Are We Done Yet? The State of Lease Accounting Challenges and Outcomes

It’s been a turbulent past few years for accounting professionals as they scrambled to implement one major accounting update after the next. One of the latest challenges, ASC 842, is the most significant change to lease accounting in 40 years and impacts nearly every company that has leases.

Because compliance with ASC 842 often requires broad organizational programs and significant changes to lease management processes and systems, many companies have struggled with completing adoption of the new standard. Given that the compliance date for public companies has already passed, and the date for private companies to comply is approaching (albeit perhaps not as quickly as originally planned), we wanted to understand the challenges and benefits companies are seeing as they move through the adoption process.

Bloomberg Tax surveyed more than 242 professionals responsible for leased asset accounting across more than 200 companies in the late spring/early summer of 2019. The results shared here illustrate the challenges, benefits, and outcomes companies are experiencing in implementing ASC 842 and IFRS 16. For finance and accounting leaders, these results may help you validate your company’s experience and shed light on new aspects of adoption you may not have anticipated.