Close Assistant: Close Checks and Live Answers
The Close Assistant helps you close each period with confidence: one-click Close Checks reconcile the journals Lease102 expects against what you have actually posted, and the AI assistant can answer questions from your own live figures. Close Checks works whether or not you use a live ERP connection.
Close Checks in one click
Open Reports > Close Checks, choose the period and click Generate Report. Lease102 works out every journal expected for the period, per lease and per month, and shows which are posted. Each lease reads Posted, Partially posted, Pending, Not posted, Failed, or In progress, so a journal you have not posted is caught on close day rather than by your auditor. Data-quality checks (missing fields and material changes since your last report) run at the same time. To close one entity at a time, use the Portfolio selector: the checks, the data-quality results, and the mark-as-posted actions are then limited to that portfolio's leases, which is how accountancy practices run the close for a single client company.
Transition readiness
When the period you are closing ends on or after your FRS 102 transition date, Close Checks also lists any lease that starts before the transition date and runs past it but has not yet had its transition calculated. Until you calculate the transition (on the Transition screen), that lease's figures are still measured from its start date rather than from the transition date, so the check flags it for attention and links you straight to Transition. The same leases are marked wherever their figures appear: the amortisation schedule on the lease page shows an amber notice, and the schedule downloads (CSV, Excel and PDF) carry a PROVISIONAL notice until the transition is calculated, so a file sent to a colleague or auditor cannot be mistaken for final numbers. Once you calculate the transition, the notices disappear.
Recording a posting (draft vs final)
Close Checks also lists the dilapidations and make-good provisions your reporting date covers, and which of them have been reviewed. FRS 102 requires a provision to be reviewed at each reporting date and adjusted to the current best estimate; Lease102 cannot make that judgement for you, so it makes sure the question is asked and keeps the evidence that it was. The reporting date is your own financial year end, taken from the portfolio where it sets one and from the organisation otherwise, so nothing has to be configured. Confirming is one click: 'Reviewed, unchanged' is a complete answer and the commonest, and it is recorded against that reporting date with your name, the time and any note you add, and appears in the audit trail. Recording again for the same date supersedes. Where a provision is discounted at the lease's borrowing rate the list says so, because the standard asks for a rate specific to the obligation and each provision can carry its own. A provision owing a review also appears on your dashboard, in the panel now called Needs Attention, and in the lease alert email if you receive one: the same email that carries leases approaching their end date, naming each provision with its figure and reporting date, and including a provision at most once a fortnight however often you receive alerts. Lease102 counts a journal as posted in one of two ways. If you post through a live ERP connection, a completed sync counts automatically. If you export journals to post them yourself, tick 'This is my final posting' on the Journal Entry Export before you download: a plain download is a draft and records nothing, while a final posting records those journals as posted. You can also mark a lease as posted, or re-open it, directly from the Close Checks list; both act on the period the report on screen was generated for, so if you change the dates, press Generate Report again before marking anything. Reconciliation is by calendar month, so posting one month of a quarter correctly leaves the other months showing as outstanding. Where the comparison is a fair one, Close Checks also compares amounts and not only months, because every month can be recorded and the amount still be short. For an ERP connection it compares what the journals actually total; for a period you marked as posted yourself it records what those journals totalled at the time and compares that, so a lease edited after it was marked as posted is flagged rather than left reading green. And it looks the other way round too: journals sitting in your accounting system for a lease this period expects nothing from are listed by reference and month, since nothing here reconciles them. That usually means they were posted before the lease was transitioned, and comparatives are not restated on transition, so they may need withdrawing.
What the statuses mean
A month only counts as due once it has ended. Posted means every month the lease has journals in is recorded (by a final export, a manual mark, or a completed ERP sync). Posted (draft) means every month is recorded but at least one of them went to your ERP as a draft that still needs approving there, so those entries are not in your ledger yet and the lease is counted as outstanding. Partially posted means at least one month has ended unposted (overdue) while others are done. Pending means nothing is overdue - the months you have posted are done and the rest are still to come. Not posted means months have ended with none of their journals posted. Failed shows an ERP sync error to fix and re-run. In progress means an ERP sync is still running.
Ask the assistant about your own figures
On eligible plans the in-app AI assistant answers questions computed from your own portfolio: your total lease liability and gearing impact, maturity analysis, roll-forwards, what changed since your last report, and close checks. You can also model a hypothetical lease (for example, a 5-year lease at £3,000 per month at 6.5%) and see the balance-sheet and Year-1 P&L impact - nothing is saved. Every figure is computed under FRS 102 Section 20; the assistant never posts to your ERP and always leaves review and posting to you.
Plan availability
Close Checks and live portfolio answers are available on the free trial and on Professional plans and above. On other plans the assistant still answers from documentation and the button offers an upgrade.
Read-only by design
The AI assistant reads and drafts; it never posts journals to your ERP, changes lease data, or marks reports as run. Recording a posting is your own action - a tick on the export or a mark on the Close Checks list - and it only notes in Lease102 that you have posted; it never sends anything to your ERP. Posting to your ERP always remains a reviewed, user-initiated action.