GASB 87 lease accounting software: 6 vendors compared

For a US public entity, GASB 87 software splits into two groups. DebtBook is the only widely used option built exclusively for public finance, covering GASB 87, GASB 96 and ASC 842 with unlimited seats and auditor access. FinQuery lists the broadest standards coverage of anyone (ASC 842, IFRS 16, FRS 102, GASB 87, GASB 96 and SFFAS 54), and is the usual pick when a component unit also reports federally. Nakisa, Visual Lease, Yardi Corom and NetLease all support GASB 87 as one standard among several. None of the six publishes a price.

This is a buying guide for finance officers at cities, counties, school districts, universities, airports and special districts who have a GASB 87 obligation and a shortlist to narrow. Every vendor fact below was read on that vendor's own site in September 2026. Last updated September 2026.

GASB 87 lease accounting software compared

Sort the field by one question first: is the vendor selling to the public sector specifically, or selling a corporate product that happens to have a GASB module? Both can produce a compliant schedule. They differ on whether the implementation team has ever seen a component unit, a fiscal year ending June 30, or an auditor who wants read access.

Standards coverage above is what each vendor states publicly, not an assurance that your specific arrangement is in scope. One name worth flagging because it turns up on generic shortlists: Black Owl Systems lists ASC 842, IFRS 16 and ASPE 3065 as the standards it supports, and does not list GASB among them. It is a capable lease accounting platform and a reasonable choice for a corporate lessee or lessor. For a US government entity with a GASB 87 obligation, it is the wrong shelf.

How much does GASB 87 software cost?

No vendor in this category publishes a rate card. All six quote against your entity size, lease count and module mix, and DebtBook states plainly that pricing depends on organization size and the features you need. That is the honest state of the market, and it means a real comparison takes several demo calls before you can line up numbers.

The dollar figures you will find on comparison and directory sites deserve real suspicion. For quote-only vendors those numbers are usually reconstructed from one old customer quote or generated to fill a pricing field, and the ranges published for the same product across different directories routinely disagree by an order of magnitude. A spread that wide is not a price, it is the absence of one.

What you can control is the shape of the quote. Ask for four lines separately rather than one bundled number: the annual subscription, implementation and configuration, the unit the meter runs on and where it steps, and the cost of getting your existing leases into the system. That fourth line is the one that breaks public-sector budgets, and it is the subject of the section below. Our lease abstraction cost guide works through the same three cost models in more detail.

One practical procurement note: several of these vendors hold cooperative purchasing or state term contract vehicles. Ask early, because it can remove a formal solicitation from your timeline entirely.

What is the difference between GASB 87 and GASB 96?

GASB 87 covers leases of nonfinancial assets: buildings, land, vehicles, equipment. GASB 96 covers subscription-based information technology arrangements, meaning your SaaS contracts, and it creates a subscription asset and liability using a model deliberately built to mirror GASB 87. Most entities that had a GASB 87 project then discovered a GASB 96 project waiting behind it.

This matters for software selection because the two standards use the same underlying data shape and the same review muscle. If your vendor covers only GASB 87, you will run the GASB 96 exercise somewhere else, usually back in a spreadsheet. DebtBook, FinQuery, Visual Lease and NetLease all list GASB 96 alongside 87. Nakisa and Yardi Corom list GASB 87 without GASB 96 on the pages reviewed here. Ask directly rather than inferring it.

Does GASB 87 apply to lessors?

Yes, and it is the requirement most often missed. GASB 87 uses a single model in which lessees recognize a lease liability and an intangible right-to-use asset, while lessors recognize a lease receivable and a deferred inflow of resources. Public entities are lessors far more often than they expect: ground leases, cell tower and rooftop antenna agreements, concession space in a terminal, farmland, a wing of a building rented to a nonprofit, marina slips.

Not every platform does both sides well. FinQuery states lessor and lessee accounting for GASB 87 and SFFAS 54 explicitly. Visual Lease covers both sides of the transaction. If your entity has meaningful lessor activity, put a real receivable arrangement into the demo rather than a building you occupy, because the lessor path is where product depth actually separates.

Do we need GASB 87 software or is a spreadsheet enough?

A spreadsheet holds up when the portfolio is genuinely small, static and short. Under roughly ten to fifteen arrangements with no variable payments, no modifications and no lessor side, a well-built workbook reviewed by someone who understands the standard will pass an audit. Plenty of small districts run exactly that way.

The spreadsheet stops working at the modification. A lease amendment mid-term forces a remeasurement, the remeasurement changes the amortization schedule from that date forward, and the prior-year figures have to stay reproducible for the auditor. Do that three times across forty arrangements with staff turnover in between and the workbook becomes a liability nobody wants to inherit. The honest trigger for buying software is not lease count on its own, it is lease count multiplied by how often your arrangements change and how often your staff does.

The line item nobody quotes: getting the leases into the system

Every platform above assumes the lease data already exists in structured form. None of them creates it. The GASB 87 work that actually consumes a fiscal year is upstream of the subledger: finding every agreement across departments, deciding which ones meet the definition of a lease, and pulling the commencement date, term, options, payment schedule, escalations and any variable components out of signed PDFs that live in a records room, a shared drive and three department heads' inboxes.

That is the step that overruns. Implementation teams scope the configuration accurately and scope the back catalog optimistically. If you hold 200 agreements that nobody has abstracted, the platform is not useful until they are keyed in, and abstracting 200 agreements as a professional service is its own line item that can exceed the first year of software.

It is also the step where the data quality is decided. A schedule is only as good as the term, payments and options behind it, and a wrong renewal option or a missed escalation produces a clean-looking, audit-failing number. Once that inventory exists it tends to earn its keep beyond the audit: the same leased-square-footage register is what teams reuse when they have to account for emissions from leased facilities under a state or grant reporting requirement, which is why the exercise is worth doing once, properly.

This is the part we build. Upload a signed lease with its amendments and get the GASB 87 input fields back in minutes, each one linked to the page and clause it came from so a reviewer confirms it with a click instead of a re-read, then export to Excel or CSV and load verified data into whichever platform you select. The field list is the same one the standard needs, and our lease data extraction for lease accounting page sets out exactly which fields the measurement depends on. If you want a register to build against, start from the lease abstract template.

What to test before you sign

Run the same evaluation on every vendor, using your own documents rather than the demo lease:

• Bring your worst agreement. A scanned 1990s ground lease with three amendments and an exhibit that changes the rent. Every product looks equivalent on a clean template.
• Put a lessor arrangement in the demo. Receivable and deferred inflow handling separates the field far more than lessee schedules do.
• Ask them to run a modification live. Remeasure mid-year and show the prior period still reproducing. This is the audit question.
• Price the back catalog as a separate number. Subscription, implementation, unit pricing and abstraction of existing agreements, four lines, not one.
• Confirm auditor access and seat count. Some vendors include unlimited seats and auditor read access, others meter them. It changes the real cost materially.
• Check GASB 96. If SBITAs are coming, decide now whether they live in the same system.
• Check the exit. What can you export, in what format, and does it include everything you put in?

If your shortlist is still mixing product categories, the lease abstraction software comparison sorts the wider market into the three groups buyers actually choose between, and our implementation guide covers the sequencing that GASB 87 and ASC 842 projects share.