Visual Lease Review: Features, Pros and Cons
Visual Lease truly shines when it comes to combining lease administration and accounting, a feature that left us truly impressed. But we weren’t exactly over the moon about its lack of language options - English only may not cut it for everyone. Despite that, it still outperforms competitors with its robust scalability and stellar security features.
Companies with fewer than 25 leases might find better-suited options, especially since we felt Visual Lease’s real-time integrations required custom data connectors. Nevertheless, its integration capabilities are fantastic, making it a solid choice for mid-market firms with a sizable lease portfolio.
- Compliant with ASC 842, GASB 87, and IFRS 16
- Intuitive and easy to use
- Modules for additional portfolio compliance
- Developer Visual Lease
- Client OS Web
- Deployment Cloud Hosted
What is Visual Lease?
Visual Lease is a cloud-based software that provides lease accounting features such as reporting, alerts, and advanced functions like CAM analysis and ledger integrations. With its Integrations Hub, users can connect Visual Lease with popular BI tools like Tableau and PowerBI or utilize the REST API for custom solutions.
| Pros | Cons |
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Our Ratings
| Usability - 8.9 | System is very configurable, slight learning curve; Various functions are well integrated; Most people would learn to use this system relatively quickly. |
| Support - 9.6 | Rich and clear help documentation available; 2 hour average response time; Dedicated account manager and customer success manager; Email, phone, and portal support access. |
| Scalability - 10 | Includes all basic lease accounting features; This product is adequate to accomplish all lease accounting tasks; Charges per leased asset so software grows with portfolio; Smaller companies with 20 or fewer leased assets may want to choose another solution. |
| Security - 10 | Multi-factor authentication and SSO; export all data; Detailed permission controls for users. |
| Value - 8.5 | More expensive than some products on the market but it is all-inclusive and charges per leased asset; Most vital features are not hidden behind an expensive plan, some non-vital add-ons are an additional cost. |
| Performance - 10 | Software fast and responsive; We feel we could accomplish regular, repetitive tasks quickly. |
| Key Features - 10 | Tasks accomplish what we expect; Supports compliance with critical lease accounting standards. |
Who Is It For?
Visual Lease software is tailored for mid-market companies with complex portfolios and distributed business units. It is particularly well-suited for businesses with robust real estate portfolios, equipment leases, and organizations prioritizing strong internal controls.
Visual Lease is beneficial for companies that leverage lease data across various areas of their operations and require seamless integration with corporate headquarters, especially if they have leases signed in different regions. It caters to a wide range of industries, including healthcare, manufacturing, retail, and any business involved in real estate or with retail locations.
Pricing Plans
| Plan | Pricing | Features |
| Custom | Pricing by request |
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Deployment
Visual Lease is a cloud-based lease accounting software. It is designed to be accessed and utilized through a web browser, allowing users to manage their lease data and perform lease-related tasks remotely from any device with an internet connection.
Alternatives
Summary
Visual Lease is ideal for businesses with 25+ leased assets needing IFRS, GASB, and FASB compliance. It integrates lease administration and accounting, facilitates ESG initiatives, and allows bulk import of lease data. The software validates inputs through detailed audits, supports unlimited users with customizable controls, and enables creation of customized reports with an option to upload templates.
However, there are a couple of limitations to consider. First, while Visual Lease operates globally and has multicurrency support, the software is available only in English. Additionally, Visual Lease does not offer software customizations, meaning customers must adapt to the features and functionalities provided within the confines of configurations.
User Reviews of Visual Lease
Visual Lease has been tremendously helpful in implementing ASC 842 as we prepared to transition from ASC 840. This was a huge project for us in 2019 as we prepared for the transition from ASC 840 to ASC 842 and the annual audit. We were tracking everything using Excel before and, without Visual Lease, it would have been really difficult.
It is a comprehensive lease management software. It allows you to track existing leases for expiration and notifies you. You can track expenses by setting up payees and rent payment records. You can also set up an allocation model if a lease is split based on %, sq. ft., or a different measure. All this flows into GL Feed so it’s easy to prepare journal entries.
Not much downside to it but the app seems to run slow although they switched to AWS sometime in 2020. The speed really isn’t a major issue but it can be annoying for some people. There is definitely some room for UI/UX improvements! P.S. I was just resetting my password and it took about a good 30 seconds to get a “successfully updated” message after clicking the submit button.
Visual Lease allows us to comply with ASC 842 while improving the visibility of our lease portfolio, and it allows us to perform analysis of this crucial data.
Visual Lease is a very intuitive platform, very friendly to navigate. It allows you to consolidate all of your lease portfolio in a single place that can become the single source of truth for your decision making process and analyses of your leases.
It would be great to have more options to upload the leases information to the platform, including Optical Character Recognition technology that allows you to add some automation to this critical process.
I love working with Visual Lease. It is extremely logical, intuitive and easy to use. I especially love how the data exports to Excel for easy manipulation. Uploading to the Documents tab is a very easy task. Visual Lease provides numerous Standard Reports and it is simple to create your own Custom Reports. Even the Standard Reports can be further edited as they export to Excel. And the tech support is TOP NOTCH! We’ve been in the Visual Lease “cloud” and are 100% satisfied. We launched the Accounting Module to run rents through Lease Administration and the process has gone very well. Visual Lease is excellent!
