Quick Summary
This is a complete lease accounting checklist covering monthly reconciliation tasks, quarterly reporting and reassessment work, and annual close and audit preparation. It includes a dedicated ASC 842 and IFRS 16 disclosure checklist and a usable table organized by period, so lease accounting stays a routine control rather than a scramble every time a deadline or an audit approaches.
A lease accounting checklist works best as a year-round control, not a task pulled out once in January and forgotten by March. Compliance with ASC 842 and IFRS 16 doesn’t end at initial adoption. Leases get amended, renewed, and terminated throughout the year, and each of those events needs to be reflected in the calculations and disclosures before the next reporting deadline arrives, not discovered during a rushed year-end close.
Treating this as a recurring monthly, quarterly, and annual discipline, rather than a single push at the start of the year, is what actually keeps a company audit-ready at any given moment rather than only right after a scramble. This guide covers the specific tasks worth running on each cadence, a dedicated checklist for ASC 842 and IFRS 16 disclosures, and a usable table you can apply directly to your own lease accounting process.
Why a Lease Accounting Checklist Matters
Lease accounting touches more of the organization than most people expect: real estate and procurement generate new leases and amendments, accounting calculates and records the right-of-use asset and liability, and finance and legal handle disclosures and audit support. Without a structured checklist, it’s easy for a change in one area, a lease amendment signed by a regional manager, for example, to go unreflected in the accounting calculations for months.
A checklist run consistently on a monthly, quarterly, and annual cadence catches these gaps close to when they happen, rather than during a compressed year-end close when there’s far less time to investigate and correct an error. It also produces a more defensible audit trail: an auditor asking why a specific lease’s classification changed gets a documented answer tied to a specific review period, not a shrug. For the ongoing service work this checklist assumes is happening in the background, lease accounting services covers what consistent, professional support for this function actually looks like.
Monthly Lease Accounting Tasks
Review Lease Agreements
Start each month by reviewing which leases have had activity: new agreements signed, amendments executed, or terminations completed. This isn’t a full re-read of every lease in the portfolio every month, it’s a targeted check against whatever changed since the last review. Missing this step is how a signed amendment sits unreflected in the accounting system for months, quietly making every subsequent calculation for that lease inaccurate. Real estate, procurement, and legal teams should have a clear, known channel for flagging these changes to accounting as they happen, rather than accounting discovering them during a periodic audit of its own records.
Update Lease Records
Once changes are identified, update the lease records in your accounting system to reflect them accurately: new leases entered, amendments applied to existing records, and terminated leases closed out properly rather than left active. This step should happen close to when the change occurred, not batched up and processed once a quarter, since a growing backlog of unrecorded changes makes each subsequent update more complicated and more likely to introduce an error.
Verify Payment Accuracy
Check that payments made in the previous month match what the lease agreement specifies. This includes base rent, any percentage rent or CAM estimate payments, and confirms neither an overpayment nor an underpayment has occurred. A consistent monthly check catches a billing error or a landlord miscalculation within weeks rather than allowing it to compound silently across an entire year before anyone notices the total was off.
Assess Lease Liabilities and Assets
Recalculate the present value of lease obligations for any lease that changed during the month, and confirm the right-of-use asset and lease liability on the balance sheet reflect that updated calculation. This is where a missed update from the earlier steps becomes visible in the financials, an unreflected amendment shows up here as a liability that no longer matches the actual terms of the lease.
Reconcile Against the General Ledger
Compare the lease subledger or tracking system against the general ledger to confirm the two are aligned. Discrepancies here are often the first sign that a change made in one system, an amendment update in the lease database, for example, hasn’t fully propagated into the accounting records. Catching this monthly, rather than only at quarter or year-end, keeps the gap small and easy to trace back to its source.
Quarterly Tasks
Quarterly reporting. Beyond the monthly reconciliation, quarterly close typically requires a more formal review of lease-related figures feeding into quarterly financial statements, confirming the numbers tie out cleanly before they’re reported externally.
Modification review. Take a broader look across the quarter for any leases that were modified in ways that might trigger a reassessment of classification or a remeasurement of the lease liability, not just individually as each modification happened, but checking for any missed during the monthly process.
Reassessments. Certain events, a change in the likelihood of exercising a renewal option, a change in variable payments tied to an index, can trigger a required reassessment under ASC 842 or IFRS 16. A quarterly review is a natural checkpoint for confirming none of these triggering events were missed during the busier monthly cadence.
