Choosing lease accounting software comes down to eight criteria: compliance depth, audit trail quality, ERP integration, onboarding speed, expert support, asset type coverage, scalability, and total cost of ownership. Getting all eight right reduces audit risk, speeds up month-end close, and removes the manual workarounds that make lease compliance so painful in practice. Miss one, and you'll find out about it at the worst possible time.
Every vendor will tell you their software is comprehensive and easy to use. The only way to cut through that is to evaluate each criterion systematically, ask the right questions, and watch closely for the answers vendors avoid giving. This guide walks through each criterion in turn and ends with a scorecard table and a list of questions you can put directly to vendors during your evaluation.
The most basic requirement, and the one most commonly undersold during demos. Your software must handle the specific standards that apply to your organisation - not just one of them. Australian entities report under AASB 16. Those with global operations or international reporting obligations typically need IFRS 16. UK entities reporting under UK GAAP now also face a lease accounting model closely aligned to IFRS 16 under the updated FRS 102 (effective January 2026). US entities or those with US stakeholders will need FASB ASC 842 support.
But compliance depth isn't just about which standards are listed on a feature page. It's about what the software actually automates. A compliant platform should generate right-of-use (ROU) asset and lease liability calculations, interest and depreciation schedules, income statement, cash flow, and balance sheet outputs. It should handle lease modifications, partial terminations, and CPI-linked reassessments without manual intervention. If you have to recalculate anything in a spreadsheet after the software runs, the software hasn't done its job.
An audit trail is not a report you generate at year-end. It is a continuous, timestamped record of every change made to every lease in the system - who made the change, when, what it was, and what the financial impact was. Auditors will test this. The question is whether your system generates it automatically or whether your team has to reconstruct it from memory and email chains.
Ask vendors to show you specifically what the modification log looks like after a lease extension has been processed. It should show the effective date of the change, the old and new lease terms, the revised IBR if applicable, the recalculated amortisation schedule, and the resulting journal entries - all in a single traceable view. If they can't demonstrate this clearly, assume it doesn't exist in a form your auditors will accept. For a detailed breakdown of what auditors actually look for, see our IFRS 16 audit preparation checklist.
Lease accounting software that doesn't integrate with your ERP creates a new problem: you've automated the calculations but you're still manually posting journals. That's where errors creep in, reconciliations fail, and month-end close gets extended.
The integrations that matter most are with the systems your finance team already runs: SAP, Oracle, NetSuite, and Microsoft Dynamics 365 are the most common in the mid-market and enterprise space across Australia and New Zealand. Confirm whether the integration is native (maintained by the vendor) or relies on a third-party connector. Native integrations are updated when either system changes. Third-party connectors may break during system upgrades and leave your team manually bridging the gap. Also confirm the integration is bidirectional where relevant - journal data flowing out to your ERP, and general ledger account codes flowing in. For a deeper look at how purpose-built lease software compares with ERP lease modules, our post on lease accounting software vs. ERP modules covers the key trade-offs.
Implementation timelines vary enormously across vendors, and the gap between "signed contract" and "live in the system" has a real cost. Your team is still managing leases during that window - usually in spreadsheets - and every week of delay is a week of additional manual processing risk.
Ask vendors to distinguish between the time to load your data and the time to go live with full calculations and journals. These are different milestones. Look for standardised upload templates rather than bespoke data migration builds - standard templates mean your team can prepare data in a familiar format and the vendor can validate it quickly. Avoid vendors whose implementation process involves custom development work unless your situation genuinely demands it. Custom builds take longer, cost more, and create dependencies you'll still be managing years later.
One area that separates well-designed platforms from the rest is how they handle reconciliation between live data and the locked-down ledger. This is a common pain point during and after implementation: your system is running calculations in real time, but those figures need to tie precisely to the journals already posted in your ERP. Many SaaS vendors don't have a standardised approach to this - reconciliation becomes a manual exercise each month, and the gap between the reporting layer and the ledger becomes a recurring risk. Look for platforms that separate live reporting from the locked ledger by design, giving your team a defined reconciliation process and a control point rather than leaving it as an informal workaround. LOIS, for example, operates this separation as a core part of its standard functionality, so finance teams have both the reconciliation process and the control framework built in from day one.
There's a meaningful difference between software support and lease accounting expertise. Most vendors offer the former: a helpdesk that can tell you which button to press, troubleshoot login issues, and escalate technical bugs. Very few offer the latter: qualified accountants who understand IFRS 16 in practice and can advise on modification accounting, discount rate methodology, and lease identification decisions.
If your team has deep lease accounting experience in-house, software support may be sufficient. If you don't - and many finance teams don't, particularly those managing lease portfolios across multiple asset classes for the first time - expert support is what separates a platform you can rely on from one that leaves you second-guessing your own numbers. LOIS is built and supported by CA-qualified lease accounting specialists, which means the team advising you has practical experience applying the standards, not just operating the system.
When does a managed service make more sense? For organisations with smaller portfolios, teams without dedicated lease accounting expertise, or businesses that want to avoid the internal training overhead of running the process themselves, a fully managed service may be a better fit than self-managed software. Under this model, a specialist team handles data validation, calculations, journal preparation, and audit-ready reporting each month - your team reviews and approves the outputs, without carrying the processing burden. Our guide to what a lease accounting managed service includes explains how the model works and who it suits best.
Not all lease accounting software handles all asset types equally. Many platforms were built primarily for property leases and treat fleet and equipment as an afterthought - or don't support them at all. If your organisation leases vehicles, IT equipment, machinery, or other non-property assets in volume, this matters.
