Property Management Accounting
Trust accounts that reconcile three ways. Owner statements you can send without checking twice.
Property management accounting is a different discipline, not harder bookkeeping. You hold money that is not yours, you report to every owner separately, and one broken ledger is a licensing problem rather than a rounding error. We run that function for management companies so it stops living in your head.
Why generic bookkeeping breaks here
You are running two sets of books at once.
One for the management company you own, one for every owner whose property you hold. Most bookkeepers are set up for the first and improvise the second.
Trust and escrow are not your cash
Security deposits and owner funds are liabilities you hold, not revenue you earned. They belong in a designated account, they must never fund operations, and the balance has to prove out against every individual ledger behind it. Commingling is the fastest way to turn an accounting gap into a license issue.
Every owner needs their own statement
A single consolidated P&L is useless to the owner of one building. Each needs income, expenses, management fees, reserves and a draw calculation for their property alone — accurate the first time, because owners check.
Management fee revenue is easy to state wrong
Fees earned, fees collected and fees swept from trust are three different numbers with three different timings. Treat them as one and your revenue is wrong in both directions across a month-end.
Owner draws versus reserves
What you distribute and what you hold back for maintenance and taxes has to be traceable per property. When a reserve target is informal, the shortfall surfaces as an angry call about a repair bill.
What we run for you
The whole accounting function, built for doors.
Your software, not ours
We work inside the system you already run.
PM platforms handle the property ledger well. The gap is almost always between that platform and the general ledger for your own management company — fee recognition, payroll, owner draws and trust movement. We close that gap instead of asking you to migrate.
Engagement scope
Three levels. Priced against your door count, not a package.
Doors, entities, trust accounts and how far behind the file is are what actually drive cost, so we quote after a call rather than publishing a tier you would outgrow.
Close Only
Your PM software is fine. Your own books are behind.
- Monthly close for the management entity
- Trust and operating account reconciliation
- Management fee revenue recognition
- Owner and tenant ledger tie-out
Close + CFO
Most commonYou are growing doors and need the numbers to keep up.
- Everything in Close Only
- Three-way trust reconciliation, documented monthly
- Owner statement review before distribution
- Doors, delinquency and fee-yield reporting
- Cash-flow and hiring scenarios
- Monthly CFO call
Full Back Office
You want the finance function out of the office entirely.
- Everything in Close + CFO
- Accounts payable and vendor payment runs
- Owner and vendor 1099 preparation
- Business tax prep and year-round planning
- Lender and acquisition reporting packages
Every engagement is scoped to your entity count, transaction volume, and close complexity, so we quote after a call rather than publishing a package you would outgrow. The call is free and you get the number in writing.
Getting started
First call to a clean trust reconciliation.
Questions
Straight answers before you book.
What makes property management accounting different from normal bookkeeping?
Two things. You are holding money that is not yours — tenant security deposits and owner funds sit in trust or escrow accounts that must reconcile three ways, to the bank, to the book balance, and to the sum of every individual owner and tenant ledger. And you report to two audiences: your own P&L as a management company, and a separate statement for each owner whose property you manage. A general bookkeeper set up for a single operating entity is not built for either.
What is a three-way reconciliation and why does it matter?
A three-way reconciliation proves that your trust bank balance, your trust book balance, and the total of all individual beneficiary ledgers agree. If they do not, you are either short in trust or commingling funds, and in most states that is a licensing problem, not just an accounting one. It is the single reconciliation a property management company cannot afford to skip, and it is the first thing an auditor asks for.
Do you work inside our property management software?
Yes. AppFolio, Buildium, Rent Manager, Yardi, Propertyware and RentVine all handle the property ledger and owner statements well. The gap is usually between that system and the general ledger for the management company itself — management fee recognition, payroll, owner draws and trust movement. We work in your PM platform and reconcile it to the accounting file rather than asking you to migrate.
Can you handle owner 1099s?
Yes. Rents collected on behalf of a property owner are generally reportable to that owner, and vendors you pay from trust have their own reporting requirements. Getting this right depends on clean owner records maintained through the year, which is why we treat 1099 prep as a year-round data-hygiene job rather than a January scramble.
Do you take short-term and vacation rental managers too?
Yes, and the mechanics differ enough to say so. Short-term management adds channel reconciliation across Airbnb and Vrbo, per-stay occupancy and lodging tax by jurisdiction, and payout timing that rarely matches the booking date. We work in that model as well — see our short-term rental and STR bookkeeping pages.
Go deeper — or just talk to us
Go deeper — or just talk to us.
Related terms
Related services
Send us last month’s trust reconciliation.
Thirty minutes. We will tell you whether your trust position proves out, where the owner ledgers drift, and what it takes to run this properly every month.
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