EZLease Enterprise Updates
UI Design Refresh
The EZLease dashboard, user management, and templates pages have been redesigned to align with insightsoftware design standards, creating a cohesive experience for customers as they navigate across any insightsoftware products they own.
Reporting- Improved Web Reporting
Availability: In Development (Lessee) | Beta Available (Lessor)
The users can now run reports from the Reports tab directly after logging in, without the need to open the Lease Management workspace. This makes it faster than ever to log in and access the reporting needs. The new web reporting has the following key features and limitations.
Current Limitations
Only lessor reports are available. Lessee reports must still be downloaded from the Lease Management workspace.
The system is optimized for large reports (>100,000 leases) and has a minimum report creation time of 1 minute, regardless of how many leases are in the report.
Reports will be returned as CSVs. Excel or PDF reports must still be downloaded from the Lease Management workspace.
Key Features
After running a report, it is stored and can be re-downloaded for up to 30 days from the Jobs History page.
Admin users can view reports generated by other users by clicking the Other users’ reports from the Jobs History page.
Reports can be easily re-run by clicking the re-run button next to a report on the Jobs History page.
Note: Each of these limitations will be addressed in future releases.
Reporting- Subtotal Reporting
Availability: In Development (Lessee) | Beta Available (Lessor)
EZLease now supports a new subtotal by group option in the journal entries, IS/BS Detail, IS/BS Compact, Disclosure table, and future minimum rent reports. This allows users to aggregate data by a group, such as entity, asset class, and user-defined field. This feature is particularly useful when a customer has multiple leases under a single master lease agreement and doesn't want to load all the lease-level journals into their ERP.
This is only available when running reports from the Web Reporting workspace. When selecting the report options, there is a Report detail level section where users can choose to return data at lease level, subtotal, and summary total levels.
Lease Management- Ability to Set Booking Date for Early Terminations
Availability: In Development (Lessee) | Beta Available (Lessor)
Previously, users could not perform retrospective early terminations. Now, there is an early termination booking date field directly underneath the early termination date option in EZLease.
Currently, EZLease allows users to early terminate leases and set an early termination date. EZLease creates the early termination entries as of the early termination date. However, accounting teams often don't learn about early terminations until after the fact, meaning there may be months of journals that should not have been booked. Previously, EZLease couldn't handle this scenario.
EZLease now lets you define an early termination booking date in addition to the early termination date. It automatically creates reversal entries as of the booking date for the period between the early termination date and the booking date.
Example
Let's say a lease early terminated on 1/1/2020, but the accounting team didn't find out until June and has already booked activity for January through May. The user would edit the lease and choose "early termination" as the termination reason, set an early termination date of 1/1/2020, and an early termination booking date of 6/1/2020.
EZLease will leave the journals for January through May as-is and book the termination on 6/1/2020 along with reversal entries for the activity between January and May.
Note: If you're in the UI, EZLease will automatically set the booking date to match the early termination date.
Lease Management- Ability to Set Custom Account Labels for Cash Accounts
Availability: Beta Available (Lessee and Lessor)
Users can now define custom account titles to be shown on reports for the "cash—finance rent" and "cash—operating rent" accounts from the Text tab in System Options.
This helps facilitate easier reconciliation for customers who want to use a single account for finance and operating rent. As a reminder, EZLease already lets users define custom account titles for executory costs, non-lease components, and variable payments.
Lease Management- Ability to Reverse Expired/ Terminated Leases
Availability: In Development (Lessee) | Beta Available (Lessor)
A reversal of a lease is when an organization decides a lease never should have been booked and wants to fully remove it. EZLease already supports this for active leases, and with this release adds reversal support for terminated leases.
How to Use
To fully reverse a terminated lease, edit a lease, go to Term/ Options, then check the box for "post-term reversal" and specify a date. EZLease will not allow you to specify a reversal date in a closed period.
Note: Reversals can be performed even if a lease was already early terminated. The "early term type" will be empty in the UI unless a lease was early terminated.
Lease Management- Ability to Separate Catch-Up and In-Period Activity in Journals
Availability: In Development (Lessee) | Beta Available (Lessor)
EZLease supports retrospective changes by creating catch-up or adjusting entries in the first open period (or any open period a user chooses).
