The Mastering Lease Accounting live broadcast, hosted by The CFO in partnership with MRI Software, brought together industry experts Gavin Maze and Richard Olney to unpack the forthcoming changes to FRS 102 and what they mean for finance teams.
In the recent broadcast on the forthcoming FRS 102 lease amendments, panellists Gavin Maze and Richard Olney argued that manual spreadsheets have reached their limit.
Lease counts are rising, disclosures are more detailed, and auditors expect a traceable link between every journal line and its source contract.
Starting with periods that begin on January 1, 2026, finance teams must present right-of-use assets and liabilities with the same precision already required under IFRS 16.
The speakers showed that purpose-built software, especially platforms that apply artificial intelligence (AI) to contract data, can relieve pressure, raise accuracy, and keep reporting timetables intact.
Workbooks cope when a business has a handful of leases, but problems multiply as portfolios grow—and one missed cell reference can distort an entire depreciation schedule, yet the error may stay hidden until an auditor compares note totals with underlying ledgers.
Version control is equally troublesome: several users updating the same file must rely on informal naming conventions, and reconciling changes often takes longer than producing the numbers in the first place.
Spreadsheets also lack a built-in audit trail; tracing a lease liability back to its signed agreement demands separate support schedules, prolonging both internal reviews and external fieldwork.
For these reasons, the panelists urged organizations to shift to purpose-built lease accounting software, which imports large data sets in a single pass, enforces user-level controls, links every journal line to the source contract, and maintains a permanent audit trail—virtually eliminating the errors and reconciliation headaches inherent in manual files.
The broadcast demonstrated how modern lease systems use optical character recognition to read PDFs and identify commencement dates, rent tables, escalation clauses, and break options without manual typing.
Machine learning checks then compare captured fields with policy rules, flagging missing discount rates, duplicate contract IDs, or improbable rent steps before any data posts to the ledger.
Organizations that adopted similar tools for IFRS 16 reported extraction tasks shrinking from weeks to days and data-entry effort falling by roughly eighty percent.
Once records are loaded, the software calculates present values for assets and liabilities, creates double-entry journals, and feeds them straight into the enterprise resource planning (ERP) platform, ensuring the same logic applies across all entities.
Built-in alerts warn users of renewal dates, index-linked rent changes, and expiries well ahead of month-end, giving staff time to act.
Centralizing leases in one database brings benefits beyond meeting the standard. Dashboards group commitments by region, maturity profile, and asset type, letting finance teams forecast cash flows and gauge covenant headroom with greater confidence.
Property managers can compare occupancy costs across sites, helping them negotiate more favorable terms or flag underperforming locations.
Because each journal line links back to its source clause, auditors can follow balances from the financial statements to the underlying PDF without requesting extra workbooks.
The speakers noted that providing auditors with read-only system access shortens fieldwork and cuts follow-up queries, freeing up internal staff for value-adding tasks.
The panel stressed that technology is only part of the story and that successful projects also secure resources and engage stakeholders early.
Procurement and operations teams often hold contracts long before finance sees them, so capturing a complete lease population requires coordinated outreach.
When selecting software, running a short pilot on representative leases helps confirm extraction accuracy, multi-currency handling, and remeasurement logic.
Setting measurable targets, such as hours removed from data entry or a drop in audit adjustments, and reviewing them after go-live keeps both the supplier and client focused on outcomes.
Budgeting for temporary analysts, license fees, and ERP interfaces prevents last-minute shortcuts that could undermine data quality.
With fewer than two reporting cycles remaining, relying on spreadsheets places compliance at risk.
AI-enabled lease accounting software has proven to remove manual bottlenecks, raise data integrity, and provide real-time insight for both statutory reporting and strategic planning.
Early adoption, supported by adequate resources and clear ownership, will spare finance teams the year-end scramble and establish a solid foundation for reliable lease information long after the first FRS 102 submission.
Watch the full broadcast here.