Companies that have any interests in leasing can help shape the future of lease accounting rules by completing a 20-minute survey.

The Financial Accounting Standards Board and the International Accounting Standards Board are looking for companies on both sides of lease transactions—the lessees who acquire property or equipment under lease agreements and the lessors who provide such assets—to answer a few questions. The survey focuses on how companies use and account for leases.

The survey is part of FASB’s and IASB’s effort to better understand the likely impact of their joint effort to overhaul lease accounting rules. FASB proposed a new standard for U.S. Generally Accepted Accounting Principles, while IASB issued a similar proposal for International Financial Reporting Standards.

The proposed standards would require companies not only to record their leases on the balance sheet, but also to better reflect the likely long-term obligation that they assume when they sign a lease agreement. FASB and IASB are conducting various outreach activities both to educate preparers and users of financial statements on how the accounting will change and to assess the impact of the proposed new approach on financial reporting. The boards said companies do not need to study the proposal in order to complete the survey. Feedback will be confidential and will not be used externally in a way that ties any data back to a given entity, FASB and IASB said.

In addition to the survey, the boards are conducting roundtable sessions, and they are field testing the approach with companies that are willing to take the new standard for a test drive. While survey respondents are not obligated to perform field testing, the boards are still looking for entities that are willing to apply their own lease circumstances to the new standard to get a sense for how the accounting will work and what impact it will have on financial statements.

The field work will consist of assessing the costs and level of effort necessary to apply the proposals along with providing a sneak peek at how the accounting will affect presentation in financial statements. Companies that consent to field testing would be asked to present their findings in workshops to the boards. Field testing is scheduled to take place in October with workshops scheduled for November and December.

Companies have until Sept. 30 to complete the survey and Dec. 15 to comment directly on the proposal.