Van Leeuwen’s prior lease accounting process involved the maintenance of a massive Excel Spreadsheet.

So, they implemented Occupier as a means to automate their ASC 842 compliance transition and make their day-to-day lease accounting easier.

Van Leeuwen is a pioneer in the artisan ice cream movement. They serve up delicious scoops of innovative flavors like Earl Gray Tea, Honeycomb, and Sicilian Pistachio to consumers across the country. Founded in 2008, with a yellow truck on the streets of New York City, and on a mission to serve great ice cream with great ingredients. Fast forward 15 years and Van Leeuwen has expanded to more than 40 retail locations across the United States.

Their robust real estate lease portfolio ranges from retail store leases to production facility leases. All of which require close collaboration between the real estate team and accounting team to manage the entire lease life cycle. Kai Lu, the Controller at Van Leeuwen, and his team implemented Occupier as a means to automate their ASC 842 compliance transition and make their day-to-day lease accounting easier.

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Why Was Excel No Longer Viable for Van Leeuwen's Lease Accounting?

Managing ASC 842 compliance across 40+ leases in Excel meant Van Leeuwen's Controller spent hours each month verifying formulas, manually adding new lease tabs, and accepting the risk that a single broken cell could create downstream inaccuracies ahead of an audit.

Van Leeuwen’s prior lease accounting process involved the maintenance of a massive Excel Spreadsheet. “I used to go through each tab, one by one — with 40 locations it became incredibly tedious. My time was spent making sure that every spreadsheet cell was linked to the correct formula each month. Then when we brought on a new lease, I’d manually input that lease data into a new tab on the spreadsheet.” recalls Lu.

The first and most time-consuming step in attaining ASC 842 compliance is organizing (and locating) all of your lease data. “If you are using Excel Spreadsheets to transition, then you are risking data inaccuracies and making it hard to track historical changes, errors, or outline policy decisions in preparation for your audit.”

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How Did Van Leeuwen Automate ASC 842 Compliance Without the Spreadsheet Risk?

Van Leeuwen implemented Occupier to replace their manual Excel process, automating journal entry calculations, syncing lease administration and accounting data in real time, and enabling a single clean export into NetSuite each month.

“The new rules can be confusing and complicated for most accountants, but Occupier makes it easier. After you enter the data, the Occupier software calculates your journal entries for you. And, with our leases stored in the lease administration module, monthly rent increases are automatically calculated per lease within the lease accounting module.” 

"Occupier gives us peace of mind. We export one journal entry directly into NetSuite. It’s a smooth lease accounting process each month. This software saves you time, and it is a nice clean interface to action your lease data.”

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“Switching to Occupier saved us tons of time and it’s much easier to run reports compared to Excel. Our real estate, accounting, and C-suite teams can log in and pull the reports or data sets that they need within a few clicks."

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What Did Van Leeuwen's Accounting Team Gain by Switching to Occupier?

With Occupier, Van Leeuwen's real estate, accounting, and C-suite teams can pull the reports and data they need in a few clicks, with journal entries calculated automatically and audit documentation always within reach.

Van Leeuwen identified several key benefits of implementing Occupier's lease management software:

• Save time with automatically calculated journal entries
• Changes in lease administration update in real-time in lease accounting
• At the month's end, the Accounting Team easily exports Occupier journal entries and imports them into NetSuite’s ERP
• Keep auditors happy with easy access to accurate measurements and operational policies
• Lease abstraction services to import every data point
• Diligent customer success team to quality check all lease data

“My advice to anyone working towards ASC 842 compliance is to start at least 3 months before your audit,” says Lu. “Especially, if a company has multiple locations, and they are not familiar with the new lease accounting rules, Occupier helps make the transition easy.”