Lease management software helps finance teams collect and track their lease obligations, organize and extract data from their lease documentation, generate schedules, manage and record lease payments, and share information with internal and external team members. Modern finance teams leverage lease management technology to operate more efficiently, collaborate more effectively, and produce higher quality and more accurate work.
As the technological revolution disrupts the finance industry and the GASB-87 deadline approaches, teams can no longer wait to adopt technology. Instead, the demand for a solution that can assist accounting teams with a central lease repository, digital data management, and automated financial reporting is propelling lease management software into the spotlight.
Below are 5 helpful features and functions you may not have known lease management software offers.
#1: View Contracts by Fund, Purpose, and Custom Frequencies
When it comes to viewing contracts and extracting the data from them, efficiency is key. But with manual data management processes, exercises like building custom pivot tables in Excel can consume a lot of unnecessary time. Additionally, manual entries increase the risk of inaccurate data.
DebtBook makes it simple to switch between different views of your portfolio for easy-to-produce reports. Seamlessly track, manipulate, and analyze your agreements across multiple categories, filters, and allocations with the “View By Type, Fund, Purpose” feature.
Practical Use: Consider a regularly occurring meeting during which you report on all projects relating to your Water and Sewer department and funding. With DebtBook, simply sort your profile by your Water/Sewer fund, view all payments and contracts related to that fund, select the right dates, download the export, and go to your meeting with confidence in having an accurate report.
#2: Grant Access to your Auditors, Accountants, Attorneys, and other External Stakeholders
When you and your team need to review contracts in a time-sensitive environment, the last thing you want to do is sort through stacks of paper contracts or photocopied documents buried on multiple hard drives. This pain point can be amplified with cross-functional contract management, where responsibilities are shared across various internal departments and external team members such as accountants, advisors, lawyers, consultants, and bankers.
With DebtBook, you have anywhere, anytime access to your financial data and can invite unlimited internal and external users to your workspace for free. DebtBook serves as a single source of truth -- a master data warehouse where all lease obligations and source documentation can be stored.
Practical Use: During audit season, invite any and all guests who review contracts, verify data, check source documentation, or provide financial analysis and recommendations. With DebtBook’s easy-to-use interface, your auditors, accountants, and advisors are empowered to locate, review, and download the data and source documentation they need without delaying your timeline to complete your audit. When audit season is over, choose to maintain their access, reduce their permission levels, or suspend their account – the power is in your hands.
#3: Prepare Accurate Journal Entries
If cash flow is the lifeblood of any accounting and finance organization then journal entries are the heartbeat. The accuracy, validity, and timeliness of these pieces of record keeping is critical. While managing journal entries in spreadsheets is very common, we all know spreadsheets are prone to errors and manual data management can cause burnout in even the most seasoned financial professionals.
DebtBook's powerful, but intuitive custom General Ledger builder provides the ability to export accurate, automated journal entries. No matter the complexity of your account structure or lease amortization schedule, you can export your journal entries directly to Excel in a clean, organized, and easy-to-comprehend format.
Practical Use: Imagine you are running behind on this month’s financial analysis and your boss asks you to deliver all journal entries for your entire lease portfolio by the end of the day. With DebtBook, you can quickly sort your lease portfolio by your preferred reporting date and download all corresponding journal entries within seconds. Or better yet – invite your manager to create their own DebtBook profile so they can view and download this information whenever they deem necessary!
#4: Automate Audit Season
For teams working in local governments and public higher education and healthcare, the end of your financial year can often produce feelings of audit dread and stress. Scrambling to meet deadlines, locate source documentation, and support your stated assumptions can feel overwhelming.
DebtBook provides modern tools and resources to help automate your audit season and reduce the stress often associated with the process. DebtBook helps you stay organized by providing a centralized repository for all your debt and lease schedules and contracts, enabling access to up-to-date payment projections, and surfacing the underlying documentation requested by auditors. With quick and convenient access to these resources and reports, preparing for and completing audit season has never been easier.
Practical Use: As audit season approaches, utilize DebtBook to anticipate and prepare for the requests your auditor will have. With DebtBook you can export footnotes and amortization schedules, locate and tag all source documentation related to your lease repository being audited, and showcase how your organization is complying with current and changing accounting standards.
#5: Comply with GASB-87
GASB-87 has been a very hot topic for accounting and finance teams serving local governments and public higher education and for good reason – complying with these new regulations is no small undertaking. It is estimated that organizations with 50-100 leases will need about 3-6 months to fully implement and comply with GASB-87.
By relying on a lease management software specialized in complying with GASB-87, organizations can drastically reduce the time, stress, and resources allocated to accomplish this initiative. DebtBook focuses on the 3 key areas required for GASB compliance:
- Upfront Lease Organization and Data Extraction
- Schedule Creation
- Ongoing Compliance
Practical Use: By adhering to DebtBook’s recommended implementation plan and timeline, your organization can digitize your entire lease repository; generate the amortization schedules, journal entries, and disclosures required; and showcase ongoing compliance methods – all in time for your 2022 audit.
How DebtBook Can Help
DebtBook is the industry’s only consolidated solution for debt and lease management. Our powerful, but easy-to-use platform centralizes your lease repository, provides access to accurate and automated financial reporting, and empowers your team to make data driven decisions.If you are interested in learning more about DebtBook and how your organization can leverage the features mentioned in this guide, don’t hesitate to schedule a personalized demo today!
Disclaimer: DebtBook does not provide professional services or advice. DebtBook has prepared these materials for general informational and educational purposes, which means we have not tailored the information to your specific circumstances. Please consult your professional advisors before taking action based on any information in these materials. Any use of this information is solely at your own risk.
