ASC 842 Compliance at AI Speed: From Days to Minutes
ASC 842 lease accounting is one of the most tedious compliance requirements in business. Accountants spend weeks combing through dense leases, often at costs of hundreds or thousands of dollars per contract. Enterprise solutions run into the tens of thousands annually, yet mid-market companies still face the same regulatory pressure — without affordable, effective options.
We saw an opportunity: what if AI could cut this process down to minutes without sacrificing accuracy?
The ASC 842 Bottleneck
The current market presents a perfect storm of inefficiency:
High Costs: Enterprise tools charge thousands for their services and “budget” options are slightly less but still require manual data entry. Essentially, you’re paying for a glorified spreadsheet software that doesn’t eliminate any of the actual work.
Time Drain: Outsourcing often takes a full week per lease, and those organizations or CPA firms still face the fundamental inefficiency of manual processes that don’t scale.
Expertise Gap: Compliance requires specialized knowledge, creating bottlenecks and risk when organizations either hire expensive specialists or risk classification and measurement errors that trigger audit issues.
Technology Gap: Despite advances in AI, most organizations still rely on manual processes or outdated software that doesn’t leverage modern capabilities.
Built by a CPA, Powered by AI
What makes our solution different: it wasn’t built solely by AI engineers guessing at accounting — it was co-designed with a CPA who developed and configured the entire logic. The system thinks like an accountant because it was built by one.
We engineered a step-by-step AI workflow that mirrors how a CPA actually analyzes a lease, instead of a black-box guess that hopes for the best.
Enterprise-Grade Security First
Handling sensitive financial documents requires bulletproof protection:
Zero Data Retention: We don’t collect, store, or use your lease documents for training or internal purposes.
End-to-End Encryption: Industry-standard encryption protocols protect your data in transit and at rest.
On-Prem / Local Build: For organizations with strict data policies, we can deploy the solution directly on your infrastructure. Your lease documents never leave your environment, ensuring complete control and compliance with internal and regulatory requirements.
Reducing Errors to Near Zero
In compliance scenarios, an AI system that confidently provides wrong information is worse than no system at all. Our multi-layered approach eliminates this risk:
Mandatory Source Citations: Every decision is backed by exact lease text — no guesswork
Built for Edge Cases: System flags missing information instead of fabricating answers
Uncertainty Handling: Never makes up answers when confidence is low
Dual-Pass Verification: Two independent reasoning chains cross-check every result
Live Data Integration: Always uses current Treasury rates, not outdated information
Real-World Impact
In pilot deployments, organizations reduced classification time from days to hours while eliminating errors that typically surface in audits. What previously took accounting teams days now takes minutes, with:
Full Audit Trail: Complete reasoning and source citations for every decision
Excel Integration: Output works directly with existing accounting workflows
Comprehensive Coverage: Handles everything from simple office leases to complex equipment agreements with multiple renewal options
The Technical Foundation
Our system combines several breakthrough approaches:
Methodical Processing: Instead of trying to extract everything at once, the AI works through each decision point systematically
Real-Time Integration: Direct API connections to Treasury data ensure discount calculations use current risk-free rates
Adaptive Design: Rather than breaking down on unusual leases, the system gracefully handles edge cases and explicitly identifies what additional information is needed
Looking Forward
Our success with lease classification and measurement reveals the massive potential for AI to transform routine compliance work. The key insight: effective AI for specialized fields isn’t about replacing human expertise — it’s about encoding that expertise into systems that work at scale and speed while maintaining precision.
Replace your ASC 842 Roadblocks with Results
If your team is spending weeks and thousands of dollars on ASC 842 compliance, we can help you cut that down to minutes — without sacrificing accuracy. At The Glenwood Group, we combine deep AI expertise with CPA-level precision to turn compliance into a competitive advantage.
Contact us today to see how we can streamline your ASC 842 process and explore how AI could transform other time-consuming compliance work in your organization.