FinQuery vs Black Owl Systems Pricing and Fit

FinQuery and Black Owl Systems both sell ASC 842 and IFRS 16 lease accounting, and neither prints a dollar price for its main product. The practical split is scope. FinQuery (formerly LeaseQuery) covers more standards, including GASB 87, GASB 96 and SFFAS 54, integrates with nearly any US general ledger, and lists AI-assisted lease abstraction. Black Owl Systems is a narrower, Calgary-based lessee and lessor accounting tool with ASPE 3065 for Canadian entities and no lease abstraction of any kind.

Everything below comes from the two vendors' own pages, read on September 29, 2026. Directory listings for both products quote figures neither vendor publishes, so we left them out.

FinQuery vs Black Owl Systems at a glance

How much does FinQuery cost compared with Black Owl Systems?

Neither vendor publishes a price for the product most mid-size companies buy. FinQuery's pricing link now lands on a request pricing form, and Black Owl's pricing page lists Small Business, Large Companies, Enterprise, CPA Essentials and CPA Advanced, each with a Contact Sales button. Black Owl's own FinQuery comparison, published April 7, 2026, says only that pricing varies with lease count, features and support.

The one real number in this comparison belongs to FinQuery's small-portfolio product, LeaseGuru. Its page lists a Premium tier at $1,099 a year for 10 leases and $1,925 a year for 15, marked lessee only, plus multi-company tiers from $850 a year for one company to $2,750 for five. A second table on the same page shows $999 and $1,750 for the same lease counts, so confirm which applies before you budget. FinQuery also says LeaseGuru is meant for portfolios of 25 leases and under. Above that you are in quote territory with either vendor.

If you are sizing a budget, the software quote is only half of it. Somebody has to load every lease, and careful manual abstraction runs four to eight analyst hours per lease with its amendments. Our breakdowns of how much FinQuery costs and Black Owl Systems pricing go deeper on what each quote tends to include.

Is FinQuery the same as LeaseQuery?

Yes. LeaseQuery renamed itself FinQuery and kept LeaseQuery as the name of its lease accounting product, which is why buyers search for both. The product pages still say LeaseQuery was built by accountants and list more than 40 accountants on staff. FinQuery now also sells fixed assets, accruals and prepaids, debt and contract management on the same platform, which matters if you want one vendor for several close tasks. The rename is covered in is LeaseQuery now FinQuery.

Does Black Owl Systems support GASB 87?

Not as a listed standard. Black Owl's solution menu names ASC 842, IFRS 16 and ASPE 3065, with separate lessee and lessor paths. GASB appears on its homepage once, and not as a supported feature. FinQuery names GASB 87 and GASB 96 and sells a governmental package with lessor and lessee accounting and fund accounting. A US city, county, school district or public university should treat that as the deciding line. Our GASB 87 lease accounting software page lists the other tools that cover government.

Which one does lease abstraction?

FinQuery does, at least on paper. Its lease management page lists AI-assisted lease abstraction trained on thousands of leases that extracts key dates, clauses and payment streams, and its feature list includes automated lease abstracts. It does not publish an accuracy figure or a separate price for it. Black Owl Systems does not abstract leases at all: its homepage, pricing page and ERP page contain no mention of abstraction, extraction or OCR. You or an implementation partner key the terms in. We checked that in detail in does Black Owl Systems do lease abstraction.

That gap is the reason people land on our tool from this comparison. Whichever vendor wins, the first month of the project is reading leases. Upload one above and you get commencement, rent steps, renewal options and notice deadlines back as fields, each cited to its source page, in a file you can import into either system.

Which is better for a US private company?

For most US private companies the standards question settles itself: you need ASC 842, and both vendors cover it. The choice then comes down to three things.

Your general ledger. FinQuery names QuickBooks, Sage, Acumatica and Workday, which covers the systems most US mid-market companies close in. Black Owl names SAP, NetSuite, Microsoft Dynamics and Oracle Cloud and otherwise relies on journal entry exports. A QuickBooks or Sage Intacct shop has a more direct path with FinQuery.

Lessor exposure. Black Owl markets lessor accounting prominently, with its own section. If you both lease and sublease or lease out equipment, test that workflow in the demo. FinQuery's LeaseGuru tiers are lessee only, so a small company with lessor leases lands in the main product.

Everything else you close. If the same controller also owns fixed assets, prepaid schedules and vendor contracts, FinQuery sells those modules on one platform. If contracts are the bigger pain, a dedicated contract management software tool usually tracks renewals and obligations across every agreement type more thoroughly than a lease accounting add-on.

Black Owl makes more sense for a company with Canadian subsidiaries reporting under ASPE, or one that wants a narrower tool and already runs SAP, Dynamics or Oracle.

Which is better for CPA firms managing client leases?

Both vendors sell to accounting firms. Black Owl has two CPA tiers, CPA Essentials and CPA Advanced, described as core lease accounting with multi-client management and a custom journal entry mapper for posting into several client ledgers; both are Contact Sales. FinQuery's LeaseGuru page has a multi-company table aimed at firms, priced per company from $850 a year for one client company to $2,750 for five, each company capped at 10 leases and lessee only. A firm with a handful of small clients can price that today. A firm with larger or lessor-heavy clients is quoting with either vendor, and the client leases still need to be abstracted before either system has anything to calculate. Our lease abstraction for CPA firms page covers that workflow.

What about other options?

If neither quote fits, the Black Owl Systems competitors comparison covers eleven alternatives, and FinQuery alternatives covers the vendors that publish real prices, such as Cradle and iLeasePro. Companies whose main problem is tracking leases they signed as the occupier, rather than the accounting alone, should read lease management software for tenants.

How to run the evaluation

Ask both vendors the same four questions in writing: the annual price at your exact lease count, what implementation includes and whether lease data entry is billed, which of your leases the price counts (active only, or expired too), and whether your ERP connection is native or a journal entry file. Then send each of them the same abstracted lease file. You will see how each handles your real rent steps and options instead of a demo portfolio, and you will have the data ready the day you sign.