per page using this dropdown and navigate between pages using the page numbers or Previous and Next buttons found here.

The Export Data or Export Grid option – depending on your current view – exports your financial categories to an excel spreadsheet in table format.

This topic covers the process of adding a new financial category to your existing hierarchy.

Let’s walk through a hypothetical scenario and set up a financial entry that supports it…

In my organization, we want to track security deposits for our real estate holdings. The deposit is considered part of our total base rent rollup, however – we don’t factor these payments into our liability for lease accounting purposes.

From Tree Mode, I can start by either clicking the Add Category button found here, or I can first locate the lowest roll-up category the new category should fall under – in this case Total Base Rent Expense Real Estate – and then select the Add Category button.

The Add new Financial Category dialogue box will open.

You’ll notice: by doing this additional step up front, the platform will automatically place the new financial category under the Total Base Rent Expense Real Estate roll up category.

If I made a mistake or change my mind about where this category should fall in the hierarchy, I can change the rollup category at any time using the dropdown list. Every single existing financial category can be found in this list since any category can become a roll up category once a financial entry is placed under it.

If my new financial category was a top level roll up category, I would simply select “None” from the roll up list.

The first step is to name the new category. These names are used throughout the platform. Visual Lease best practice recommendation is to name each category in such a way that you can identify its purpose and its roll up location.

Each category name must be unique across your platform and the field has a 30-character limit.

In this example, the security deposit relates to a real estate expense, so I will name it Security Deposit Expense RE.

Next, we need to enter a category code and abbreviation. These fields are typically not seen while working within the VL platform but are required behind-the-scenes.

Each field has a 10-character limit.

Since I don’t need these fields for a particular purpose, I will just abbreviate the financial category name for both. Keep in mind these values must also be unique across your platform and both fields have a 10-character limit.

Sort order indicates where in the current roll up category this new category will fall. By default, each new category is assigned the next sequential number in its roll up group, placing it at the bottom of the current list.

The category type drives how a financial category is treated within the platform. This dropdown list is hard coded. Let’s review what each mean and how they are typically used…

Let’s start with the most used payable and receivable types:

A category with the Normal type has no special coding or treatment for lease accounting calculations in the platform. Financial categories that use this type can be included in Lease Accounting calculations.

As the name suggests, the Base Rent type identifies a lease’s base rent expense or income and is used in Percent Rent module formulas. This type is also included in Lease Accounting calculations and straight-line rent calculations, however only ONE financial category can be configured with this type.

Most of your expense and income categories will be entered as Lease Only. These categories will only appear in lease records, not project records and this type can be included in calculations created in both the lease accounting and straight-line rent modules.

There are typically 3 category types that may be used to capture Percent Rent. The Percent Rent Module of a lease record enables you to create entries and payments of percentage rent in your retail real estate leases. . The platform can create automatic one-time entries in your lease record if the financial category is mapped to the Percent Rent type.

As a general rule:

Use Percent Rent Obligation to Cash to capture transactions where the retail percent rent payments are paid directly without accrual.

If your percent rent will accrue over time and be held back until a specific date, use the Percent Rent Accrual category type for these categories.

For categories that are used to signify that your percent rent accrual has been paid out, use the Percent Rent Accrual to Cash type.

The Deferred Rent category type pertains only to deferred rent calculated in the legacy Straight-Line Rent module. When Lease Payment type entries are averaged over the length of the lease term, it creates a delta between the averaged accrued obligation and the cash obligation. The Deferred Rent type is used for the category created to capture this delta.

The Project Only type is used in project records. Categories with this type will not display in your lease records and are not used in lease accounting or straight line rent calculations.

And finally, GL Entry type. This type is designated for Journal Entry categories, accounting schedule columns, and a couple other uses. For example, a journal entry type of category that corresponds to a journal entry seen in the platform can be pulled into your GL feed.

Let’s continue with our security deposit example category. Since we are configuring a payable category that is related to Base Rent Expense but NOT the Base Rent category itself, I will select Lease Only as my category type.

In the next section, labeled Lease Accounting Details, you will elect the Inclusion Type, or how the platform should treat the financial category you are configuring when running lease accounting calculations.

This section only displays when a payable or receivable category type that can be used in Lease Accounting is selected. This is usually limited to Normal, Base Rent and Lease Only types.

