LeaseAccelerator announced national consulting and talent solutions firm, Vaco, has joined its global alliance program. The new alliance will help companies accelerate adoption of the new lease accounting standards, ASC 842 and IFRS 16. The new standards will have material impacts to corporate balance sheets and will require significant changes to systems, processes, policies and controls.

As the initial Jan. 1, 2019 deadline is looming for public companies, experts with strong lease accounting and project management skills are both in high demand and in short supply. Vaco will leverage its consulting and strategic staffing model to help clients implementing LeaseAccelerator's Enterprise Lease Accounting software application with a full suite of services needed to comply with ASC 842, including:

• Process transformation – Assessment of a company's current policies and controls, data and systems, and people and processes; design of a future-state model that leverages LeaseAccelerator's powerful lease sourcing and management capabilities;
• Data collection – Identification of the data required to perform accounting under the new standards as well as abstraction of the necessary data from leasing contracts, invoices and purchase orders; and
• Software implementation – Upload of leasing data and master data into LeaseAccelerator's application; configuration of accounting policy elections and practical expedients for the ASC 842 standards.

"With the implementation deadlines for the lease accounting standards just a few months away, many companies are beginning to hit the panic button," said June Becker, managing partner with Vaco's Philadelphia office. "Vaco can jump in to help get projects back on schedule by deploying a hand-picked, fully trained and certified team of accounting superstars who live for complex operational challenges like implementing ASC 842."

"If accounting teams are going to deploy the necessary systems, processes, policies and controls in time, they will need to think outside of the box about how to source talent for this complex initiative," said Tyler Mills, vice president of global alliances for LeaseAccelerator. "We are thrilled to offer our customers access to such a diverse community of top talent via Vaco's unique staffing model."

LeaseAccelerator's Global Alliance program enables consulting, audit, tax and advisory firms, as well as business process outsourcing (BPO) providers, to assist their clients with implementation of the new ASC 842 and IFRS 16 standards. By leveraging LeaseAccelerator's Enterprise Lease Accounting application, alliance members can offer an expanded set of consulting, implementation and managed services to clients seeking assistance in transitioning their accounting and financial reporting processes and controls.

Vaco has over 35 offices across the globe, 780+ employees and 4,300 consultants, and $450 million in revenue.