Lease Accounting

Impact

The accounting standards – ASC 842 and IFRS 16 – are now in effect. This “new norm” affects the entire organization as initial compliance involves significant modifications in new systems, processes and controls. The transitions dates for Public (2019) and Private companies, non-profits, and government agencies (2021) provide an opportunity to reevaluate corporate leasing practices and the future financial impact of leases on the balance sheets.

Compliance

Implementing and sustaining new systems combined with new processes, roles and controls to ensure ongoing compliance proves challenging. Many companies report that they aren’t prepared to move past the initial compliance. Jackson Cross works with various software providers and client companies to build and maintain the required data and change management processes for the maintaining new Standards. The challenges are ongoing but we are helping to provide services and solutions as our clients adapt to the new standards. Learn more about how Jackson Cross helps clients maintain beyond compliance.

The first step in becoming compliant under the revised standards, is to ensure that all system data is accurate and that there is documentation available to verify the data. Studies suggest that employees spend an average of 18 minutes trying to locate a single document confirming lease information. For more than a decade, Jackson Cross has worked with companies to help start the process towards actionable data and controls. Understanding how the data is utilized in an organization is key to implementation and leveraging of critical information. Jackson Cross can assist in developing the organizational elements needed for compliance.

Beyond compliance, there is an opportunity to restructure the corporate portfolio and explore alternate occupancy strategies. Jackson Cross has developed a Corporate Asset Management Platform to utilize the principals and strategies of institutional investors to create significant and permanent cost reductions for corporate tenants. Relying on core competencies in the Jackson Cross Partners Commercial Real Estate Services platform, Jackson Cross is working with a number of large portfolios on lease restructures, purchase of key assets as well as leveraging tenant with excellent credit for favorable lease negotiations.