According to a recent article that appeared in Accounting Today, the new lease accounting standard is likely to have a much greater impact on lessees than lessors.

Accounting Today quotes leasing industry specialist Bill Bosco as saying, “The big change is for lessees, and it is a huge change in terms of work. Transitioning to the new rules means booking every operating lease as an on-balance sheet transaction and then setting up a process going forward. Lessors don’t have a lot of work to do, but the lessees will.”

One of Bosco’s clients estimates it would take about an hour to put a single lease into a system. “For Walgreens that would translate into 8,000 man hours, the equivalent of approximately three man years’ worth of work,” Bosco was quoted as saying by Accounting Today.