Fleet is particularly worth probing. Large fleet portfolios typically involve bulk data uploads from multiple providers in varying formats, frequent modifications (CPI adjustments, scope changes, early terminations), and the need to cross-check incoming data against your existing register for consistency. A platform that handles individual lease modifications manually is not built for fleet at volume. Ask vendors to show you specifically how they handle bulk fleet uploads and what validation occurs during that process. For more on what fleet lease management at scale requires, our post on fleet lease management for finance teams goes into detail.
The platform you choose today needs to handle your portfolio not just now, but in three to five years. That means coping with increases in lease volume, additional asset classes, new entities, and changes in reporting requirements - without requiring a second implementation project or a platform migration.
LOIS is designed to scale from portfolios of 30 leases to portfolios exceeding 10,000, across property, fleet, and equipment. The platform handles both the volume and the complexity that comes with it: multi-entity structures, cross-currency portfolios, and the reporting requirements of large organisations managing assets valued at over AUD 50 billion. Scalability isn't just a marketing claim to accept at face value - ask vendors for references from organisations materially larger than you are today, and ask those references specifically whether the platform performed as the portfolio grew.
Licence fees are the visible part of the cost. The less visible costs are what catch organisations out. Implementation fees, data migration costs, training, ongoing support tiers, per-lease or per-user fees that scale with your portfolio, and integration maintenance charges can together add up to multiples of the annual licence fee over a typical contract term.
Add to this the hidden cost of manual workarounds: the time your team spends processing modifications the software can't handle automatically, reconciling journals the integration doesn't produce cleanly, or building reports the platform doesn't generate. These costs don't appear on a vendor's pricing page, but they're real and they compound. A platform with a higher licence fee but complete automation and a clean ERP integration frequently delivers a lower total cost than a cheaper alternative that requires ongoing manual intervention to compensate for its gaps.
Use this table to score vendors systematically during your evaluation. Score each criterion 1-3 based on the vendor's responses and your own assessment.
| Criteria | Questions to ask | Red flags | Green flags |
|---|---|---|---|
| Compliance depth | Which standards do you support natively? Does the software automate income statement, cash flow, and balance sheet outputs - or just amortisation schedules? | Vendor lists a standard as "supported" but can't demonstrate specific calculations. Manual steps required after the software runs. | Live demo of modification accounting and disclosure generation. Named standards in the product - not just "compliant with IFRS." |
| Audit trail | Can you show us a modification log from a live client? Does the audit trail include who made each change, when, and the financial impact? | Audit trail is a manually generated report, not an automatic system log. No read-only auditor access. | Continuous modification log generated automatically. Read-only auditor login available. Modification history tied directly to journal entries. |
| ERP integration | Is the integration native or via a third-party connector? Is it bidirectional? Which specific versions of SAP, Oracle, NetSuite, or D365 are supported? | Integration relies on a middleware tool the vendor doesn't maintain. No confirmed version compatibility. | Native, vendor-maintained integration. Bidirectional data flow. References from clients using the same ERP you run. |
| Onboarding speed | What is the typical time from contract to go-live? How do you handle reconciliation between live reporting and the locked ledger during and after implementation? | Implementation requires custom development. No standardised reconciliation process between the reporting layer and the ledger. | Standardised upload templates. Defined reconciliation process built into standard functionality. Go-live in weeks, not months. |
| Expert support | Who handles support escalations - software engineers or qualified accountants? Can your team advise on modification accounting methodology? | Support team can only resolve technical issues. No accounting expertise available within the vendor team. | CA-qualified or equivalent accountants on the support team. Vendor can advise on IFRS 16 technical questions, not just system operation. |
| Asset type coverage | Does the platform handle property, fleet, and equipment natively? Show us how bulk fleet uploads and validations work. | Fleet and equipment treated as manual data entry. No bulk upload or cross-validation against existing register. | Automated bulk upload for fleet data. Validation against existing register for scope changes, terminations, and CPI adjustments. |
| Scalability | What is the largest portfolio you currently manage? Can you provide references from clients who have grown significantly on your platform? | Vendor can only reference small clients. Performance degrades with large modification volumes. | References from enterprise clients with 1,000+ leases. Multi-entity and cross-currency support confirmed. |
| Total cost of ownership | What are all fees beyond the annual licence - implementation, training, per-lease charges, integration maintenance? What manual steps remain after go-live? | Pricing is opaque. Vendor is unable to itemise post-go-live manual effort. Large implementation fee relative to licence cost. | Clear all-in pricing. Vendor can specify exactly which steps are automated and which require human input after go-live. |
Prioritise compliance depth (does it handle your specific standard - IFRS 16, AASB 16, FRS 102, or FASB ASC 842 - end to end?), audit trail quality (is every modification automatically logged?), ERP integration, expert support, asset type coverage across property and fleet, and a scalable pricing model. The scorecard above gives you a structured way to compare vendors across all eight criteria.
Platforms with standardised data templates and pre-configured workflows typically go live in weeks rather than months. Custom implementation builds can take three to six months. Always ask vendors to separate the time to load data from the time to go live with full calculations and automated journal output.
Yes, purpose-built lease accounting platforms typically offer integrations with major ERPs including SAP, Oracle, NetSuite, and Microsoft Dynamics 365. The critical distinction is whether the integration is native (maintained by the vendor) or relies on a third-party connector that may break during system changes.
Lease accounting software gives your team the tools to run the compliance process yourself. A managed service gives you the outputs: a specialist team validates your data, runs the calculations, prepares the journals, and delivers audit-ready reporting packs each month, with your team reviewing and approving rather than processing.
Once a portfolio exceeds 30 leases, the modification volume alone typically makes manual spreadsheet management unsustainable from a risk and time perspective. The hidden cost is not just the time spent processing; it's the audit risk of a modification history that exists only in spreadsheet cells and email inboxes rather than a traceable, timestamped system record.