The future of accountancy, what’s next?

May 22, 2022 (Evertise Digital via COMTEX) — The leasing industry is yet to significantly harness the powers of the Internet. Despite the hype, the web enabling of the leasing process has been sporadic at best. While the industry has already taken to the Internet’s obvious convenience for credit scoring and front-end application processing, a larger and perhaps more significant impact on productivity has yet to be realized. The advent of the lease life-cycle management model can realize this untapped potential for productivity and, if implemented well, can even directly enhance profitability. Online lease management and accounting software certainly have the makings of a paradigm shift in the lessor’s approach to the lease accounting software. More specifically, it holds enough promise to replace the client/server model just as the client/server model itself dethroned the mainframe.

The Benefits of an Internet Model-based Lease Management system

To implement, the Internet model is much simpler than its client/server-based counterpart, demanding nothing more than a secure Internet server on which the lease accounting software and database reside. Each of the limitless numbers of computers accessing the server can run any operating system, with nothing more than access to the Internet. By inference, the type of Network and the leasing software’s compatibility with it no longer matters. Even the physical implementation of the network itself, in laying down the wiring and connections, becomes redundant when any authorized computer belonging to any authorized user, is part of the virtual network. In this respect, especially for lessors with multiple operations in different locations, the model used in the lease management software is a boon that takes no more significant effort to tie two computers into its virtual network than it does 2,000. Even training employees to use the lease accounting software becomes easy when there is one standard program worldwide. This immediate scalability and operating-system/network independence of the leasing software model makes it possible for lessors of all sizes to experience IT benefits unknown in the client/server world.

It would seem that today’s nascent Internet technology compromises the functional power of the client/server model in their leasing software; complex algorithms required to amortize income or calculate yields appear hard or even impossible to replicate on a browser. Fortunately, however, with the growing sophistication of Internet developmental platforms, Internet applications run a tight race with client/server technologies. The Internet-based lease accounting software enables yields and depreciation schedules to be calculated with the same click of a button. The lease management software facilitates reports to be sorted, filtered, and queried to obtain any conceivable information available in the database. Income, IDC, and residual can be accrued, blended, and separated, just like they are in client/server systems.

Not surprisingly, even technology as complex as an Enterprise Resource Planning system, simultaneously used for solutions from global car manufacturing to domestic chemical production, runs on Internet-based applications today similar to the internet-based lease accounting software.

New Governmental Lease Accounting Standards

Another aspect of change in accountancy is viewable in the governmental lease accounting standards. It’s a standard that is issued by the GASB board. So, what’s new? GASB 87 has come in to replace the older standards of GASB 13 and GASB 62. Changes like this can be annoying and require bookkeepers and accountants to pivot how they account for their lease obligations. Another aspect of GASB 87 leases is to increase the usefulness of the financial statements that governments prepare. If you work in government accounting or for a business that has to subscribe to governmental lease accounting standards, you need to be sure that you’re aware of new standards like this or the accounts you draw up under lease accounting will be wrong.

Software is getting better and advancements are noticeable all around us

Compared to humans, software technology can work faster, eliminate human error and reduce overhead costs. It is therefore not surprising that Oxford University predicts in the next years, jobs will be eliminated by artificial intelligence! The impact technology has on the working population is not something new. During the Revolution workers are being replaced by machinery and this trend is growing. Today software technology is advancing at such a high pace that jobs are being replaced and tasks have been replaced by robots’ software advancements and computers will be so highly intelligent, that they will start competing with the human brain. This means entire professions will be replaced!

The functionality of the Internet model and the Lease Management Software

While functionally the Internet application is interchangeable, its differentiating quality lies in its approach to data. By the very nature of their technology, client/server systems typically just crunch numbers. A good Internet-based application, on the other hand, maximizes the value of that data, in addition to maintaining it. This translates into a direct value-add for the lessor’s operational efficiency. Sales staff can, for instance, be allowed to access the leasing software from anywhere they can connect to the Internet. During negotiations, they can obtain historic information about the lessee to make informed decisions for new business opportunities through the lease management software. The traditional one-way pipelines of data delivery thus become forums for information exchange.

Easy Tenancy Management With Lease Management Software

One aspect that is often ignored by professional landlords who are new to the business is the necessity of lease management software to help them manage their business. Landlords managing a property portfolio usually overlook this factor leading to leading to error, which can prove difficult to manage. They would have spent a lot of time and money on building the portfolio. However, lease managing software will help them from saving both, time and money.

For a professional landlord with a decent-sized portfolio, it becomes impossible over time to manage things without the help of this management software. This is true even for the most experienced landlord in the business. These professionals make a living by putting the right tenant in the properties they have. Properties that are well maintained will increase in value over some time. During the course, the landlord will be kept away from mundane things such as maintenance, collection of rent on time, and keeping their bank account in a healthy condition. By investing a little money in lease managing software, they would have put to rest any prospects of leaving things unattended.