Visual Lease Integration
Documents & TransactionsWhat It Does
Visual Lease is a lease accounting and lease administration platform built to keep an organization compliant under the modern lease standards — FASB ASC 842, IFRS 16, and GASB 87 — while also managing the operational lifecycle of every lease it holds. Where a location-management tool answers 'what is coming due,' Visual Lease answers 'what is on the balance sheet, and can we prove it to the auditors.' It takes the executed lease and its classification (operating versus finance), computes the right-of-use (ROU) asset and lease liability, generates the amortization and interest schedules, produces the journal entries to feed the general ledger, and assembles the quantitative and qualitative disclosures the standards require each reporting period.
Why Real Estate Professionals Use It
For a CRE operator, owner-operator, or fund with leased space and equipment, lease accounting is where compliance risk and reporting effort concentrate. ASC 842 and IFRS 16 moved nearly every lease onto the balance sheet, which means every new lease, every modification, and every renewal exercised has an accounting consequence — a new ROU asset, a remeasured liability, a revised amortization schedule, and a downstream journal entry. Get the classification or the discount rate wrong and the balance sheet is wrong; miss a modification and the schedule drifts from reality; assemble the disclosures by hand each quarter and the close stretches for days while someone reconciles spreadsheets against the lease file. Visual Lease structures all of this, and automation around it turns the structured accounting data into a faster, more defensible close.
AI Solutions for Documents
Ebook
CTO's Guide to AI Implementation
Security, compliance, and vendor evaluation frameworks for AI operations
Solution
AI Transaction Coordinator
Automate document collection, deadline tracking, and stakeholder updates
Solution
Commission & Pipeline Tracker
Real-time dashboard showing deal progress and expected commissions
Key Features for Real Estate
Discover how Visual Lease powers real estate automation workflows
1 of 6
Feature
ASC 842 / IFRS 16 / GASB 87 Compliance Engine
Classifies each lease (operating vs finance), computes the right-of-use asset and lease liability, and generates the amortization, interest, and roll-forward schedules required under the current lease standards across US GAAP, IFRS, and governmental reporting.
Real Estate Impact
Nearly every CRE lease now lives on the balance sheet. The compliance engine is what makes the numbers defensible — and an AI abstraction layer can feed it the lease inputs (term, payments, options, discount rate) extracted straight from the executed document, so the schedule is generated from the lease instead of a manual transcription that becomes the audit's first finding.
See how we automate Visual Lease
Get a personalized plan for your tech stack
Automation Workflows
Ready-to-deploy workflows powered by Visual Lease + NextAutomation
Workflow 1 of 4
Advanced
New Lease Added → AI Abstraction, Accounting Schedule, and Critical-Date Cadence
When a new lease is added to Visual Lease, the automation feeds it the accounting inputs (via AI abstraction of the executed document), confirms the schedule it generates, and builds the operational reminder cadence — turning a freshly signed lease into a balance-sheet-ready record and a live critical-date calendar at the same time.
Trigger: New lease record created in Visual Lease (detected via API poll or new-record event where provisioned; otherwise via a new-lease intake step before import)
Workflow Steps
1Detect a new lease record in Visual Lease (scheduled API poll for newly created records, or a new-lease intake queue feeding an import where the API is not enabled)
2Run the executed lease and amendments through an AI abstraction step to extract the accounting inputs: commencement date, term, payment stream and escalations, options reasonably certain to be exercised, and embedded non-lease components
3Write or stage those inputs to Visual Lease — via the API where provisioned, or as an import batch where the export/import path is the integration surface — and let the platform generate the ROU asset, liability, and amortization schedule
4Pull the generated schedule back and run a sanity check (liability reconciles to the discounted payment stream; classification matches the lease terms) before the lease is marked active
+3 more steps
A newly signed lease becomes a correctly classified, schedule-generating accounting record and a tracked set of operational deadlines within minutes — closing the gap where a new lease sits un-abstracted, misses its first-period accounting, and surfaces as a restatement risk at the next audit.
Triggers & Actions
Connect Visual Lease to your workflows with powerful triggers and actions
Triggers
New Lease Created
Fires when a new lease record is added in Visual Lease, detected via API poll for newly created records (where provisioned) or via a new-lease intake step ahead of import where the API is not enabled.
When a new lease is added, run AI abstraction to extract its accounting inputs, generate the schedule, sanity-check it, and build the critical-date cadence so the lease is balance-sheet-ready from day one.
Reporting Period Close Kickoff
Fires on a schedule at the start of each monthly or quarterly close, prompting the automation to pull the period's journal entries, schedules, and disclosure data from Visual Lease via API or period export.
On close kickoff, reconcile the journal-entry batch against the prior-period roll-forward and assemble the ASC 842 disclosure pack for the controller's review.
Critical Date or Option Approaching
Fires when a tracked critical date — option window, expiration, notice deadline — falls within a lead-time horizon you define, evaluated by polling Visual Lease's critical dates.
When a renewal-option notice deadline enters the 120-day window, escalate it with both the operational deadline and the modeled remeasurement impact attached.
Lease Term or Schedule Modified
Fires when a lease's terms, payment stream, or schedule change in Visual Lease (an amendment recorded or a remeasurement applied), detected via API poll for modified records or by diffing successive period exports.
