Managing 100+ Leases Without a Central Repository Exposed Volunteers of America Chesapeake & Carolinas to Unseen Risks

As Executive Vice President and CFO of Volunteers of America Chesapeake & Carolinas, Suzanne Tobin first looked into Occupier when ASC 842 came into effect. The organization manages a large lease portfolio, and overseeing it manually wasn't realistic. But the accounting standard change surfaced a deeper problem. Leases were everywhere. 

As CFO, she fielded all the lease questions - when does the lease expire, what are we paying per month - all the common things people needed to know, but had no way to find out quickly.

Protecting the Budget When Federal Funding Shifts

Volunteers of America Chesapeake & Carolinas relies on federal grants for many of its programs. Funding streams can shift over time. Leases signed under the old, disconnected system carried that risk with no built-in way to respond to it.

For leases tied to programs that depend on federal grants, Tobin's team now includes exit clauses tied directly to funding changes. If a government funding stream shifts, the organization has a documented way out, rather than being locked into a lease that no longer matches the program's funding reality.

Occupier is what makes that protection usable rather than just theoretical. Instead of digging through a signed lease to find out whether a funding-contingent exit clause exists, Tobin can pull it up in Occupier and confirm the terms right away. 

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“We've added in clauses that essentially say if the government funding stream changes, we can exit our leases. Occupier allows us to quickly identify the relevant clauses in leases, saving us time and money.” — Suzanne Tobin, EVP and CFO

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Confidence in the Numbers, Every Audit Season

Audit season no longer carries the burden of manual lease verification for Volunteers of America Chesapeake & Carolinas. As an entity reliant on federal grants, the organization's finance department previously spent dozens of hours retrieving individual contracts and validating math by hand; a tedious requirement during their most critical reporting period.

By leveraging Occupier, Tobin provides auditors with direct, read-only entry to the platform. This self-service model allows external teams to verify calculations and pull documentation independently, bypassing the finance team entirely. Complex lease accounting that once demanded manual intervention is now finalized in less than five minutes, while annual footnote disclosures are generated with high confidence and minimal manual effort. “For our annual audit, I created a login for our auditors that's read only, which significantly reduced questions regarding leases. Now, they are pulling the information in Occupier themselves.”

Real-Time Lease Data Turns Strategic Questions into Answers

Instead of wasting time searching through email chains, Tobin can instantly verify exit options and remaining lease periods when a program requires expansion or relocation.

Occupier's dashboard plays a direct role in that shift. Seeing the full lease picture on one screen, rather than piecing it together from scattered files, has made it easier for Tobin and her team to think strategically without getting lost in the details of any single lease.

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“Occupier has helped influence our strategy and vision. The platform provides a thorough database of information. I love the dashboard the relevant lease details on the lease landing pages. It helps us to think strategically without getting lost in the details.”

How Occupier Supports Budgeting and Program Operations

Volunteers of America's VP of Finance pulls lease numbers directly into the budgeting cycle now instead of assembling them by hand, and that same data sharpens how each program's direction is evaluated. That evaluation now includes lease specifics like cost, term length, and renewal timing, details that were easy to overlook when the information was scattered across email and drives and took real effort to track down.

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“For financial analysis, we have largely used Occupier for budgeting, because it's very helpful to quickly look up the numbers. We have also used it as we analyze operations for each program. This has helped us to think strategically about the vision for the program and its future direction, whereas before it wasn't easily accessible.”

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Why Suzanne Tobin Recommends Occupier to Other CFOs

Tobin has recommended Occupier to a number of her CFO counterparts at other organizations. Her guidance is straightforward: for a portfolio in the double digits, manual tracking might still work, but past that scale, Occupier pays for itself.

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“Occupier makes lease management simple, easy, and reduces the time it takes to manage the leases. I highly recommend Occupier to colleagues with large lease portfolios. 

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