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Lease Entry

The main screen of EZLease contains the form to enter all the information on an individual lease needed to properly account for it under the relevant lease accounting standard (FAS 13/ASC 840, IAS 17, ASC 842, IFRS 16, or GASB 87). In the descriptions below, “required” means that you cannot leave the field blank; “optional” means that it is not necessary to fill that field in. (On the input screen, required fields are shown in bold.) A reference to another field is in capital letters. Fields are listed in tab order (the order they are activated if you press Tab to go from one to the next). Fields shown with a gray background cannot be changed.

When you first display a lease, it is “locked,” that is, you cannot make changes. To make changes to the lease, click on Unlock Lease, and the fields are opened for editing. When finished, click on Save Lease. If you wish to abandon the changes you have made, click on Cancel Changes.

Field

Definition/Format

Lease Number

Required. Enter up to 50 letters, numbers, or other characters to identify this lease. You select the lease using this number throughout EZLease; all individual lease reports are printed in alphanumeric order (numbers first, then letters) by lease number. The lease number must be unique; if you enter a number already used by another lease in this file, EZLease notifies you and asks for a new lease number.

Description

Optional, but highly recommended. Enter a description (up to 50 characters) of the leased asset. This is listed with the lease number on all lease detail reports and on lease selection popup lists.

Linked Lease

You can link two leases together so that you can see the rent combined. This is most commonly used for a lease which has land and building components, where the land is treated as operating and the building as finance. Since ASC 842 requires operating and finance leases to be reported separately, the two pieces must be separated. If you link this lease to its mate, you can view the combined rent for both by clicking on the Combined Rent button. You can optionally combine the rents for a Listing report on the Special report options window.

Revision

When a new lease is created, it is assigned revision number 0. If you make financial changes to the lease during the life of the lease (that is, a change that affects the financial calculations, as opposed to descriptive information), the changed information is stored in a new revision so that the initial activity on the lease is not recalculated, but the changes are applied only from that point forward. Each time financial changes are made, a new revision is created.

You can view prior revisions by changing the revision number. When you move to a new lease, the final revision is always displayed. Next to the selection box, EZLease displays the maximum revision number for the lease. When you make changes to a lease, the revision number automatically increments while you are in input mode; once you save the lease, if only descriptive information is changed or you choose Replace to store the changes in the current revision, the revision number is reversed back to what it was; otherwise, a new revision is stored.

Classification According To

Select the accounting standard which you want to use to see the classification of the lease. When set for the old standard, EZLease displays the Annual land rent portion for split capital/operating leases and Monthly/Daily level operating rent for operating leases. When set for the new standard, EZLease displays the Monthly/ Daily lease cost for operating leases.

Classification

Required. If the lease is system-classified (noted in the How Classified field on the Classification tab), this is filled in automatically when you save the lease. If the lease is user-classified, you must choose the desired classification. If the lease is currently user-classified and you wish to change to allowing the system to classify the lease, change the classification to To Be Classified; EZLease will determine the classification when you save the lease.

Valid classifications, depending on the accounting standard you are using, include:

§ FAS 13/IAS 17: Capital, Operating

§ ASC 842: Finance, Operating, Short Term

§ IFRS 16: Finance, Short Term, Low Value

§ GASB 87: Finance, Short Term

You may also choose in System Options to permit Low Value as an option for ASC 842 and GASB 87, intended to be used for items deemed immaterial.

If a lease begins after the implementation date of ASC 842/IFRS 16/GASB 87 (as specified in System Options/New Standard), the classification according to FAS 13/IAS 17 is shown as Not Applicable. If a lease ends before the transition date for applying ASC 842/IFRS 16/GASB 87, the classification for ASC 842/IFRS 16/GASB 87 is shown as Not Applicable.

If the classification for a lease that started under the old standard is shown for the new standard as “To be classified,” it indicates that no transition incremental borrowing rate (or possibly another data item needed has been entered for the lease.

If you have purchased the ARO module, you may also select ARO Only as a classification type for records that do not reflect actual leases, but are placeholders for AROs not connected to leases. See Chapter 6, Asset Retirement Obligations, for more information.

Discount Rate

(Previously called capital rate.) If the lease is operating (FAS 13/IAS 17), this field is blank. If a finance lease is system-classified, it is filled in automatically. If the lease is user-classified finance, you are required to enter the discount rate. Enter the rate as a percentage (10% is entered as 10, not as .10). You can enter up to 12 digits to the right of the decimal place. For FAS 13/IAS 17, this rate does not change if a lease is revised. For ASC 842/IFRS 16/GASB 87, it can change with a revision.

The most common reason to user-classify a lease is because a special situation requires overriding the normal classification process (for example, a lease is below your company's materiality threshold to be capitalized). It is generally best not to user-classify a lease finance even if you know it is finance, because you may not know the correct rate to use. Instead, let EZLease do the calculations based on the rent, incremental borrowing rate, fair value, and related information.

Begin Date

Required. Enter the starting date of the lease. This is normally the same as what in the FAS 13 text is called the inception of the lease but may be later if a commitment is signed before possession of the asset is actually taken. It need not be when rent is first paid.

Base End Date

Required. Enter the end date of the base term of the lease. Don’t include any optional renewal periods; enter them in the Options grid on the Term/Options tab.

Note that for a lease that is a whole number of months long, the end date should not be the same day of the month as the begin date. For example, a one-year lease that starts on January 1 should end on December 31, not January 1 of the next year.

Base Lease Term

Automatically calculated by EZLease. The number of months the base lease agreement covers.

If you prefer, you can have EZLease calculate the end date based on the length of the lease. To do this, enter the lease begin date, then double- click on the Term box (where the number is shown). An input box displays; enter the number of months the lease is active. The End Date is calculated.

Effective End

If a lease has no options, or none that are recognized as part of the lease term, the Effective End Date is the same as the Base End Date. Otherwise, this is the end date of the last recognized option (“recognized” meaning that it is considered part of the lease term because it has been exercised or exercise is reasonably certain; see Options input for more details).

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