Making the most of lease renewals

Renewals are a key component of your lease agreements. Lease renewals present you the opportunity to get out of leasing situations that are not in your favor, while allowing you to reap the benefits of really great lease deals. Renewals also offer scope for renegotiating lease terms and conditions. Missing out on lease renewals can mean termination of the lease, which, when unforeseen can be a huge financial loss for the tenant. In our blog this week, we discuss some best practices that you can adopt when it comes to lease renewals. Following these best practices will ensure you make the most of your lease renewal options and enjoy better ROI on your leases.

Critical date monitoring for renewals

In order to benefit from a lease renewal option, you need to exercise it within the timeframe stipulated in your lease. Make sure you invest in a lease administration software platform which captures important dates such as the last date for exercising lease renewal options, and also generates alerts in a timely manner so you have the time to think through, calculate and take a well-informed decision regarding the renewal. This process ensures you don’t miss out on the opportunity to renew your lease.

A quick lease review

Lease renewals are a great time for a quick lease audit and review. Using your lease abstracts, you can quickly go over the key financial and non-financial clauses of your lease and decide if you should be negotiating on any of those. This is a good time to make amendments or include any addendums to your existing lease. You could also get a financial modeling done on your lease to compute the long term ROI on your lease, helping you determine if the renewal is a good fit for you.

Get assistance if you are overwhelmed!

While it may sound easy, it becomes complicated when you have a large lease portfolio. When you have thousands or even hundreds of leases with different renewal dates and varying terms and conditions, it can get overwhelming. If that sounds familiar, you should reach out to a trusted lease support service provider who can take care of this for you. A lease administration services provider will have a large team of experienced lease administrators who can help you stay on top of your lease portfolio irrespective of its size.

Rebolease.com, powered by RE BackOffice, Inc., is a premier provider of lease abstraction, administration, audit and accounting services. Headquartered in Pittsburgh, PA, we are a global boutique firm, providing high-quality services to top-tier clients across industry verticals, covering every type of lease and on any lease platform. We are proud to be a trusted partner, for 15+ years, to leading retailers, REITs, property owners/managers, and corporate accounts seeking a strategic advantage. All client projects are performed in-house.

What to consider when investing in a lease administration software?

Investing in a lease administration software is a must to stay on top of your lease portfolio and for efficient ongoing lease management. While there’s no doubt that lease administration software programs are indispensable, things start to get a little tricky when it comes to selecting a lease administration software. Our blog this week discusses the key elements you should consider when choosing a lease administration system.

Compliance

Compliance forms a big part of your lease management process. You need to make sure that your new lease administration software helps you meet the compliance requirements as per lease accounting standards such as FASB ASC 842, IFRS 16 and GASB 87. On the same note, it is important to ensure your lease administration software caters to the different kinds of leases in your portfolio, such as real estate, equipment, vehicles, etc.,

Ease of use

For any tool to be adopted and utilized fully, ease of use is an important factor. The lease administration software should allow you to easily manage every aspect of lease management including lease abstraction, lease audits, critical date monitoring, rent roll, CAM audit and reconciliation, etc.

Reporting and dashboards

Your lease administration platform must be intuitive and flexible. It should support report generation of various kinds, allowing you to make sense of the rich data contained in your leases and lease abstracts, thus bringing more objectivity to the critical business decision-making process.

Import and export functionality

One of the most important elements to consider before investing in a lease management platform is the import-export functionality. It dictates how your data will be shared and in what format. The information from your lease abstracts will be used across various teams in your organization such as Finance, Operations, IT, Accounting, Legal, etc. Before you purchase a lease management software, you need to make sure it is compatible with their data format requirements.

Data storage and security

One of the questions to seek answers to before you purchase a lease administration software is, “Where your lease data will be stored by the lease management platform and in what format?”. For example, is the data stored locally, or on the cloud? What are the security concerns and how are they being addressed by the lease management software vendor? Getting answers to these questions is a must when evaluating a lease administration software platform.

Service and support

Investing in a lease management platform is a big decision. You will be using the platform to store critical business information and will need uninterrupted access to it at all times. Hence after-sales service and support become critical components when evaluating lease management platforms. What kind of support does your lease software vendor provide? What is their availability? Is the service and support free, or will you be charged? It is very important to get these questions answered to your satisfaction before invest in a lease administration software.