Under FASB 842, GASB 87 and IFRS 16, many payables and receivables have specific treatment requirements within lease accounting calculations. The Inclusion Type of each financial category allows you to set the default behavior for your categories, saving you time when generating lease accounting calculations within each lease record.

The 6 options seen here are hard coded within the platform.

Let’s take a moment to define each inclusion type and best practices:

Once again, let’s start with the most used options: Lease Payment, Variable, and Excluded.

All financial entries created with categories that have the Lease Payment inclusion type will be included in lease accounting calculations by default. These entries are also used to determine the NPV, or Net Present Value, of future payments.

This is often used for expense and income categories like Base Rent, Storage, Parking, and Fixed CAM & OP EX.

Categories with the Variable inclusion type will be included in the standard Disclosure Report under the Variable Lease Expenses line item. By default, they are ignored in Lease Accounting Schedules and Journal Entries. Percent Rent, Variable CAM & OP EX, and CPI Increase are commonly configured with the variable inclusion type.

Excluded categories – usually things like Insurance, utilities, and maintenance – are ignored in the lease accounting module all together. They are not factored into your lease liability or the NPV of the asset.

Less frequently used inclusion types include Initial Direct Costs, Lease Incentives, and End of Lease Obligation.

Initial Direct Costs, the cost incurred to enter a lease – like legal fees, – are included in your Straight-Line Rent calculations and increases the Right of Use Asset in a Lease Accounting calculation.

An entry created with an End of Lease Obligation inclusion type category will result in a Lease Payment during the last period of the Lease Accounting Calculation. These categories are typically used to document any cost incurred to return a leased property to its original condition at the end of the term.

We do not currently use the Lease Incentives inclusion type. Incentives that do not impact the total lease liability, such as tenant improvement allowance, are typically entered directly in Step 3 – Initial Unamortized Lease Incentives – of a lease accounting calculation. Other incentives, like Free Rent, that do impact your total liability are typically entered as negative lease payments.

A security deposit is typically returned after vacating the premises and most clients do not want this amount to factor into the assets ROU, so I am going to configure this category as Excluded.

Finally, we have a section labeled Automation Settings.

The check boxes to Include in SLR and Include one-time payment in SLR allow you to customize how the category is treated in a calculation within the Straight Line Rent, or SLR, Module.

Our best practice is to leave these boxes unchecked as the SLR Module is not often used under the latest lease accounting standards and the functionality is likely to be retired in the future.

You do not need to fill out GL Entry Target generally, unless instructed to do so to meet one-off configuration needs.

Forecast Target is also an optional configuration. When configured, this category can be used within the Forecasting feature in the Multiple Lease Update tool. Forecasting only applies to expense and possibly income category types, not journal entry types. The forecasting feature uses historical financial information from the assigned financial category to build budget or income projections for the category assigned from this dropdown. I am going to leave this blank for now.

Now that I have reviewed all the fields and selected my configurations, I’ll simply click save to create my expense category.

This video will walk you through the steps and best practices for configuring a Journal Entry financial category.

Just as with income & expense categories, the VL platform comes preconfigured with industry best practice Journal Entries.

Configuration of Journal Entry financial categories is necessary to leverage Visual Lease’s GL Feed, found in the Accounting Feed module.

These categories will permit you to fully utilize the Accounting Module for FASB, IASB and GASB calculation schedules.

From the financial categories landing page I see the top level roll up categories for all my preconfigured financial categories. As you can see, Journal Entries has its own rollup category here.

When I expand this rollup, I will see a list of all my current Journal Entry categories.

I notice that my platform is currently configured to capture the Starting Balance of the Right of Use Asset for Operating leases and Finance lease, as well as the ongoing ROU Asset for Operating leases.

In my organization, we also want to track and report the Ongoing ROU Asset for Finance leases – so this is the category I will be creating.

As a best practice, Visual Lease recommends that all Journal Entry categories be created under the existing Journal Entries rollup. I’ll click on Journal Entries to highlight it and select the

Add Category button.

The add new category dialogue box appears and I can see that the Rollup Category Name has already defaulted to Journal Entries.

Since this category is going to capture the Right of Use Asset for Finance Leases, I will name it ROU Asset – Finance.

Next, I’ll enter a category code and abbreviation. These fields are not typically seen within the VL platform but are required behind-the-scenes.

Each field has a 10-character limit.

Since I don’t need these fields for a particular purpose, I will just abbreviate the financial category name for both. Keep in mind these values must also be unique across your platform and both fields have a 10-character limit.

