Customer stories, tips, and insights on lease and asset accounting.
Published January 15, 2025 • 6 min read
When Mike and Sarah Chen started Riverside Plumbing & HVAC in Columbus, Ohio back in 2015, accounting was simple. A few trucks, some tools, and a small office. Sarah handled the books herself using QuickBooks and a basic spreadsheet.
Fast forward to 2024, and things had gotten complicated. The company had grown to 12 employees, a fleet of 6 service vehicles, a warehouse lease, equipment financing agreements, and dozens of individual tools and assets that needed tracking.
"I was spending 4-5 hours every week just on depreciation schedules and lease tracking," Sarah recalls. "And I still wasn't confident the numbers were right. Every year at tax time, our CPA would find mistakes."
The final straw came during their 2023 tax preparation. Their CPA discovered that Sarah had been calculating depreciation on a $32,000 HVAC installation unit incorrectly for two years—using the wrong MACRS recovery period. The mistake cost them nearly $4,000 in missed deductions.
"That's when I knew we needed a real system," Sarah says. "But everything I found was either too expensive or designed for huge companies."
Sarah discovered Lease Easy AI through a recommendation in a small business Facebook group. The price point ($39/month for Professional) was within budget, and the promise of automatic depreciation calculations and ASC 842 compliance tracking caught her attention.
"I was skeptical at first," she admits. "We'd tried other software before that promised to simplify things but ended up creating more work."
She signed up for the 14-day free trial and started uploading their assets and leases.
Getting started took about 3 hours—longer than Sarah expected, but only because she had to dig up old invoices and lease agreements. The actual data entry was straightforward:
"The tooltips were really helpful," Sarah notes. "I didn't know the difference between MACRS recovery periods before. Now I understand why our HVAC equipment uses 7-year and our computers use 5-year."
While reviewing the assets she'd entered, Sarah noticed something unexpected. Lease Easy AI flagged that one of their vehicle leases was likely a finance lease, not an operating lease as she'd been treating it.
"I had no idea there was a difference," she says. "But when I read the explanation, it made sense. We have a bargain purchase option at the end—we're essentially buying the van."
More importantly, the system's tax optimization feature identified that several recent equipment purchases qualified for Section 179 immediate expensing—something their previous process had missed entirely.
After using Lease Easy AI for six months, Sarah shared their results:
Time saved: "I went from 4-5 hours per week to maybe 30 minutes. Most of that is just reviewing what the system calculated and approving the journal entries. It's probably 15+ hours per month that I've gotten back."
Audit prep: "Our CPA was shocked at how organized everything was. She said our lease documentation was better than most of her larger clients. Audit prep went from 2 days to about 3 hours."
Confidence: "For the first time, I actually understand our depreciation. I can explain to Mike why our book income is different from our tax return. That used to be a black box."
Cost savings: "Between the identified deductions and reduced CPA fees, we're probably ahead by $15,000 this year. The software pays for itself many times over."
Asked what she'd tell other small business owners considering Lease Easy AI, Sarah offered this:
"Don't wait until you have a mess to clean up. If you have more than a couple leases or a dozen assets, you need a real system. Spreadsheets just don't cut it once you start growing."
"And don't assume this stuff doesn't apply to you because you're small. ASC 842 affects everyone now. The IRS expects proper depreciation tracking. Getting it right from the start is so much easier than fixing years of mistakes."
Ready to see similar results for your business? Start your free 14-day trial of Lease Easy AI. No credit card required for the Starter plan.