Click here to learn more about the top 10 lease administration software programs of 2022.

Getting lease portfolio management right

Lease portfolio management is one of the most important business functions irrespective of your industry vertical. Staying on top of your lease portfolios is a must but it is easier said than done! And, it is even more challenging if your lease portfolios include leases that are spread across multiple geographical areas, run into hundreds of pages and have many amendments or addendums. This blog discusses the key elements which help make your lease portfolio management process a success.

Accurate lease abstracts

One of the key elements for successful lease portfolio management is having accurate lease abstracts of all the leases in your portfolio. A lease abstract condenses the key financial and non-financial information contained in the lease and provides it to you in an easy-to-understand and consumable format, as and when needed. Plus, lease abstracts help bring a great degree of consistency to your lease portfolio. When it comes to leases, it is not an exaggeration to say that each lease is unique. Unless you have a Master Level Agreement (MLA), no two leases of yours will be the same. There will be variations in key lease terms, obligations and even the same line items could be worded or referred to differently. Lease abstracts help you standardize all of these and provide you with a common format for all your leases. This makes it easier for you to compare your leases and drive key business decisions based on ROI. Lease abstracts are especially important if you have a large lease portfolio consisting of a number of leases panning across various locations. If your lease portfolio is multilingual, meaning having leases drafted in different languages, having standardized lease abstracts becomes even more important as they help bring all your leases on the same page.

Lease abstract template

Now that we have established the importance of lease abstracts in the lease portfolio management process, let’s move on to lease abstract templates for they determine how useful your lease abstracts are going to be. Your lease abstract template is the backbone of your lease abstraction efforts, You need to ensure that your abstraction template captures all the relevant information. While some core fields such as rent, options, key dates, etc., are needed irrespective of what industry you belong to, there may be fields that are important for your business or industry in particular. Apart from such fields, there may be certain, less common clauses in some leases that must be captured. So, the first step to ensuring your lease abstracts serve their purpose and are capturing the right data is being able to identify what data matters to you and then having a lease abstract template that caters to your needs by capturing that information

Lease Audits

Once you sign off on the two elements discussed above, namely lease abstracts and lease abstract templates, the next step is lease audit. The term, lease audit, refers to auditing of a lease abstract in the light of the original lease documents. Lease audits are usually required if your lease abstracts are older and your leases have been amended or renewed since the original lease was abstracted. If the leases were amended or any addendums were made to them at a later date, you would want to ensure that the lease abstracts reflect the most recent information, which won’t be the case if the lease abstraction was done before the amendment/addendum was executed.

Lease administration software

You cannot stay on top of your lease portfolio without a lease administration software. Spreadsheets are great to track data in general, but to manage your lease portfolio efficiently you need much more than spreadsheets. Lease management has very specific requirements including the need to meet compliance regulations, critical date monitoring and alerts, timely notifications and multiple report generation for different user personas such as the finance department, real estate department, legal department and others, which can be met only by . Lease administration software platforms. Lease administration platforms make it easier for for you to keep track of your leases efficiently, manage lease obligations effectively, and stay on top of your lease portfolio consistently.

Learn more in this blog post

Here’s a quick analysis of top 10 lease administration platforms for 2022.

Resources

Lease portfolio management is not a one-time task. It is an ongoing process involving several moving parts and tight timelines. At the same time, there are some aspects of lease portfolio management that demand a lot of time initially and then, only minimal investment of time, on an ad-hoc basis. Lease abstraction is one such element. You will need accurate and comprehensive abstracts of all the leases in the lease portfolio in order to manage your lease portfolio efficiently. However, once the lease abstracts are ready and entered into your lease administration software platform, they’ll most likely only need to be updated in the event of any amendment to the original lease agreement. But, there are other elements in the lease management process that require consistent attention, such as CAM reconciliation, critical date monitoring, invoice processing, etc. Organizations are often short-staffed when it comes to this as a result of which organizations fall behind on tasks like invoicing, reconciliation, CAM audits, and other timely updates., Outsourcing lease administration functions fully or even partly to a trusted lease administration company can help organizations stay on top of their lease portfolios and, at the same time, enjoy more cost-efficiency, scalability, and flexibility.

