Regulate Footnote Lease For Free

The new lease standard increases the scope and complexity of the financial statement footnote disclosure with additional requirements for both quantitative and qualitative disclosures. While providing useful information, using a spreadsheet to create these disclosures becomes far more difficult than before.

The exact nature of these footnotes varies, depending upon the accounting framework used to construct the financial statements (such as GAAP or IFRS). Footnotes are an integral part of the financial statements, so you must issue them to users along with the financial statements.

ASC 842, or Topic 842, is the new lease accounting standard issued by the FASB and governs how entities record the financial impact of their lease agreements. Among other changes, it requires all public and private entities reporting under US GAAP to record the vast majority of their leases to the balance sheet.

The lease liability represents the obligation to make lease payments and is measured at the present value of future lease payments. Once we have gathered our information, i.e., we know the lease term, the lease payment and the discount rate, we simply discount the liability over the lease term, using the discount rate.

The basics of the new lease standard requires businesses to recognize both a right-of-use asset and corresponding lease liability for all leases exceeding 12 months on their balance sheets.

Existing operating leases with terms extending beyond 12 months will be included on the balance sheet effective January 1, 2022, the date of required adoption. Existing capital leases will continue to be included with property, plant, and equipment, and will be amortized over the remaining life of the lease.

Other Lease-Related Information Cash flows - for both finance and operating leases, a lessee must disclose the cash paid to reduce lease liability (for operating leases, this is the total cash paid, and for finance leases, this includes the interest paid, disclosed broken out from principal payments)