New from FASB.

• Position: FASB

The Financial Accounting Standards Board recently released two new accounting standards updates dealing with employee share-based payments and leases.

Employee Share-based Payment Accounting

This accounting standard update is intended to improve the accounting for employee share-based payments that affects all organizations that issue share-based payment awards to their employees. The update simplifies two areas specific to private companies:

* Practical Expedient for Expected Term:

In lieu of estimating the period of time that a share-based award will be outstanding, private companies can now apply a practical expedient to estimate the expected term for all awards with performance or service conditions that have certain characteristics.

* Intrinsic Value: Private companies can now make a one-time election to switch from measuring all liability-classified awards at fair value to measuring them at intrinsic value. Previously, private companies were provided an option to measure all liability-classified awards at intrinsic value, but some private companies were unaware of that option.

Lease Accounting

With this update, the FASB is working to improve financial reporting about leasing transactions. The update affects all companies and other...