Learn more about how you can scale your lease portfolio management process by leveraging the outsourced lease administration model

Rebolease.com, powered by RE BackOffice, Inc., is a premier provider of lease abstraction, administration, audit, and accounting services. Headquartered in Pittsburgh, PA, we are a global boutique firm, providing high-quality services to top-tier clients across industry verticals, covering every type of lease and on any lease platform. We are proud to be a trusted partner, for 15+ years, to leading retailers, REITs, property owners/managers, and corporate accounts seeking strategic advantage. All client projects are performed in-house.

Whether it is one clause, one amendment, or a whole lease agreement, we can do it for you.

Top 10 Lease Administration Software Platforms for 2022

Managing commercial real estate lease portfolios is a challenging task. Especially if the lease portfolio is large and the leases are spread across multiple geographical locations. Lease administration software platforms make it easier for landlords, tenants, property owners, and managers to keep track of their leases efficiently, manage lease obligations effectively, and stay on top of their lease portfolios. In our blog this week, we review the top 10 lease administration software platforms of 2022 and discuss their key features.

MRI Software

Truly the giant when it comes to offering robust lease administration solutions, MRI has more than 52,000 clients across 170 countries. The MRI lease administration software solutions are top-rated in the industry. Top lease administration platforms, AMT Direct, Leverton AI, ProLease, Manhattan Trimble, and Cube Horizon are now all a part of the MRI software thus making its lease management software solution set even more powerful. MRI offers end-to-end lease portfolio management solutions covering both real estate and equipment lease administration, compliance requirements, lease accounting, detailed lease reporting, space management, and CAFM requirements. It is the go-to solution for compliance with the ASC 842/IFRS 16 lease accounting standards and offers dual reporting on the same leases. With automated lease workflows, OCRs for faster data recognition, anomaly detection, and predictive analytics that help you manage your lease portfolios effectively. MRI lease management tools help users make the right business decisions and generate superior ROI on their leases by offering them access to all the data they need, just when they need it. Whether you have real estate or equipment leases, MRI has the answer!

Website Link – https://www.mrisoftware.com/

Yardi property management software

An innovative property management software for all property types, Yardi is a leading lease administration and real estate property management software. Yardi offers 2 innovative property management software programs, namely, Yardi Voyager and Yardi Breeze covering lease accounting, operations, and other ancillary services for both, commercial and residential real estate. Many users regard Yardi to be one of the best lease administration software to manage large lease portfolios. However, customization can be a bit tricky in Yardi and the platform can be a bit slower than some others listed here.

Website Link – https://www.yardi.com/

Visual Lease

Visual Lease is a lease administration software with a twist. The company brands itself as a lease optimization software, meaning, one that helps users optimize their lease portfolio for maximum ROI. Visual Lease offers powerful lease accounting, lease administration, and compliance solutions. Visual Lease is widely used across various industry verticals including services, healthcare, government, construction, manufacturing, retail, and transportation. Visual lease is easy-to-use and has great lease organization capabilities. However, it lacks a project management system, so tracking your lease renewal actions or other capital projects can be challenging.

Website Link – https://visuallease.com/

Lease Accelerator

Lease Accelerator is a complete lease lifecycle automation software that covers both equipment and real estate leases effectively. Lease Accelerator has strong reporting, accounting, and governance modules and allows you to scale easily so you can go from managing a lease portfolio of just a couple of leases to thousands in no time. Lease Accelerator also supports compliance goals allowing your lease administration team to get audit-ready in no time! Currently, there are more than 700,000 leases that are being managed across the world with Lease Accelerator. This lease administration software really stands out for its ease of use, custom reporting templates, ability to bulk import leases, and continuous system updates that ensure the software keeps up with the needs of the modern lease administrator.