When a schedule changes without a recorded modification, flag potential drift and open a remeasurement review task with the before/after figures attached.
Actions
Read Lease Schedules and Balances
Retrieve a lease's ROU asset, lease liability, amortization and interest schedules, and classification via the Visual Lease API, or ingest the equivalent period export where the API is not provisioned.
Pull every active lease's current balances and schedules at close to build the portfolio roll-forward and feed the disclosure pack.
Read Journal Entries
Retrieve the period journal-entry batch — ROU amortization, liability accretion, payment reclass, and modification adjustments — via API or journal-entry export for reconciliation and GL posting.
Reconcile the period's journal entries against the prior-period roll-forward and flag any entry that doesn't tie out before it posts to the general ledger.
Read Disclosure Data
Query the quantitative disclosure figures — maturity analysis, weighted-average discount rate, weighted-average remaining term, and cash paid for leases — via API or disclosure export.
Assemble the ASC 842 / IFRS 16 quantitative disclosures into a review-ready pack each reporting period without a hand-built spreadsheet roll-up.
Create or Stage Lease Inputs
Write a new lease's accounting inputs — term, payment stream, options, classification, discount rate — to Visual Lease via the API where provisioned, or stage them as an import batch where the integration surface is export/import.
After AI abstracts the executed lease, write the extracted accounting inputs so Visual Lease generates the schedule from the lease rather than from manual keying.
Setup Guide
Get started in approximately 30-60 minutes to confirm the surface and a first read; half a day for the close reconciliation and disclosure pack; 1-2 days to add AI abstraction, the modification check, and option escalation
Prerequisites
- A Visual Lease account, and confirmation from your Visual Lease account manager of whether your plan/partner status provisions API access or whether the integration surface is the export/import path (this determines how data moves in and out)
- Visual Lease API credentials (where provisioned) stored in a secrets manager or your n8n credentials store; otherwise, access to the ASC 842 schedule, journal-entry, and disclosure exports
- An n8n instance (cloud or self-hosted) with the HTTP Request node for API calls and/or a file-ingestion path for exports
- Your leases configured in Visual Lease with classifications and discount rates set (or an AI abstraction step ready to stage those inputs) so there are schedules and dates for automations to act on
- Destination targets configured: Slack for accounting/operations alerts, an email distribution list for the disclosure pack, and an Airtable or Google Sheets base for the reporting tracker and roll-forward history
1
Confirm the integration surface and obtain access
Ask your Visual Lease account manager whether API access is provisioned on your plan and partner status, and which objects it can read and write (leases, schedules, journal entries, disclosure data). If the API is not enabled, confirm the export/report path instead — the ASC 842 schedule, journal-entry batch, and disclosure exports. Store any API credentials as secrets, never in workflow source.
Decide the surface before building. An API path supports near-real-time polling and write-back; an export path is batch-oriented and best driven on the close calendar. Designing the workflow to match avoids rebuilding it later.
2
Establish a reusable read path in n8n
Set up either an HTTP Request credential for the Visual Lease API or a scheduled file-ingestion step for its exports. Build a small test workflow that reads your lease schedules to confirm the path works and to capture a real response/export shape you'll reference while building.
Save a sample of the schedule, journal-entry, and disclosure payloads to your tracker base. Field and column names are easiest to map against real data, and you'll reference them in every downstream workflow.
3
Build the period-close reconciliation
Create a workflow that, on the close kickoff, pulls the journal-entry batch and schedules and reconciles them against the prior-period roll-forward stored in your tracker. Branch any lease that fails to tie out — or whose schedule changed without a recorded modification — to an exception list for review.
Reconcile one lease end-to-end and confirm the roll-forward math (opening + additions + accretion − amortization − payments ± modifications = closing) before scaling to the portfolio. A correct check on one lease is worth more than a fast check on all of them.
4
Assemble the disclosure pack
Add a step that pulls the quantitative disclosure figures (maturity analysis, weighted-average discount rate and term, cash paid) and lets AI draft the qualitative narrative and close summary, producing a review-ready pack delivered to the accounting team.
Keep AI-drafted disclosure narrative clearly marked as a draft for controller review. The numbers come from Visual Lease; the narrative is a starting point, not a sign-off.
5
Add AI abstraction for new and un-abstracted leases
For new leases, add a step that runs the executed document through an AI model to extract the accounting inputs — term, payments, escalations, options, classification cues — then writes or stages them to Visual Lease so the schedule is generated from the lease. Sanity-check the generated schedule before marking the lease active.
Flag AI-extracted inputs as machine-extracted and route them for human confirmation the first few times on each lease format. Lease accounting tolerates no silent errors — earn the trust before relaxing the gate.
6
Wire the option escalation and the roll-forward history
Add the daily critical-date sweep that escalates approaching option windows with their modeled remeasurement impact, and the period snapshot that appends each close's roll-forward to your tracker so balance, term, and discount-rate trends are visible over time.
Snapshot the roll-forward every period even when nothing material moves — the time series is what surfaces a drifting discount-rate assumption or a clustering of expirations before it becomes a close-week surprise.
Frequently Asked Questions
Common questions about Visual Lease integration
Related Integrations
Explore other tools that work great with your workflow
Ready to Automate Visual Lease?
Get a free AI roadmap showing how to connect Visual Lease with your existing tools for maximum impact.
Get Your Free AI Roadmap