Sort order indicates where in the current roll up category this new category will fall. By default, each new category is assigned the next sequential number in its roll up group, placing it at the bottom of the current list.

Journal Entry Categories ALWAYS use the GL entry type. All other types found within this list are reserved for income and expense type categories.

When GL Entry is selected, the Lease Accounting Details section changes to display 4 new configuration options. Let’s go through each of these options in order…

The Sub Type you select maps the new category to a specific journal entry or lease accounting schedule type that is generated by your Lease Accounting calculations. These subtypes are hard coded in the platform.

While this list cannot technically be modified…

during your initial implementation you may provide custom “GL Account” names for your journal entries that will appear on your GL feed export alongside the VL standard Journal Entry sub type name. This additional customization enables your Visual Lease GL Export to match up to your ERP system more easily.

There are additional fields that help map the journal entry to a specific Lease Type, Accounting Standard, or Record Type – if needed.

By default, these additional options include all lease types, accounting standards and record types.

These additional options allow you to further customize your platform to track individual components of a specific sub type.

I have the ability to track the ROU Asset of each lease type separately – even though it all rolls into the same ROU Asset sub type –

OR I can map a category to different Journal Entry sub types based on the Accounting Standard it applies to.

In this example, the ROU Asset category I am creating is specific to finance leases – so I will select finance as the lease type.

Additional types include Operating, Capital, Short Term and Low Value.

The Accounting Standard drop down will display only the standards that are enabled within your platform. If a particular standard is needed but not visible here – check the System Settings of the Administrator, found under the Settings & Defaults section – to enable additional accounting standards.

I am going to have this category apply to all my accounting standards.

The Record type dropdown is also customized based on the record types configured for your platform. If you do not see the record type you are looking for, you may need to create it from the

Record Type option in the Key System Setup section.

These are my options based on the record type configuration of my platform. I have no need to break this category out by record type, so I will keep this set to “All”.

If, at any time, your portfolio expands to include new asset record types – or if you begin reporting under new or additional standards – you will need to review your financial configuration to ensure that your current categories and COA mapping will capture the change. If not, a new category may need to be created and mapped.

Once the sub type is selected, a new check box labeled “Include in Accounting Feed” appears under the Automation Settings.

This checkbox is typically enabled by default so that the category is included in your Accounting Feed.

If you do not want this category to ever flow through to your Feed, you can deselect it here.

You do not need to fill out GL Entry Target generally, unless instructed to do so to meet one-off configuration needs.

Forecast Target is also an optional configuration. When configured, this category can be used within the Forecasting feature in the Multiple Lease Update tool. Forecasting only applies to expense and possibly income category types, not journal entry types. The forecasting feature uses historical financial information from the assigned financial category to build budget or income projections for the category assigned from this dropdown. I am going to leave this blank for now.

Now that I have reviewed all the fields and selected my configurations, I’ll simply click save to create my Journal Entry category.

Let’s review the process for modifying or deleting a financial category in the Platform Administrator…

To edit a Financial Category, simply click on the category you’d like to update and click Edit Category – here.

Once inside the Edit Financial Category dialogue box, make the desired changes and click Save.

Keep in mind that any changes to a financial category’s configuration will be reflected in all leases and across all reports. We highly recommend viewing all areas of the system where that category appears before making any changes to prevent any negative downstream impacts. Additionally, once a category is in use in your platform, the category type can no longer be changed.

To delete a Financial Category, simply click on the existing category you’d like to delete and select Delete Category.

Please note that there are some platform restrictions in place to protect you from accidentally deleting a Financial Category in use. You will not be able to delete the category if it is being used to capture financial entries or is being mapped to accounting codes within Visual Lease’s Chart of Accounts. The platform will display a message identifying all related lease records and Chart of Accounts mappings you need to disassociate before allowing you to delete the category.

That concludes our course on Configuring Financial Categories for Administrator Users.

Remember…

• The financial categories section of the Administrator is home to all expense, income, and Journal Entry categories.
• Your platform comes preconfigured with customizable industry best practice category configuration.
• Category type determines how each category is treated within the platform.
• Inclusion type specifies the default behavior of a category in lease accounting calculations.
• Configuration impacts multiple aspects of the platform from lease accounting calculations, reporting, and feeds.

Thank you for your time. Questions, suggestions, or feedback can be sent to support@visuallease.com