Website Link – https://explore.leaseaccelerator.com/

Accruent-Lucernex

Accurent offers potent lease administration and accounting software solutions for real estate and equipment leases across multiple industries including corporate, healthcare, hospitality, telecommunications, manufacturing, retail, metal and mining, utilities, oil and gas, pharma, public sector, and many others. Accurent has also acquired Lucernex, a cloud-based, lease administration and accounting software platform that automates lease administration and accounting effectively for both, real estate and equipment leases. Lucernex, powered by Accurent offers a single, 360-degree view of your entire lease portfolio allowing you to take data driven business decisions that help you optimize your overall lease portfolio ROI. The platform helps you identify key lease portfolio obligations and opportunities easily, offers customizable workflows and makes your lease administration function more process oriented by automating key tasks such as approvals. It also supports the financial reporting requirements as per the new FASB regulations helping you meet compliance goals effectively.

Website Link – https://www.accruent.com/solutions/lease-administration-accounting/lease-administration-accounting-lucernex

Lease Harbor

The USP of Lease Harbor lease administration software platform is the simplicity with which it approaches lease administration. Lease Harbor is an end-to-end lease management platform for equipment and real estate leases that covers lease accounting, lease administration, compliance, task management, and workflow, ERP, and data integration effectively. Lease Harbor supports bulk data uploads, inputs, and updates–a very useful feature if you have a large lease portfolio and offers unlimited custom configurations for lease fields, reporting templates, task reminders, etc. It has a robut search feature that ensures easy and quick access to lease information when you need it at both a bird’s eye view and in-depth levels.

Website Link – https://leaseharbor.com/

Tango Lease

Tango lease administration software is an end-to-end, next generation, lease real estate and facilities management software platform that truly covers everything from strategy to execution. Tango Lease is a feature-rich lease management platform covering both equipment and real estate leases. It offers compliance, end-to-end lease activity management including abstraction, renewals, clause reviews, rent or lease payment processing, expense calculations, lease audits, occupancy, operating expense review and analysis, and more. World’s leading corporations and real estate and accounting firms rely on Tango Lease to manage their lease portfolios effectively and efficiently. Tango Lease is widely used across various industry verticals including manufacturing, telecommunications, technology, retail, corporate, healthcare, and financial services.

Website Link – https://tangoanalytics.com/products/tango-lease/

Lease Query

Lease Query simplifies lease management through its light and crisp lease administration and accounting software that covers all aspects of lease administration and accounting including compliance for all lease types–real estate and equipment. Lease Query offers custom integration with your existing ERP solutions seamlessly, to eliminate manual efforts and to provide you with complete visibility of the financial aspects related to your leases, so you can take data-driven business decisions and optimize the ROI on your leases. The USP of Lease Query lies in its user-friendly interface and a very powerful search engine that ensures any lease data you need is at your fingertip, on-demand. Lease Query is a great, budget-friendly solution for lease management if your lease portfolio is not very large. The company is also known for its great customer service and support.

Website Link – https://leasequery.com/

CoStar Real Estate Manager

CoStar real estate manager is a powerful lease administration platform from the leading commercial real estate services provider, CoStar. It provides end-to-end lease administration solutions including lease accounting, compliance, and real estate lease portfolio optimization. It integrates with other CoStar solutions on the market research and data analytics front to form a very powerful tool to help manage your lease portfolio efficiently. CoStar Real Estate Manager integrates seamlessly with client ERP and accounting systems to give you a consolidated view of your lease obligations. Custom reports are just a click away with the CoStar lease administration and accounting software! The platform is one of the most comprehensive ones in terms of lease administration.

Website Link – https://www.costar.com/

Oracle JD Edwards

Oracle JD Edwards is a popular lease administration software platform in the telecommunications industry. It is primarily used by telecom companies to manage their cell-tower leases. Cell-tower lease portfolio management is complex and has various nuances which are often not seen in real estate leases. Oracle JD Edwards caters to these nuances effectively and is hence a leading lease management platform for cell tower leases. The company offers a complete suite of asset lifecycle management and financial management tools which are leveraged effectively to create a very powerful cell tower lease management system within the Oracle JD Edwards platform.

Website Link – https://www.oracle.com/in/applications/jd-edwards-enterpriseone/

Whether it is one clause, one amendment, or a whole lease agreement, we can do it for you.

