The Project Manager is a key role in driving decisions, outcome and the implementation of the compliance transition. The Project Manager works strategically, tactically and functionally to plan and integrate new compliance standards across the company. A qualified project manager will manage and preempt change along the way and overcome potentially costly project pain points. The management of your transition will greatly impact the delivery of your balance sheet.

The main reasons projects fail:

• Unclear objectives and scope changes
• Resource strain from lack of planning and proper alignment
• Failure to plan
• Unrealistic deadlines
• Unclear dependencies
• Poor communication
• Disengagement of end users
• Lack of strategic support
• Insufficient team skills
• Poor cost and scheduling estimation

Bringing in third parties or consultants experienced in the process and change management can greatly reduce the resource strain of any change. Read more about other time savings ideas on our Lease Accounting site or give us a call at 913.752.9400.

For companies that are distributed in structure with separate finance/accounting functions in each business unit, there are several strategy options for the collection and processing of their leases.

One option is to remain handling the compliance efforts in a decentralized manner, by training each business unit and expecting each one to fully understand, adopt and standardize the correct financial reporting processes. In theory, remaining decentralized can be a good strategy. However, in most cases this turns into a time-consuming and resource-burning exercise due to the complexity of this new accounting standard coupled with the newness of the compliance process including the external auditors’ guidance. Expect to be continually communicating new rules, standards, software updates and process changes to this entire group of people impacted by lease accounting changes, vs a centralized group, throughout this process and moving forward. If a company chooses this approach, then leading practices would suggest treating this as a large ‘change management’ effort similar to implementing a new ERP for example. It is highly recommended that a strong process and communications plan be developed and implemented to help the field organizations with the compliance efforts.

Another option to centralize the collection and processing of the leases creates several benefits. First, the collective time and effort will be greatly decreased since a limited set of people will be reviewing the leases and applying consistent processes to the reviews and collection of appropriate data. Next, since a smaller group of people are involved in review and decisions, feedback from the external audit guidance process can be applied more quickly.

In all cases, it is best to examine the organizational impact as part of the planning process.

Read more about other time savings ideas on our Lease Accounting site or give us a call at 913.752.9400.

We have seen some clients try to take on the inventory and management process using MS Excel for their lease population. The finance and accounting team is usually heavily involved using their go-to tool of Excel. Yes, they are typically Excel power users, but they are creating this entire process from scratch, learning and designing standards on the go while experiencing the residual impact of resource consumption from seemingly small decisions.

One may ask the question ‘haven’t other across the US dealt with this already and taken the time to develop appropriate tools for the collection and management of leases?’ Is there an easier way?

There are many examples of tools that have been developed and are being used and already ‘battle tested’. Core Catalyst’s LeaseCapture^SM is a software tool to help teams, ours or yours, with the complex process of collecting and documenting leases and all the pieces of information that go with them. On average we’ve found each lease contains 10 documents! Proper tools and data management have suddenly become even more essential for appropriate lease treatments to be applied per the new FASB standards.

The LeaseCapture^SM tool was built to save companies significant time, resources and learning curve versus building something on their own in MS Excel or waiting for a new Lease Management software acquisition and implementation. Visit our LeaseCapture^SM page for more information.

Another option is the use of existing lease management tools in place at the company. Decisions need to be made for replacing or co-existing with the tools/applications already in place (Real Estate is the most common example). It is expected that modifications will be required to integrate the new standards into existing tools.

Read more about other time savings ideas on our Lease Accounting site or give us a call at 913.752.9400.

Change Management = the controlled identification and implementation of required changes to ensure successful transitions.

Change management techniques should be used when implementation change and the following situations exist: introducing new processes and procedures, distributed organization structure, many different business units/entities with autonomous authority, management responsibilities are spread throughout multiple organization groups (for example: real estate, procurement, finance and accounting, information technology, fleet management). Change management is a term typically used for implementing new, major applications like ERPs, CRMs, etc. because of the signification cross-functional integration impact.

FASB lease requirements, ‘just an accounting change’, right? Wrong! The reality is these changes are suddenly impacting many currently disconnected aspects of your company, including job roles, software systems and operational processes. The companies that take this on as a change management effort, identifying and planning along the way, are the companies that have the most successful transitions. Bringing in third parties or consultants experienced in the process and change management can greatly reduce the resource strain on any change.

Change management techniques are not one time in nature, rather, they are used throughout a complex program/project and serve as the ‘glue’ that keeps all efforts heading in the right direction.

Read more about other time savings ideas on our Lease Accounting site or give us a call at 913.752.9400.

Practical expedient decisions can affect the data capture part of the lease inventory process. Be sure to make these decisions early in the planning of the data collection efforts.

FASB added the choice of companies to use the practical expedients in order to simplify the collection and reporting process. We have found that leading practices point toward making this decision early in the lease collection and consolidation process in order to minimize rework.

The practical expedient option is intended to provide lessors with a way to not separate non-lease components from the associated lease components when certain criteria are met; requiring accounting for the combined component in accordance with the new revenue standards.

While this option may seem like a small time savings, when chosen early in the process it can greatly expedite the data capture process. An example of this would be in Real Estate leases.

In this example, assume each lease requires two hours to review and extract the correct information. Then this time would equal 2,000 man-hours per 1,000 leases when done on the front end of th elease collection process. If the practical expedient option is chosen during the inventory process, savings would be applied, but additional rework to revisit each lease would also be incurred (say 500 man-hours per 1,000 leases based on our experiences).

Read more about other time savings ideas on our Lease Accounting site or give us a call at 913.752.9400.

The new FASB standard can make the actual calculations of payments a complicated process and subject to various interpretations. Any inconsistencies in standards cause frustration, additional rework time in the data collection process, and affect future audits from your friendly external auditors.

Spending more time on the front end with defining the standards and approaches for the calculations will pay future dividends. This couple with frequent communications and training to those involved with lease management should reduce the risk.

Read more about other time savings ideas on our Lease Accounting site or give us a call at 913.752.9400.