GASB 87 software for municipalities and counties comes from six vendors that a US finance office is likely to shortlist: Monetary (the company formerly called DebtBook), FinQuery (LeaseQuery), EZLease, Nakisa, Visual Lease and NetLease. All six calculate the lease liability, the lease receivable, the journal entries and the note disclosures. None of them reads your lease contracts for you as standard, and none publishes a full price list. The cheapest decision a town can make is to have every lease abstracted before the vendor's implementation clock starts.
This comparison is for finance directors, comptrollers, county auditors and town accountants at US cities, towns, counties and special districts who report under GASB 87 and are writing, or answering, a software RFP. Vendor facts come from each vendor's own site or a published case study. Where a vendor does not say something, we say so.
GASB 87 software for municipalities at a glance
| Vendor | Built around | Best fit for a local government | Published price |
|---|---|---|---|
| Monetary (formerly DebtBook) | Public finance only: debt, cash, investments, leases and GASB 96 subscriptions | A town that also wants debt and investment management in one system | No. Custom quote per package |
| FinQuery (LeaseQuery) | Lease accounting across ASC 842, IFRS 16 and GASB 87 | A county with an enterprise fund or affiliate on a second standard | No for LeaseQuery |
| EZLease | Lease accounting for ASC 842, GASB 87, GASB 96 and IFRS 16 | A small or mid-size county with a few dozen agreements | No. Directories list from $4,000 a year |
| Nakisa | Enterprise lease accounting with SAP and Oracle integration | A large city or state agency running SAP or Oracle | No. Book a demo |
| Visual Lease | Lease administration and accounting, GASB 87 and 96. Owned by CoStar Group since November 2024 | A city that wants lease administration and accounting in one platform | No. Request pricing form |
| NetLease (Netgain) | Lease accounting, GASB 87 and 96 | A small district already working in QuickBooks Online or NetSuite | Partly. The any-ERP edition prices in the app by lease count; the NetSuite edition is quoted |
One name change to know before you read old RFP responses: DebtBook renamed itself Monetary in 2026, and debtbook.com now redirects to monetaryhq.com. The company calls it "a rename, not an acquisition and not a pivot" and says it serves over 2,000 government and nonprofit organizations. The lease product, its Starter and Complete packages and your existing contract are unchanged. If your shortlist is already down to two of these, our side-by-side of DebtBook vs LeaseQuery for GASB 87 goes deeper on the two names most public finance offices start with.
What is the best GASB 87 software for a small municipality?
For a town or special district with fewer than about 30 leases, the best GASB 87 software is the one that is scoped for a small agreement count and does not charge for modules you will not use. Monetary's Starter package, sold under the DebtBook name until 2026, is built for up to 15 total agreements with two users, and in the public contracts we found, villages and small cities paid DebtBook from $7,770 to $11,500 a year. EZLease is the other natural fit, and it has a public local government case study that is worth reading before you write a single requirement.
Clark County, Washington started GASB 87 in Excel with TValue amortization across 27 lessee, lessor and future GASB 96 subscription agreements. The work was error prone, so the county switched to EZLease mid-project and implemented it in five months with one dedicated person and help from two others in Real Estate and Accounts Receivable. The case study names the obstacle plainly: a decentralized team made it hard to locate every lease. That is the part no software license fixes.
What is the best GASB 87 software for a large county or city?
For a county or city with hundreds of leases, several funds and an ERP that the auditors already test, the shortlist narrows to platforms with a deep integration story. Nakisa says its GASB 87 module is aimed at state and local government entities, runs from a SOC 1 and SOC 2 compliant cloud in the US, includes lessor accounting, imports spreadsheets in bulk and acts as a subledger for SAP and Oracle. FinQuery's LeaseQuery is the stronger choice when part of the reporting entity follows a different standard, for example a hospital authority or a utility affiliate reporting under ASC 842.
Visual Lease sits between the two. It names GASB 87 and GASB 96 and combines lease administration with accounting. Since November 2024 it has been owned by CoStar Group, which matters if CoStar Real Estate Manager is also on your list, because those are now the same company. We covered that in Visual Lease vs CoStar Real Estate Manager.
