A lease renewal is three different events. Most files book all three the same way.

Renewals are the most common lease event there is, and under the new FRS 102 Section 20 a renewal is not one thing. It is one of three, and the figures differ depending on which.

1. An option written into the lease is exercised.

The contract always allowed another five years; you have now taken them, or become reasonably certain you will. That is a reassessment of the lease term (paragraphs 20.43 and 20.44). The liability is remeasured for the longer term at a fresh discount rate taken on the date of the reassessment (paragraphs 20.66(a) and 20.67), and the adjustment goes to the right-of-use asset (paragraph 20.65). Same lease, same record, carrying on. Nothing before that date changes.

2. A longer term is agreed that the contract did not provide for.

A deed of variation, or a fresh contract signed for the same premises while the old one is still running. FRS 102 defines a lease modification to include "extending or shortening the contractual lease term" that was not in the original terms. It is accounted for on the date both parties agree (that is the standard's own definition of the effective date), not on the day the new term starts, and at a revised rate (paragraph 20.71(c)) unless one of the three unchanged-rate cases applies (paragraph 20.72). Same lease, carrying on, with the new payments folded in.

This is the ordinary property renewal, and it is the one most often booked wrongly: as a brand-new lease starting the day the old one expires. Do that and the extension is recognised months or a year late, the old figures are closed off as if the lease had ended, and the two halves of one arrangement sit in the register as two unrelated records.

3. The old lease ran out with nothing agreed, and terms were reached afterwards.

That is a new lease: its own commencement date, its own term, its own rate (paragraphs 20.45 and 20.49). New record. If the business simply stayed put with nothing signed, the question is how long the arrangement is enforceable (paragraph 20.39), and that is a different conversation.

The line between 2 and 3 is a fact, not a judgement: was an agreement reached while the old lease was still in force?

Lease102 asks exactly that. The Renew action puts two factual questions about the contract and opens the right record: an option exercised (remeasured from that date at a revised rate), a term extension carrying the new agreement's reference and document on the same lease, or a copy of the record for the next contract, linked as continuing the old one. It states what each answer records; the decision stays yours.