With Financial Accounting Standards Board (FASB) amending the lease accounting guidance, lessees across all industries need to account for operating leases on their balance sheet. This mandate has compelled organizations to reevaluate and revisit their lease management processes. While companies are increasingly focusing on abstracting key lease data and integrating it with lease accounting applications, managing high-volume, diverse and complex lease portfolios is a herculean task. Siloed processes, lack of relevant technology solutions and know-how to manage lease abstraction and the need for creating data migration strategies pose significant ongoing lease management challenges. The issue is further compounded by limited understanding of the regulation as well as the lease accounting platform.
Ensuring lease accounting system is current with complete, accurate, and up-to-date lease data is critical to eliminate errors in reporting and allay any risk of non-compliance. It demands training your resources and implementing new and stringent internal processes and systems to ensure accuracy and efficiency. Considering the overwhelming requirements and challenges, many companies are actively partnering with specialized service providers to leverage their data management capabilities and lease accounting expertise to ensure compliance.