Standardizing your lease abstracts

Lease portfolios constitute one of the major chunks of operating expenses for any business. Staying on top of your lease portfolio and ensuring all the elements therein are accounted for accurately can be challenging. Not doing so may result in you violating your lease obligations unknowingly, overpaying your CAM charges, or missing out on key opportunities such as renewals and expansions. By condensing the key financial and non-financial clauses of your leases and making it available on-demand, Lease abstracts help you identify these instances and ensure you are not in violation of any lease term. Coupled with CAM and lease audits, lease abstracts also ensure you are only paying what you owe to your Landlords. However, not all lease abstracts are created equal! In our blog this week, we discuss a few elements to consider when preparing your lease abstracts so they truly work as intended.

Have a consistent lease abstract template

Unless you have a Master Level Agreement (MLA), each of your leases is going to be different. There will be variations in key lease terms, obligations and even the same line items could be worded or referred to differently. Having a lease abstract and audit template helps you standardize all of these and provides you with a common platform for all your leases. This makes it easier for you to compare your leases and drive key business decisions based on ROI. Lease abstract and audit templates are especially important if you have a large lease portfolio consisting of n number of leases panning across various locations. If your lease portfolio is multilingual, meaning having leases drafted in different languages, having a lease abstract template becomes even more important. Lease abstract and audit templates help bring all your leases on the same page.

Pick an experienced lease abstraction vendor who will be able to offer you guidance and help you finalize a lease abstract template that’s right for you. They should be aware of the nuances of your business/industry. For example, someone who is well-versed in retail lease abstraction would know retail-specific clauses like percentage rent, right to audit, etc., and how they need to be captured. Apart from bringing their overall industry knowledge and expertise to the table, your lease abstraction vendor must be willing to sit down with you and understand your specific business needs and help you identify what clauses of the lease will be of importance to you, in particular.

Excel won’t help you excel!

If you are still using spreadsheets to capture your critical lease information, then it’s high time you moved away from Excel to a robust lease administration software. Spreadsheets are great to track data in general, but to manage your lease portfolio efficiently you need much more than spreadsheets. Lease management has very specific requirements including the need to meet compliance regulations, critical date monitoring and alerts, timely notifications and multiple report generation for different user personas such as the finance department, real estate department, legal department and others.

Click here to learn more about how lease administration software platforms make your lease portfolio management process more efficient.

There are many lease administration software platforms available in the market today. Some of the leading lease administration platforms are –

MRI and MRI Software owned, AMT Direct, Leverton AI, ProLease, Manhattan Trimble and Cube Horizon
Yardi
Lease Accelerator
Accruent and Lucernex
IBM Tririga
Visual Lease
Lease Harbor
Tango Lease
CoStar Lease Administration
Oracle JD Edwards

If you are not sure about which lease administration platform to pick, consider reaching out to an experienced lease abstraction and administration service provider who has experience working on the different lease administration platforms that you are considering. Such a service provider will be able to share the pros and cons of the various lease administration platforms with you, guide you through the lease administration software selection process and help you choose the lease administration software that best fits your requirements.

RE BackOffice can help you choose

Whether it is one clause, one amendment or a whole lease agreement, we can do it for you.

Choosing a Lease Administration Software that’s right for you

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Abstracting and managing leases can be hard. What makes it even more complex are the new accounting standards that went into effect. Companies are scrambling to adopt a lease administration software solution in order to simplify adherence to these new standards and avoid penalties. However, choosing a lease administration software solution that meets a company’s need can be tricky. Let’s look at some tips that will come in handy in selecting the best lease administration software.

The software should be FASB ready. This will help save time and cost in implementing the new accounting standards and avoid non-compliance related financial risks.
It is good to choose a software vendor whose software’s IFRS calculations have been validated by an outside auditor.
The lease administration software should support all types of leases, including office, retail, equipment or vehicle.
The software should provide advanced reporting features that help track, analyze and communicate the performance of your CRE portfolio.
The software should be capable of maintaining the integrity and safety of the lease data.
Consider selecting a firm which also provides implementation and consulting support.

To sum up – Choose functionality over affordability. If an offer is too good to be true then it probably is. Take time to research the best lease administration software and evaluate whether it supports your lease administration requirements. Invest in a solution that is scalable and can help create and implement consistent and efficient lease administration process today and into the future.