What should a municipal GASB 87 software RFP ask for?
A good RFP asks for the accounting outputs, the ERP export and a priced answer to who enters the leases. The Town of Glastonbury, Connecticut published a clear example in October 2021, RFP RPGL-2022-15 for lease accounting and management software. The town estimated 100 or more leases across real property, vehicles and equipment, managed in a decentralized way, and asked vendors to cover:
- Accounting. Lessee and lessor treatment including the lease receivable and deferred inflow of resources, modifications, remeasurement journal entries, fixed versus variable payments and the GASB 87 disclosure reports.
- Export to the ERP. Data uploaded to Munis for the town and Infinite Visions for the Board of Education, both Tyler Technologies systems.
- Contract review. Reviewing each lease, separating lease from non-lease components, finding the implicit rate where there is one, and populating the new software with data obtained from the leases.
- Price structure. Pricing for about 100 leases, the number of licenses, annual maintenance and support, training and the maximum annual percentage increase.
- Timeline. Work completed within 60 days of authorization.
Notice the third item. The town asked the software vendor to read its contracts. That is normal, and it is also where implementation quotes grow, because reading a commercial lease with amendments takes a skilled person two to four hours. If you plan to issue a similar RFP, a procurement team can run the vendor questions and scoring through procurement software so every response is compared on the same price lines.
How much does GASB 87 software cost a local government?
None of the six vendors above publishes a complete price list, so the only reliable numbers come from public contracts. Councils and boards approve these purchases in open session, and the staff reports usually show the amount. Gardner, Kansas approved DebtBook at $11,500 a year after the vendor waived its implementation fee, against a $15,000 standard Tier 3 price. Santa Fe, New Mexico signed Visual Lease at $18,000 a year for up to 360 leases plus a $3,500 implementation fee. Riverside, California budgeted $205,801 plus contingency for LeaseQuery bought through a CPA firm, with consulting bundled in, for about 450 leases. We collected every figure we could verify, with a link to each document, on our page of GASB 87 software pricing from real public contracts.
When you compare quotes, split each one into the same lines: annual subscription, one-time implementation, entry of existing leases, training, and the cap on annual increases. The entry of existing leases is the line most likely to be bundled vaguely and the one you can take out of the quote entirely.
Does GASB 87 software read the lease documents?
Mostly no. These platforms calculate schedules and disclosures from data a person keys or imports. Some vendors offer AI-assisted data entry or a services team for setup, and Monetary's Starter package does not include the AI data entry that its Complete package lists. Ask each vendor which fields it extracts, whether each value links to the clause it came from, and what your staff are expected to enter.
| Input the software needs | Where it sits in the contract | What municipal leases get wrong |
|---|---|---|
| Lease term | Term clause, renewal and termination options | Options in a council-approved amendment nobody filed with finance |
| Payments | Rent clause, rent schedule exhibit | CPI escalators and rent paid in kind, such as maintenance |
| Cancellation rights | Termination and non-appropriation clauses | Fiscal funding clauses treated as if they shorten every term |
| Lessor leases | Cell tower, airport, marina and concession agreements | Held by the department that signed them, not by finance |
Our critical dates extraction pulls the notice windows and option deadlines from those same clauses, which is what the department heads who signed the leases actually need from the exercise.
Abstract the leases before the implementation starts
Whichever vendor wins, it will ask for the same inputs, and the implementation quote depends on who supplies them. LeaseAbstracts reads each lease with its amendments and returns the term, payment schedule, escalations, options, cancellation rights and lessor terms as fields, each linked to the clause it came from. Your accountant checks the flagged values against the source and exports a spreadsheet in the import layout of the platform you choose.
Plans start at $49 a month for 15 leases, $149 for 75 and $399 for 250, with yearly billing at roughly half the monthly rate. There is no implementation fee and nothing to install. For a 100 lease town like Glastonbury, the Team plan covers the backlog in two months. Compare plans on the pricing page, or try the demo above on one of your own leases.