Private Companies Struggle to Meet Lease Accounting Deadline

Smaller private companies are struggling to meet the 2020 deadline for following new accounting rules that will force more transparency in reporting the rent they pay for everything from photocopiers to forklifts.

Other back-to-back significant accounting changes that companies also must confront are big reasons for the leasing struggles, members of the Financial Accounting Standards Board’s Private Company Council said June 24.

“I mean, they’re really momentous,” Dev Strishek, principal at Devon Risk Advisory Group, said of the FASB’s new revenue recognition, lease accounting, and credit losses accounting standards taking effect one after another.

Prohibitive cost for lease accounting ...