The Background
San Joaquin County, CA, like many government organizations, faced challenges managing lease and subscription-based agreements under GASB 87 and GASB 96. With agreements scattered across multiple departments, tracking compliance and ensuring accurate reporting was an overwhelming task.
Jian Ou-Yang, Assistant Auditor-Controller, took over lease management after joining the county in 2024. Having previously implemented DebtBook in a neighboring county, he immediately saw the benefits of a centralized system that simplified tracking, reporting, and compliance.
“My first exposure to DebtBook was at my previous position where I believe we were one of the first counties to go live with DebtBook back then. And so we actually introduced San Joaquin County to DebtBook,” said Jian.
The Challenge
Before DebtBook, San Joaquin County faced several major challenges when managing leases and subscription-based agreements:
- Decentralized Lease Tracking: With multiple departments responsible for various agreements, maintaining an accurate and complete lease inventory was difficult.
- Manual Lease Calculations: Lease calculations were done manually in Excel, a time-consuming and error-prone process.
- Audit Complexity: Providing documentation and ensuring accuracy during audits required extensive effort and created inefficiencies.
- Transitioning New Employees: Without a centralized system, onboarding new team members and ensuring continuity in lease management was a challenge.
“Managing leases manually takes a lot of time, and I couldn't even tell you how much time it would take year over year trying to review. And then, of course, if we had any modification, the act of trying to go in there and change those terms, and also just from an accuracy standpoint. If working manually, if I fudge one number, it affects the entire schedule, and so that would be a pain to try to hunt down that error in this material,” Jian shared.
The Solution
Recognizing the inefficiencies, San Joaquin County implemented DebtBook to streamline its lease and subscription management processes. The platform provided automation, improved reporting accuracy, and allowed for easier collaboration between departments.
San Joaquin County now benefits from an efficient, centralized lease management system. DebtBook has saved time, improved compliance, and provided a reliable system for tracking and managing lease agreements.
“Going back to my previous position, when we first implemented GASB 87, we thought ‘Should we do this manually?’ We had over 200 leases,” Jian shared. “And so I thought to myself, ‘Am I to manage 200 leases year after year and make sure that we input and calculate that correctly?’ That’s not an impossible task, but definitely a daunting task. So that’s when we started looking around. DebtBook was new at the time and we liked what we saw so we went from there.”
By the time Jian arrived at San Joaquin County, DebtBook had already been implemented for lease and subscription management. His role was to ensure all lease agreements were entered correctly, optimize processes, and fully leverage DebtBook’s automation to simplify year-end reporting and audits.
Centralizing Lease & Subscription Management
Before DebtBook, tracking leases and subscription agreements required constant coordination between departments. With DebtBook, the county was able to consolidate all agreements into one centralized platform.
“When I transitioned over to San Joaquin County, one of the things the previous controller did was make sure that the departments had the expectation of gathering leases and sending them over to us. So when I came in I already had a ton of leases. I just had to go in and make sure that my population was complete,” Jian explained.
“So I essentially went into DebtBook, printed out all the leases in DebtBook, and basically sent them out to all the departments and said ‘Do you have any more to add to this? Anything to delete?’ And so it was a lot more centralized.”
For subscription-based agreements under GASB 96, DebtBook provided similar efficiencies. The county’s IT department maintained most of these agreements, making them easier to centralize within DebtBook.
“I think that DebtBook has been great for all of us. And it's been useful and saves us a ton of time from an efficiency standpoint. And our auditors really appreciate not having to dig through a ton of agreements, everything's there, and they can select a sample and do their test, and they're done,” Jian explained. “I'm very thankful for having DebtBook, and we even just signed a new three year contract.”
Automating Lease Calculations & Modifications
Manually calculating lease schedules was a tedious process that took hours per lease. DebtBook automated these calculations, drastically reducing the time required for modifications and ensuring accuracy.
“When we were brand new to this process, just the pure calculation took my staff about 2 hours. That was our first lease. It was our first calculation, so we made sure we did everything correct and that was just for one lease. And so I thought to myself, ‘Even if one of these leases took us just half an hour to do it, that would have still been multiplied times 200,” Jian shared. “It was just taking days, maybe a week. That's why we decided that it's more cost effective and more efficient to go with DebtBook.”
DebtBook’s Lease Management platform provided the automation that reduced the risk of manual errors and allowed the team to complete modifications in minutes instead of hours.
“I actually made a modification not that long ago when I came on board and just making that modification with DebtBook to an existing lease literally took me 15 minutes. And so I went back and made sure all my terms were correct before running the journal entry. So it is really quick and really efficient.”
In addition to modifications, DebtBook also streamlined the reporting process for lease accounting. Previously, Jian’s team had to manually extract relevant financial data and adjust entries, a cumbersome process that was prone to errors.
“We're now able to run the report and know exactly that those are the entries that we need to post. In the past, they would lump everything together, and so it was hard because you had to do some manual calculation just to get your entries for the current year,” Jian explained.
“But now, with DebtBook, it's a lot easier. I can just run the report, and it shows all my current year activities. And I can just grab those and put them in my entry for the current year. And then we also have an accumulated amount. So you know it gives us everything that we need right now.”
Simplifying Audits & Improving Accuracy by Sharing Access
DebtBook significantly streamlined the county’s audit process by centralizing lease documentation and automating compliance reporting.
“I had everything sort of stored as a storage. Having all my documentation centralized made our audits a lot more simpler. So now I just assign them. I gave our auditors access, and they go in there and do an audit, and it makes my job a lot easier. They don't really bother me other than the calculation. They don't ask for agreements. And so it's made the audit side a lot simpler than if we just kept everything manual and not used DebtBook,” Jian shared.
The auditors quickly saw the benefits of DebtBook too.
“The auditors love DebtBook,” Jian said. “And you know, it makes their audit process a lot simpler and more efficient on their end as well.”
DebtBook also provided better transparency and organization, ensuring that year-end reporting was accurate and complete.
“Once you have all the new leases in DebtBook, you just click a couple of buttons and your reports are done. It's sort of magical. It's almost like, ‘Oh, wow! One click of the button and I have my audit notes. And then, another click of the button and I have my journal entries.’ From an accounting standpoint it made my life a lot easier. It's just so much simpler than having to do it manually.”
A Smarter More Efficient Future with DebtBook
San Joaquin County now benefits from an efficient, centralized lease and subscription management system. DebtBook has saved time, improved compliance, and provided a reliable system for tracking and managing lease and subscription agreements.
“I know some organizations, the smaller ones, only have a handful of subscriptions and leases that meet the requirement. And so I know some of these organizations have been able to do a manual subscription,” Jian said. “However, it's definitely worth the money to go with DebtBook. And over the last 4 or 5 years that I've used DebtBook, I've noticed a change.”
Jian encourages other organizations to consider DebtBook for lease and subscription management.
“I would tell anyone looking for software, that DebtBook is constantly trying to improve itself, and I think it listens to the customer. For instance, one thing we voiced was ‘Can we get a report in such a format?’ And you know they made the reporting format that we wanted.”
As San Joaquin County moves forward, DebtBook remains a critical tool for ensuring accurate financial reporting and compliance.
