German AI Co. Leverton Forms Second Accountancy Partnership

German legal and property AI company LEVERTON has partnered with accountancy software company AMANA Consulting to develop applications to handle the new lease accounting standards, IFRS 16 and US GAAP ASC 842.

The move appears to be part of a wider trend among legal AI companies to partner with other businesses to both gain new capabilities they don’t have inhouse and also to help develop new products to appeal to a wider client base.

This is the second lease accounting partnership the German AI company has made recently. In March they also announced a deal with UK-based boutique accountancy firm Theta Financial Reporting, also with a focus on developing their offering in the lease accounting standards area.

While at face value this may not seem a game changer, especially for those in the legal field, the reality is that the new accounting standards will have a big impact on the property sector, an area where legal AI is often used today. In which case, gaining this new capability could be a significant step.

IFRS 16, for example, will mean that leases, from property to other major items, that were once kept off balance sheet, will now have to be on balance sheet. Leverton’s AI will help with analysing lease documents and helping companies to comply with the new standards.

Leverton said that they would be working in particular with AMANA Consulting’s GlobalLeaseCenter software, which is a web-based, cloud enabled application for lessees and lessors which supports calculating and posting of leasing contracts. It also provides reporting and controlling measures such as relating to buy or rent decisions.

The idea is that this specialist software for accounting will be able to integrate with Leverton’s natural language processing capability to read legal and property documents, as well as link with its ‘data core’ capability, which in essence is the long-term storing and AI-led analysis of data, as opposed to only analysing data on a case by case basis.

In a statement the German AI company said: ‘Both parties are convinced that this highly automated and fast process will help clients to simplify their lease accounting transition while saving time and cost.’

This latest move is in step with other legal AI companies that have also sought to build partnerships. In particular RAVN in the UK has formed multiple partnerships with a wide range of consultants, tech advisers and others, also to widen expertise that is not available inhouse and also to generate a broader reach to potential clients.