DebtBook vs LeaseQuery for GASB 87: Pricing and Fit Compared

For most US governments choosing between DebtBook and LeaseQuery for GASB 87, the deciding question is what else the software has to do. DebtBook is built specifically for public finance teams and ties leases and GASB 96 subscriptions to debt, cash and investment management. LeaseQuery, now sold by FinQuery, is a multi-standard lease accounting subledger that also covers ASC 842, IFRS 16 and SFFAS 54. Neither publishes a price for the full product, and neither enters your leases for you on every tier. We read both vendors' own pricing and product pages in September 2026, and everything below comes from those pages.

This comparison is for finance directors, controllers and auditor-controllers at US counties, cities, school districts, special districts, universities and public hospitals who have a GASB 87 schedule to produce this fiscal year and a shortlist of two. If your entity is a company reporting under ASC 842, the lease accounting software guide for CPA firms covers that market better.

DebtBook vs LeaseQuery at a glance

The two products overlap on the core GASB 87 job: calculate the lease liability and right-to-use asset, produce amortization schedules and journal entries, and generate the note disclosures your auditor asks for. They differ on who they were built for and what sits around the lease module.

How much does DebtBook cost?

DebtBook does not publish a dollar figure. Its pricing page offers a custom quote for each product and says pricing depends on the size of your organization and the features you need. What it does publish is the package structure for lease and subscription management, which tells you a lot about where the cost goes.

The Starter package is for smaller organizations with up to 15 total agreements and includes 2 users, automated general ledger functionality, determination questions, schedule creation, journal entry and audit note exports, and change management. The Complete package adds unlimited agreements and unlimited users, AI data entry, an ERP export format, automatic materiality determination, reconciliation, payment reporting and SBITA project management for GASB 96. DebtBook's pricing FAQ is explicit that there are no free trials, and it says 2,100+ customers use the platform.

How much does LeaseQuery cost?

LeaseQuery itself is quote only. The FinQuery pricing page is a request form, and leasequery.com now redirects to finquery.com, so the product you are pricing is FinQuery's lease accounting platform under the LeaseQuery name. FinQuery does publish prices for its small-portfolio tier, LeaseGuru, and they are worth knowing because they set the floor of the market.

One caution for public entities. LeaseGuru's own page describes its reports as ASC 842 or IFRS 16 compliance, and its lessor accounting sits on the LeaseQuery tier. A government is very often a lessor as well as a lessee under GASB 87, recording a lease receivable and a deferred inflow for the space and land it rents out. Confirm in writing that the tier you are quoted handles GASB 87 lessor accounting before you budget around the LeaseGuru prices. Our FinQuery and LeaseQuery alternatives page tracks what FinQuery publishes over time.

Is DebtBook or LeaseQuery better for a small government?

For a small government with a handful of leases and no other public finance software, DebtBook's Starter package is the more natural fit, because it is scoped for up to 15 agreements and built around GASB rather than adapted to it. The catch is that Starter does not include AI data entry, so every lease still gets keyed by a person. LeaseGuru has the advantage of a published price, but check GASB lessor coverage before you rely on it.

The data entry point matters more than it looks. A county with 12 leases might have 40 documents once amendments, renewals and rent adjustment letters are counted, and the inputs GASB 87 needs are scattered across all of them: the lease term including options you are reasonably certain to exercise, fixed payments and their escalations, the commencement date, and any variable payments tied to an index. Getting those right once is most of the work. The software does the arithmetic.

Is DebtBook or LeaseQuery better for a large government or university?

For a large entity the decision usually follows the rest of the finance stack. If treasury already manages bonds, cash or investments in DebtBook, keeping leases and GASB 96 subscriptions on the same platform means one vendor, one set of users and one audit trail, and DebtBook's own customer quote from the San Joaquin County assistant auditor-controller describes audit notes and journal entries produced in a couple of clicks once the leases are loaded.

LeaseQuery makes more sense when the entity reports under more than one standard. A public university with a foundation or a for-profit subsidiary, a public hospital system with ASC 842 affiliates, or a federal contractor touching SFFAS 54 gets every standard in one subledger. That multi-standard coverage is FinQuery's clearest advantage, and DebtBook does not claim IFRS 16 or SFFAS 54.

Does DebtBook or LeaseQuery abstract the lease for you?

Partly. DebtBook's Complete package includes AI contract processing that scans contracts for key details and lets users choose which inputs to accept and enter the remaining required information. FinQuery lists AI-assisted lease data entry and a FinQuery Inbox that processes documents you email into the system and links them to the right records. In both cases the extraction is a step inside an accounting system, aimed at the fields the calculation needs, and a person still confirms the values.

What neither is designed to be is the lease record your facilities or real estate staff work from: renewal notice deadlines, termination options, assignment consent, maintenance obligations and the rest of the terms that never touch the general ledger. Those come from abstracting the lease itself. Many public entities do it in that order: abstract every lease and amendment once, check each field against the clause it came from, load the accounting inputs into DebtBook or LeaseQuery, and keep the full abstract as the operating record. Our critical date extraction covers the deadlines side of that record.

Payments are the other input that drifts. GASB 87 disclosures reflect actual payment dates and amounts, and those usually live in accounts payable as lessor invoices. If your AP team still keys those invoices by hand, extracting the invoice data automatically keeps the payment history consistent with the schedule the auditor reviews.

What to ask both vendors before you sign

• Which package covers our agreement count, including amendments? DebtBook's Starter limit is 15 total agreements. Ask how an amended lease is counted.
• Is GASB 87 lessor accounting included on the tier you are quoting? Get it in the order form, not the demo.
• Who enters the leases during implementation, and at what cost? DebtBook describes a dedicated implementation team and premium implementation options. FinQuery says its support team converts, transfers and reconciles your data when you start. Ask both what that covers when your source is a PDF rather than a spreadsheet, and price it as its own line.
• What do we export if we leave? Ask for a sample export of schedules, journal entries and the lease data fields before you commit.
• What does GASB 96 add? DebtBook sells leases and subscription-based IT arrangements as one Lease and Subscription Management product, while FinQuery lists GASB 96 Software as a separate product. If you need both, get both on one quote.

Do we need GASB 87 software at all, or can the leases go in first?

Every GASB 87 tool assumes the lease data already exists and is right. Whichever of the two you choose, the fastest path to a clean first schedule is to have every lease abstracted before implementation starts, so the implementation team loads verified inputs instead of reading PDFs. Leaseabstracts turns each lease and its amendments into a source-linked abstract you export to Excel or CSV, with published plans you can start on the same day. For the wider field of public-sector tools, including Visual Lease, NetLease and Yardi Corom, see our GASB 87 lease accounting software comparison.