AI-supported lease contract assessment streamlines compliance with new accounting standards

Money Forward, Inc. is introducing the “Lease Assessment Agent” for “Money Forward Cloud Contract,” an AI agent designed to support compliance with new lease accounting standards. This AI agent assesses applicable lease contracts from executed agreements and streamlines the identification of complex lease transactions.

The “Lease Assessment Agent” is an AI agent within the one-stop contract management service “Money Forward Cloud Contract.” The agent analyzes digitized contracts to provide an initial assessment of lease eligibility and extracts relevant clauses and elements necessary for journal entries. By integrating this information with “Money Forward Cloud Lease Accounting“, users can seamlessly manage workflows from lease assessment to subsequent accounting processes.

The company’s Accounting Division and Development Department collaborated to develop this agent through iterative testing during the early adoption project for new lease accounting standards. Direct insights gained from the challenging early-adoption project enable this agent to meet the specific needs of practical accounting operations, ensuring high utility.

– Comment from Shun Matsuoka, Executive Officer and Group CAO of Money Forward:
In our early adoption project, identifying contracts for compliance with the new lease accounting standards was a labor-intensive task requiring months of extracting and verifying potential lease agreements. However, this agent achieves both comprehensive coverage and workload reduction by seamlessly providing the rationale for the contract’s lease eligibility based on automated data conversion. From an accountant’s perspective, features that minimize input effort, such as hiding unnecessary fields, make the tool user-friendly and provide a significant advantage for frontline staff.

For more details on this feature, see:
URL：https://biz.moneyforward.com/support/contract/guide/lease-assessment-guide/g058.html(Japanese only)

Furthermore, the company has completed the patent application process for this feature.

■ Background of Service Launch
As the use of AI advances, back-office operations are shifting from DX (Digital Transformation) to AX (AI Transformation). The use of autonomous AI to perform tasks on behalf of employees frees people from cumbersome work, leading to a dramatic increase in operational efficiency.

This Agent streamlines the workload required for the new lease accounting standard, which applies to listed and large companies*1 for fiscal years beginning on or after April 1, 2027. Among the tasks associated to comply with the new standard, identifying, classifying, and organizing lease contracts is considered the most burdensome for accounting staff*2. By having the AI agent handle these tasks, users can move smoothly through the subsequent accounting processes. Moreover, integrating with “Money Forward Cloud Lease Accounting” (launched November 2025) further streamlines compliance with the new lease accounting standards.

Money Forward Cloud plans to continue rolling out more AI agents designed for a wide range of back-office domains. The company will further evolve its products to enable the AI to work autonomously, driving business growth for its users through automation.

*1: Refers to “large companies” under the Companies Act, defined as companies with capital of 500 million yen or more, or liabilities of 20 billion yen or more, as stated in the balance sheet for the most recent fiscal year.
*2: Press Release Money Forward Conducts Survey on New Lease Accounting Standards (April 17, 2025, Japanese only)

■ About “Money Forward Cloud Contract”
Money Forward Cloud Contract is a cloud-based electronic signature and contract management platform to complete the entire process from legal consultation to document creation, application, approval, execution, storage, and management. It not only reduces the time, effort, and costs associated with paper contracts—such as printing, binding, sealing, and mailing—but also enables the centralized management of both paper-based and electronic contracts signed via different services. Furthermore, by integrating contract data with Money Forward Cloud Accounts Payable and Cloud HRIS, it streamlines contract-related workflows and enhances the overall productivity of back-office operations.
URL:https://biz.moneyforward.com/contract/(Japanese only)

■About “Money Forward Cloud Lease Accounting”
“Money Forward Cloud Lease Accounting” is a system that offers the fastest path to compliance with the new lease accounting standard, which will take effect on April 1, 2027. The system includes functions necessary for applying the new lease accounting standards, such as lease identification, calculation of right-of-use assets and lease liabilities, impact assessment, and journal entry creation. The service enables targeted systemization for compliance with new lease accounting standards while preserving the current system.
URL：https://biz.moneyforward.com/lease-accounting/(Japanese only)

■About Money Forward Inc.
Money Forward, Inc. is the leading SaaS / Fintech company from Japan, listed on the Prime Section of the Tokyo Stock Exchange (3994.T). We mainly provide B2B SaaS such as online bookkeeping, HR management, contract management, and payroll; now serving more than 425,000 paying customers nationwide. Our consumer-facing service for personal finance management (PFM) now has 17.5M users.
URL: https://corp.moneyforward.com/en/

* All company names, product and service names, and logos are trademarks or registered trademarks of their respective owners.

For further information, please contact:
PR Division, Money Forward, Inc.
Email:pr@moneyforward.co.jp