The Company
Calisen is the UK's largest owner of smart meters. The group procures, installs, finances, and maintains millions of domestic smart meters across Great Britain, with around 1,500 people employed across the group and headquarters in Manchester.
UK subsidiaries report under FRS 102 and consolidate into IFRS group accounts for investors. Calisen manages roughly 300 leases, covering property, vehicles, and equipment.
The Challenge
A black-box, year-end lease process, outsourced to a Big Four firm
Before Rubli, Calisen reported lease accounting only at group consolidation level under IFRS 16, where a high materiality threshold meant limited audit scrutiny. Each December, the finance team would compile lease data and send it to a Big Four advisory firm, who subsequently would return it in February, with the relevant calculations. The journals were then posted into the group consolidation via a spreadsheet, and the process was effectively complete for the year.
No visibility into the advisor's workings. No audit trail. No monthly discipline. Rising fees each year, with 2025 set to climb further due to a head office relocation, site consolidation, and multiple lease renegotiations.
"We only really received the output. We didn't have an audit trail. We were at best relying on the fact that [the advisor] had done a good job, and falling back on the fact that our group materiality was super high."
Ian Price, Head of Tax and Fixed Assets, Calisen
FRS 102 Periodic Review removed the safety net
From 1 January 2026, the FRS 102 Periodic Review aligned lease accounting with IFRS 16, bringing operating leases onto the balance sheet at the subsidiary level. Lease balances that had previously sat comfortably below group materiality were set to become material in the statutory accounts across Calisen's UK entities.
That made the outsourced, once-a-year, spreadsheet-based approach unworkable. Calisen needed a system with a robust audit trail, monthly close discipline, and sufficient internal ownership to withstand statutory-level audit scrutiny across multiple business units.
Exposure hidden by materiality
When Calisen carried out a full internal review ahead of the transition to FRS 102, previously unrecorded leases were identified. A fleet of around 80 vehicles had been managed by the payroll team. Because they were posted through wages rather than lease costs, they never hit the ledger category that drove the annual IFRS 16 submission, and sat entirely outside the lease schedule.
At group level, with a high materiality threshold, the omission had remained below the radar. Under FRS 102 at statutory level, however, 80 vehicle leases would have been material. Bringing lease accounting in-house with Rubli surfaced the exposure before it became an audit finding.
"There was a fleet of about 80 cars that came straight onto IFRS 16 that was previously missed off the group schedule. People had just forgotten they were leases."
Ian Price, Head of Tax and Fixed Assets, Calisen
Why Rubli
Calisen evaluated three options. Specialist tools designed for investment property portfolios with layered funding structures were quickly discounted as over-engineered, narrowing the choice to Rubli and one competing UK lease accounting tool.
Three factors determined the decision:
- Hard period close. The competing tool reopened prior periods whenever a new or modified lease was added. That works with perfect, real-time data. It does not work when a lease agreement arrives three weeks after the month it relates to, or when a modification gets signed off outside the close. Rubli posts late leases in the period they are identified, rather than retrospectively into closed accounts, preserving the integrity of the audit trail.
- Intuitive interface. Business unit staff, with no lease accounting background, needed to operate the system without extensive training. Rubli was noticeably easier to use from the outset.
- Active product development. Rubli continued to release new features and respond to customer feedback, rather than remaining static.
"When the auditors go back and pull a file from June, it's going to look completely different to what went into the accounting ledger. It's just messy. We were really big fans of the practicality of Rubli. It's tailored to how businesses actually operate, not an ideal, perfect-information world that never happens."
Ian Price, Head of Tax and Fixed Assets, Calisen
The Implementation
Calisen signed up in spring 2025, deliberately timed to give the team a clean run at the 2025 year-end before FRS 102 took effect at statutory level on 1 January 2026. The implementation coincided with one of the most complex lease years the business had faced: a head office relocation, a two-floor consolidation at another site, rent-free period renegotiations, four or five property remeasurements, and around 80 newly identified vehicle leases to add to the register. FRS 102 transition work ran in parallel with all of this.
Calisen was up and running in around 4 to 6 weeks end to end. Most of that time was spent on Calisen's internal work: gathering lease data, reconstructing the historic position, and reconciling back to the 2024 year-end. Loading the data into Rubli was the fast part. When complete, Rubli's calculations aligned with the prior Big Four advisor's 2024 position to within fractions of a percentage point.
"We were up and running and getting outputs identical to the [advisor's] calculations within four to six weeks. Quick turnaround, and easy to implement."
Ian Price, Head of Tax and Fixed Assets, Calisen
From there, Calisen used 2025 as a clean-up year: adding the missing vehicle leases, processing the property remeasurements, and closing out a clean 2025 year-end. The FRS 102 transition rules then allowed the group to carry those 2025 balances into the statutory accounts on 1 January 2026 without restatement.
The Results
Cost that stops scaling with complexity
Rubli came in at roughly half the cost of the previous Big Four advisor's 2024 fee. More importantly, the cost no longer scaled with complexity. The additional work in 2025 (the 80 fleet additions, property remeasurements, and the FRS 102 transition) would have significantly increased the advisor's fees on top of existing year-on-year rises. Rubli absorbed all of this within a flat fee.
First audit delivered on Rubli
Calisen's first post-Rubli audit cycle has now closed. The Big Four auditor signed off the 2025 group accounts using Rubli's outputs directly, which include downloadable asset schedules, movement reports, journals, and the underlying lease agreements stored in the platform.
The process has shifted from a year-end black box to a monthly, auditable trail. Journals now post each month with clear supporting documentation, and the audit team was able to review both the mechanics and the evidence in a single place.
"The audit trail was a big thing in our decision to move to Rubli. We were able to demonstrate the journals and the journal sense. Previously we were booking everything at year end. Now it's a monthly process. That was invaluable."
Ian Price, Head of Tax and Fixed Assets, Calisen
Month-end close protected
Moving lease accounting from group to business unit level was Calisen's biggest concern. Teams with no prior experience needed to take ownership from 1 January 2026. Eight months in, lease accounting has not delayed the close once.
"We haven't stopped close because of anything that's happened on the leases front."
Ian Price, Head of Tax and Fixed Assets, Calisen
Confidence across the group
Business unit staff with no prior lease accounting experience quickly adopted Rubli without formal training. Leases are now captured at source, giving the group confidence in the completeness of the lease register.
"100% confident. It's easy to use. People aren't afraid of going into the tool. That gives us a lot of confidence at group that we're capturing everything."
Ian Price, Head of Tax and Fixed Assets, Calisen
A month's lease changes are typically processed in around 10 minutes. Staff changes have been absorbed without disruption.
The Outcome
Before Rubli, Calisen's lease accounting was an annual, outsourced exercise with no audit trail, protected only by a high group materiality threshold that was about to disappear. Today, it runs in-house on Rubli, on a monthly cycle, with first-audit sign-off, at roughly half the cost.
Calisen entered 2026 with clean balances, a confident finance team, and a platform ready for the FRS 102 Periodic Review. Next up: automated journal uploads into Business Central.
"It's been so easy to use. We've really benefited from Rubli."
Ian Price, Head of Tax and Fixed Assets, Calisen