- Lease accounting tools at a glance
- Ten lease accounting tools to consider
- Why leases now sit on the balance sheet
- Lease accounting or lease administration?
- Questions to ask a lease accounting vendor
- Signs your lease spreadsheet has had its day
- My plain advice on choosing lease accounting software
- Frequently asked questions
The best lease accounting software keeps every property and equipment lease on the balance sheet correctly and updates the numbers when leases change: companies with a handful of leases usually want a simple, focused tool, while large portfolios need lease administration and accounting together. Ten options follow in no particular order.
Lease accounting used to be a footnote. Now that most leases sit on the balance sheet, every office, warehouse, vehicle and piece of equipment you rent creates entries that change each month and every time a lease is renewed, extended or modified.
Spreadsheets cope with a few leases and then quietly break. The ten tools below are listed alphabetically and in no particular order, and every description comes from the vendor's own site, read this week. If you're deciding whether to keep this in-house at all, see my guide to choosing an outsourced accounting firm.
Lease accounting tools at a glance
In the free plan column, Yes means the tool's own site names a free plan, a free version or a free profile. Trial only means a time-limited trial. Not stated means the pages I read named neither, even where there's a button inviting you to try it or book a demo.
| Tool | Type | Good for | Free plan |
|---|---|---|---|
| Accruent Lx Contracts | Lease accounting and administration | Large real estate portfolios | Not stated |
| Crunchafi | Lease accounting and data extraction | Accounting firms handling client leases | Not stated |
| EZLease | Lease accounting software | Smaller lease portfolios | Not stated |
| FinQuery | Lease, software and contract management | Moving off spreadsheets | Not stated |
| LeaseAccelerator | Centralised lease management | Big equipment and property portfolios | Not stated |
| Nakisa | Lease accounting suite | SAP-centred finance teams | Not stated |
| Occupier | Lease management for tenants | Renters of offices and shops | Not stated |
| SOFT4Lessee | Lease accounting on Dynamics 365 | Microsoft Dynamics 365 Business Central users | Not stated |
| Trullion | Accounting AI with lease accounting | Auditable AI across lease and audit work | Not stated |
| Visual Lease | Accounting and compliance for leases | Companies with complex lease portfolios | Not stated |
Ten lease accounting tools to consider
Accruent Lx Contracts
Best for: Organisations with large property portfolios that want lease accounting and lease administration inside a wider workplace system.
Crunchafi
Best for: Accounting firms and finance teams that want lease accounting plus help pulling the data out of lease documents.
EZLease
Best for: Small and mid-sized companies with a modest number of leases that want compliant lease accounting kept simple.
FinQuery
Best for: Finance teams moving lease accounting off spreadsheets that want the platform that grew out of LeaseQuery.
LeaseAccelerator
Best for: Large enterprises with many property and equipment leases that want every one of them tracked and managed centrally.
Nakisa
Best for: Large companies, often running SAP, that want a dedicated lease accounting suite inside a wider finance product range.
Occupier
Best for: Companies that rent offices or stores and want lease administration and accounting built for the tenant side.
SOFT4Lessee
Best for: Businesses on Microsoft Dynamics 365 Business Central that want lease accounting inside the system they already use.
Trullion
Best for: Finance and audit teams that want lease accounting alongside auditable AI for other accounting workflows.
Visual Lease
Best for: Organisations with many leases that want lease accounting, management and compliance handled in one dedicated system.
Why leases now sit on the balance sheet
The IFRS Foundation says IFRS 16 is effective for annual reporting periods beginning on or after the first day of 2019, and introduces a single lessee accounting model that requires a lessee to recognise assets and liabilities for all leases with a term of more than 12 months.
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US companies follow a similar approach under ASC 842. Once leases are on the balance sheet, every renewal, rent change or early exit ripples through the numbers, and that's where spreadsheets start to fail audits.
Lease accounting or lease administration?
Lease accounting tools calculate the right-of-use asset, the lease liability and the monthly journal entries. Lease administration tools track dates, options, obligations and documents, so you don't miss a break clause or a renewal.
Many tools do both. Accounting-led teams often start with the calculations, while property and facilities teams care most about dates and documents. If you're not sure which camp you're in, look at what went wrong in your most recent audit cycle: a missed renewal points to administration, while a messy audit points to accounting. Start with whichever one caused the trouble, because that's where you'll get the quickest win.
Lease entries flow into the accounts, so see financial reporting software.
Questions to ask a lease accounting vendor
- Do you support IFRS 16, ASC 842 or both?
- How do you handle modifications, renewals and early exits?
- Can we import existing leases from documents or spreadsheets?
- Will journal entries flow into our accounting system?
- What audit trail do you keep for each change?
- Do you track key dates and break clauses too?
Signs your lease spreadsheet has had its day
- Every modification takes hours. The model has to be rebuilt.
- Auditors keep asking questions. Workings are hard to follow.
- Key dates get missed. Renewals and break clauses slip by.
- Only one person understands it. Holidays become a risk.
Do you make lease accounting software? Tool makers can ask to be considered for a featured place on this list.
My plain advice on choosing lease accounting software
Count your leases before you shop. A business with ten leases needs something very different from one with ten thousand, and buying the enterprise suite for a small portfolio just adds work. Don't forget the leases hiding in other contracts, too, such as dedicated equipment inside a service agreement, because they're the ones that surprise people at year end.
Then ask your auditors what they want to see, and pick a tool that produces it without manual adjustments. Leases come in many shapes; if you're comparing renting with owning, my look at lease-to-own options for startups may help.
Frequently asked questions
What is lease accounting software?
It's software that calculates and records lease assets, liabilities and monthly entries under standards such as IFRS 16 and ASC 842.
What is IFRS 16?
IFRS 16 is the international leasing standard. It requires lessees to recognise assets and liabilities for most leases longer than 12 months.
What is ASC 842?
ASC 842 is the US leasing standard, which also brings most leases onto the balance sheet.
Can I manage lease accounting in Excel?
With a few simple leases, possibly. As leases change and multiply, spreadsheets become hard to keep accurate and hard to audit.
What is a right-of-use asset?
It's the asset a lessee records for its right to use a leased item, such as an office or a vehicle, over the lease term.
Does lease accounting software cover equipment leases?
Most tools handle both property and equipment leases. Check how each one deals with large numbers of small equipment leases.
