ASC 842 Software: What It Needs to Do and How to Choose

If your company follows US GAAP and has leases on the books — office space, warehouses, vehicles, equipment — you're required to comply with ASC 842, the FASB's lease accounting standard. Spreadsheets can technically get you there, but for most organizations beyond a handful of leases, dedicated ASC 842 software becomes the difference between a smooth audit and a stressful one.

What ASC 842 actually requires

ASC 842 requires lessees to recognize a right-of-use (ROU) asset and a corresponding lease liability on the balance sheet for nearly all leases — a real shift from the prior standard, where operating leases stayed off-balance-sheet entirely. Every lease also has to be classified as either operating or finance, which determines how it's expensed, and every change to a lease (a renewal, an amendment, an early termination) has to be reflected through a remeasurement.

None of that is inherently complicated for a single lease. It becomes genuinely difficult at scale — a portfolio of 50, 200, or 2,000 leases, each with its own escalation clauses, renewal options, and modification history, all needing to stay accurate every single month.

What good ASC 842 software actually does

• Automates the amortization schedule and journal entries for every lease, recalculating automatically when terms change
• Classifies leases using ASC 842's five-criteria test, rather than relying on someone to apply the test manually and consistently across a growing portfolio
• Generates audit-ready disclosure reports — the footnote disclosures ASC 842 requires are more extensive than the old standard, and manually assembling them from a spreadsheet is a common source of audit friction
• Maintains an audit trail showing exactly what changed, when, and who approved it
• Integrates with your GL/ERP so journal entries post automatically instead of requiring manual re-entry

Questions worth asking before you buy

• Does the platform handle lease modifications and remeasurements automatically, or does a change require manually rebuilding the schedule?
• Can it generate the specific disclosure reports your auditor expects, or will you need to reformat the output yourself?
• Is pricing based on lease count, a flat subscription, or a custom quote — and does that model make sense as your portfolio grows?
• If any part of your portfolio is international, does it also support IFRS 16 in parallel, not just ASC 842?

ASC 842 software worth evaluating

Based on our review of 23 lease accounting and administration platforms, these are consistently well-regarded for ASC 842 compliance specifically:

• LeaseQuery (FinQuery) — built and staffed by 40+ in-house accountants, broad standards coverage beyond just ASC 842
• EZLease — over 15 years of implementations across private, government, and public organizations, with a same-day setup option for smaller portfolios
• iLeasePro — built exclusively for ASC 842, a leaner and more affordable option for small to mid-sized US-only businesses
• Crunchafi — built by CPAs and Big Four auditors, with guided step-by-step calculation wizards
• Cradle — transparent published pricing with no sales calls required, daily-level calculation granularity
• Visual Lease — 100+ pre-built disclosure templates and guided data-import wizards

You can compare all of these — and the rest of our 23 listed platforms — by pricing model, ERP integrations, and compliance standards on our Lease Accounting category page.

This article is for general informational purposes and isn't a substitute for advice from your auditor or accounting firm.