Apex Tool Group (ATG) implemented Visual Lease’s software to streamline its ASC 842 lease accounting compliance efforts. With leased assets located across the globe, ATG needed a lease accounting solution to simplify the consolidation of its worldwide leases and serve as a repository to help with the management of its lease portfolio.

ATG is a world-wide manufacturer of professional hand and power tools, serving the industrial, vehicle service and assembly, aerospace, electronics, construction and DIY markets. ATG manages a portfolio of real estate, vehicle and equipment leases and needed a solution to capture relevant lease information and to ensure proper lease accounting and reporting. Given the nature of this portfolio and of the complexity and nuances of ASC 842, Apex realized that manual calculations would not be feasible and a software solution would be required.

“Like many other companies preparing for lease accounting compliance, gathering a complete and accurate inventory of our leases proved to be the most time-consuming and challenging part of the implementation process,” Nick DeNichilo, director of financial reporting and technical accounting at ATG, said. “We began compiling data about a year prior to our targeted implementation with Visual Lease. We knew it would be a daunting task to gather all our lease information, considering our vast entities located throughout the world and robust number of leases, including multiple complex leaseback real estate agreements. Visual Lease’s expertise, intuitive user interface, reporting dashboard and configurable import templates were critical to ensuring we had captured all of the needed information.”

With Visual Lease as its lease accounting software provider of choice, ATG successfully adopted ASC 842 as of Jan. 1, 2020. As a result, its team is now able to:

• Perform monthly and quarterly lease accounting calculations with greater simplicity and ease. This includes producing reports such as FASB journal entry summary and year-to-date balance sheet/income statements entirely within the system with no additional outside manipulation.
• Quickly deliver support and backup to external auditors using the software’s financial tab, which provides a breakdown of all necessary lease information.
• View lease-level details and distribute various lease information to individualized areas across ATG’s global business from one centralized repository.

“The journey to lease compliance can be a daunting one for many organizations, especially for companies that manage a large lease portfolio with information dispersed across various locations and systems,” Marc Betesh, founder and CEO of Visual Lease, said. “Even though the deadline for ASC 842 compliance has been extended for some companies, there is no time to waste, as accounting for leases is very complex. As we saw with ATG, starting the process early will not only ensure you are compliant by your deadline but has the added benefit of providing greater visibility across the organization. This will ultimately enable better decision-making and help identify opportunities to improve the bottom line.”