Annual and Audit Tasks
Year-end close. Confirm every lease in the portfolio is accurately reflected as of year-end, with particular attention to any leases added, modified, or terminated in the final quarter, since these are the most likely to have been processed under year-end time pressure.
Disclosure preparation. Compile the specific disclosures your standard requires well before the reporting deadline, not as a rushed exercise once the deadline is imminent. The next section covers this in more detail.
Audit support. Prepare the documentation an external auditor will likely request: lease agreements and amendments, calculation support, and a clear record of any judgment calls made during the year, like renewal option assumptions. Organizations that maintain this documentation consistently throughout the year, rather than assembling it retroactively, tend to have noticeably smoother audits. For background on how the underlying standards themselves compare and where adoption commonly gets complicated, see this comparison of ASC 842, IFRS 16, and GASB 87 adoption.
ASC 842 and IFRS 16 Disclosure Checklist
Both standards require detailed qualitative and quantitative disclosures, and preparing them well before a deadline reduces the odds of an auditor comment or a late correction. Key items to prepare:
- Lease cost breakdown, separating operating lease cost, finance lease cost (interest and amortization components), and any variable or short-term lease costs not capitalized on the balance sheet.
- Weighted-average remaining lease term and weighted-average discount rate, calculated across the lease population and disclosed as required.
- Maturity analysis, showing undiscounted future lease payments by year for at least the next five years, with a reconciliation to the discounted lease liability on the balance sheet.
- Significant judgments and assumptions, including how the discount rate was determined and any assumptions about renewal or termination options considered reasonably certain.
- Right-of-use asset roll-forward, if required, showing additions, amortization, and any impairments during the period.
Reviewing this list against your specific lease population well ahead of the reporting deadline, rather than starting from scratch each period, is what turns disclosure preparation into a routine task instead of a recurring fire drill. For a closer look at how ASC 842 adoption specifically affects reported balance sheet figures, see this analysis of ASC 842’s balance sheet impact.
Download the Lease Accounting Checklist
| Period | Task |
| Monthly | Review lease agreements for new activity, amendments, or terminations |
| Monthly | Update lease records to reflect all identified changes |
| Monthly | Verify payment accuracy against lease terms |
| Monthly | Assess and update lease liabilities and right-of-use assets for changed leases |
| Monthly | Reconcile the lease subledger against the general ledger |
| Quarterly | Complete formal quarterly reporting review |
| Quarterly | Review modifications for reassessment or remeasurement triggers |
| Quarterly | Confirm no reassessment-triggering events were missed |
| Annually | Complete year-end close with focus on Q4 activity |
| Annually | Prepare ASC 842 or IFRS 16 disclosures |
| Annually | Assemble audit support documentation |
How Scribcor Supports Lease Accounting
Every task on this checklist depends on accurate underlying lease data, which is why Scribcor’s role centers on lease abstraction services: capturing every financial term, date, and obligation from each lease and amendment into a structured format, then reviewing that output against the source document before it feeds any calculation.
Ongoing lease administration services keep this data current as leases change throughout the year, so the monthly review step described above has accurate information to work from rather than starting from a data gap every time. Clean data going in is what makes every other task on this checklist faster and more reliable.
Making It a Routine Control
A lease accounting checklist run consistently, monthly, quarterly, and annually, turns compliance from a recurring scramble into a routine control that holds up under audit scrutiny. The specific tasks matter less than the discipline of running them on a set schedule rather than only when a deadline forces the question.
If you want help building or running this process consistently, schedule a Lease Accounting Consultation with Scribcor. We’ll look at your current process and show you specifically where the gaps are.
Schedule a Lease Accounting Consultation
FAQs
What should be included in a monthly lease accounting checklist?
Reviewing lease agreements for new activity, updating lease records to reflect any changes, verifying payment accuracy, assessing and updating lease liabilities and right-of-use assets, and reconciling the lease subledger against the general ledger. Running these five tasks monthly catches errors close to when they happen rather than at a compressed year-end close.
What disclosures are required under ASC 842 and IFRS 16?
Both standards require a lease cost breakdown, weighted-average remaining lease term and discount rate, a maturity analysis of future lease payments, and disclosure of significant judgments and assumptions used in the calculations. Preparing these well ahead of a reporting deadline, rather than starting from scratch each period, considerably reduces audit friction.
How often should lease accounting reconciliations happen?
Monthly reconciliation against the general ledger is the most reliable cadence, since it catches discrepancies close to when they occur. Quarterly and annual reviews build on that monthly foundation with more formal reporting checks, modification reviews, and disclosure and audit preparation.