Lease Accounting Software for CPA Firms

CPA firms need lease accounting software built around many small client entities rather than one large portfolio. The features that matter are multi-entity separation, fast client onboarding, per-lease or per-client pricing instead of enterprise contracts, GASB coverage if you serve government clients, and staff-level workflow with review and handoff. Crunchafi, formerly LeaseCrunch, is the platform designed explicitly for this; FinQuery and Visual Lease were built for corporate accounting teams and adapted afterward.

Why firm requirements differ from corporate requirements

A controller at one company sets up a portfolio once, configures it to their policies, and runs it for years. A firm sets up a new entity every time it wins an engagement, runs each one under that client's policy elections, and hands the work between staff at different levels during busy season.

That difference drives almost every practical requirement. Setup speed matters more than configuration depth, because you do it constantly. Entity separation has to be genuinely clean, because you cannot have one client's data visible in another's workspace. Pricing has to scale down, because a client with four leases cannot absorb an enterprise seat cost. And the work has to survive being handed from a first-year to a senior to a partner without context living in one person's head.

Most lease accounting platforms were designed for the first scenario. They were built during ASC 842 adoption, when every private company in the country had a deadline for fiscal years beginning after December 15, 2021, and the buyer was a corporate controller. Firms are a segment those products grew into rather than started from, and it shows in the onboarding friction.

What to evaluate

Standards coverage first, because it eliminates options fastest. Everyone does ASC 842. Most do IFRS 16. Fewer do GASB 87, GASB 94, and GASB 96, and if you have municipalities, school districts, or public authorities in your client base, that requirement removes a large part of the field immediately. Crunchafi covers the GASB standards; several competitors do not.

Then pricing structure. Per-lease pricing suits firms because it flexes with each engagement instead of committing you to a platform-wide contract before you know your volume. Ask specifically whether there is a firm tier separate from the company rate, because the difference is significant. Ask whether terminated or historical leases keep billing, since records you retain for audit can quietly stay on the meter.

Then multi-entity mechanics. How long does standing up a new client actually take, and can you template it from a previous engagement? Can staff be scoped to specific clients? Is there a review layer, or does everyone have the same access? Ask to see a new entity created live during the demo rather than accepting a walkthrough of one already configured, because setup friction is exactly what a prepared demo hides.

Then reporting and handoff. You need output the client's auditor will accept without a translation layer, and you need to be able to give a client their data if they leave. Ask what export looks like on the way out, not just on the way in.

The main options

Crunchafi, formerly LeaseCrunch, is the one built for firms first. It covers ASC 842, IFRS 16, and GASB 87, 94, and 96, prices per lease per year with a distinct CPA firm tier, and says it works with more than 750 firms. It rebranded in June 2025 and said existing customers would keep the tools they knew, so older references to LeaseCrunch describe the same product. Our explanation of the LeaseCrunch to Crunchafi rebrand covers what moved, and the pricing breakdown covers what directories report.

FinQuery, which is LeaseQuery under its current parent brand, is the deeper corporate platform with a firm-facing program layered on. LeaseGuru from the same company is free up to two leases and $999 per year up to ten, which makes it a reasonable option for very small client entities and the only genuinely free entry point in the category. How FinQuery compares goes through the tradeoff.

Visual Lease, now owned by CoStar after a deal that closed in November 2024, is strong on lease administration and real estate detail, and is generally a heavier fit than a firm needs for small client entities. Trullion is aimed at accounting and audit workflows and appeals to firms doing attest work alongside the accounting.

None of these publish full pricing, and none offer a self-serve trial of the main product. Expect a demo and a quote in every case.

Where the hours actually go

Here is the thing that gets underestimated in every software evaluation: the platform calculates, it does not read. Once a client engagement starts, someone at the firm still has to open each executed lease and every amendment and extract the commencement and expiration dates, base rent and each escalation step, renewal and termination options with their notice windows, the CAM and recovery structure, any tenant improvement allowance or other incentive, and the discount rate inputs. Then key it in and tie it back to the document.

On a first-year engagement that reading and keying is usually the majority of the hours. It is also the part that is hardest to bill for at a rate the client accepts, because from their side it looks like data entry rather than expertise. This is where realization on lease engagements goes.

Two categories make it worse. Embedded leases inside service contracts, which are the most commonly missed arrangements and remain a live simplification topic in standard-setting discussions for private companies. And equipment: copiers, vehicles, IT hardware, and storage all fall under ASC 842, and clients routinely hand over a list covering only real estate.

Cutting that step down is the highest-leverage change available to a firm doing lease work, and it is independent of which accounting platform the client uses. You can test lease abstraction on a real client lease free and judge the output against the source document before committing to anything. Each extracted field cites the page it came from, so review becomes a spot-check rather than a second full read.

Practical notes for firms

Count the client's leases properly before you scope the engagement or accept a per-lease quote. Ask for equipment schedules and service contracts, not just the real estate list. A scope built on a guess of thirty leases is a problem when the real number is seventy, and the conversation about that is much easier before the engagement letter than after.

Standardize the abstraction fields across clients even when the accounting platforms differ. If every engagement produces the same field set in the same order, review is faster, staff move between clients without relearning, and the work stops depending on who did it last.

Budget separately for abstraction and accounting when you quote. They are different costs with different scaling behavior, and blending them into one number is how firms end up eating the reading time.

Finally, plan for turnover. Lease accounting knowledge tends to concentrate in one or two people, and busy season is a bad time to discover that. Firms that get this right document the abstraction standard and the policy elections per client, and treat it as material new staff work through rather than something absorbed by sitting next to someone, which is the same reason structured internal training and onboarding pays off faster in seasonal practices than in steady-state ones.

The short version

Pick for multi-entity mechanics, per-lease pricing with a firm tier, and GASB coverage if your client base needs it. Crunchafi is built for firms; FinQuery is deeper but corporate-first, with LeaseGuru as a free small-entity option; Visual Lease and Trullion fit narrower cases. Then budget honestly for the lease reading, because that is where the hours and the margin actually go, and no accounting subscription covers it. Last updated July 2026.