Previously, any time adjusting entries were created, EZLease would automatically sum the adjusting entries with in-period journals and present both sets of activities together. This made it difficult for customers to differentiate between regular in-period activity and catch-up entries.
EZLease now supports disaggregated adjusting entries for customers who want more detailed journals. This means that separate journal entries will be created for normal in-period activity and catch-up journals. Disaggregated journals will also be created when multiple payments occur within a reporting period.
To enable disaggregated journals, go to System Options > Selections tab and check "Disaggregate late bookings and revisions".
Lease Management- Unguaranteed Residual Separated into Current/ Long-Term Entries
Availability: N/A (Lessee) | Beta Available (Lessor)
Users can now choose to recognize separate current and long-term unguaranteed residual value (UGRV) asset accounts from System Options.
When selected, UGRV will be split into current and long-term accounts in journal entries and disclosure reports, and separate account numbers will be shown in System Options.
EZLease considers all UGRV to be long-term until the last 12 months of a lease, at which time the entire balance will become current.
Lease Management- Copy Function Enhancements
Availability: Beta Available (Lessee and Lessor)
New fields have been added to the lease copy function to improve the usefulness of the feature:
Booking date
Transfer addition
Transfer effective date (as a result of locking periods)
Note: The system won't let the user copy with a booking date in a closed period.
Accounting Logic- Deferred/ Prepaid Rent Entries for All Non-Capitalized Operating Rent Payments
Availability: N/A (Lessee) | Beta Available (Lessor)
Currently, the journal entry report shows a rent entry for lessor operating rent payments. If a lease has a single rent step, the entry only appears when the payment is made, with a debit to cash and a credit to operating rent income. (Lessee short-term/ low-value rent payments are handled similarly, with opposite signs).
If a lease is paid less than monthly, this means that rent income is not recognized during the intervening months. Showing the rent income equally each month, rather than all when the rent is paid, is more accurate accounting. (This is currently done when there are scheduled rent changes that need to be leveled).
EZLease now supports to recognize rent payment as a debit to cash and credit to prepaid/ accrued rent. Each month (including the month of the rent payment), the prepaid/ accrued rent is amortized with a debit and a credit to rent income.
For FX, the rent payment uses the spot rate on the transaction date, while the prepaid/ accrued amortization and income entries use the average rate for the month.
Note: This is a change to EZLease's accounting logic and cannot be disabled. It will not have a net ending balance impact for customers but may create additional entries in closed periods that cancel out in the same period.
Accounting Logic- Change in Handling of Guaranteed Residual Value Treatment at End of Term for Lessor Leases
Availability: N/A (Lessee) | Beta Available (Lessor)
Previously, journal entries for a lessor lease with a guaranteed residual at lease expiration included a debit to "New asset on termination" equal to the unguaranteed residual asset, and a debit to "Guaranteed residual payment" equal to the guaranteed residual.
A guaranteed residual typically means that the underlying asset is sold after the end of the lease, with the lessee making up a shortfall in the funds realized compared to the expected value. The problem with the current method is that EZLease has no way to distinguish what portion of the residual guarantee is covered by the lessee and what portion is covered by a third party.
Our stance is that settlement of the guaranteed residual is a post-lease transaction that should be accounted for by the customer's fixed asset system. Therefore, EZLease has been updated to reclassify the entire residual value, both guaranteed and unguaranteed, to "New asset on termination," and the customer should recognize settlement of the sale (what cash is received from lessee versus sale, whether there is a gain or loss) in their fixed asset ledger.
The current debit entry to "Guaranteed residual payment" has been eliminated, and the "New asset on termination" debit entry shows the combined amount of the net investment.
Note: This is a change to EZLease's accounting logic and cannot be disabled.
Foreign Exchange (FX)
Availability: In Development (Lessee) | Beta Available (Licensed Customers—Lessor)
Refer to the Foreign Exchange support article for full details.
EZLease now supports storing exchange rates and entities, and will perform FX calculations, making it easier to manage global lease portfolios.
Bulk Financial Modifications
Availability: In Development (Lessee) | Beta Available (Licensed Customers—Lessor)
Refer to the Bulk Financial Changes support article for full details.
To support bulk financial modifications and FX, eight new columns have been added to the import template. The old lessor bulk import template no longer works, and users should download the new template directly from EZLease. The new fields can be ignored by users who do not use FX or bulk financial modifications.