An owner asks where their money went. That shouldn't take a weekend.
Owner rent, tenant deposits, and your management fee all move through the same account. Books that keep them apart — and prove it to the dollar every month — are the whole job.
Trust account tied out monthly
So you can prove, to the dollar, that no money is where it should not be
A P&L for every property
So you can see which building earns and which one quietly bleeds
Deposits held separately
So a move-out refund never has to come from another owner’s rent
Draws checked before they go
So you never pay an owner money their property did not collect
The five errors we find in property-management books
Portfolio books fail quietly. Nothing looks wrong until an owner statement doesn't tie or a deposit can't be refunded.
No trust / three-way reconciliation
The trust bank balance, the trust ledger, and the sum of individual owner and security-deposit ledgers have to match on the same day. A plain bank rec only proves the total. When the three don't tie, you're commingling funds and don't know it.
Owner draws that exceed a property's collected rent
Pay an owner more than their property actually cleared and you're spending another owner's money. That's a trust violation in most states, and it's the fastest way to lose a management contract when it surfaces.
Security deposits treated as income or parked in operating
A deposit isn't income — it's the tenant's money you're holding, and most states require it to sit in a separate account. Mixed into operating, they inflate revenue and create a shortfall nobody sees until move-out — when the money has to come from somewhere. We tore one of these apart in the field guide.
Repairs miscoded as capital improvements, and vice versa
A roof replacement expensed, or a filter change capitalized, throws off both the owner statement and the depreciation schedule the CPA relies on at year-end. Multiply that by a portfolio and the fixed-asset schedules are fiction.
Per-property P&L that doesn't exist
Everything lands in one blended set of books, so no owner statement ties out and nobody can see which building actually performs. You're managing a portfolio on an average, and averages hide the building that's bleeding.
The three-way tie-out, animated
The three-way tie-out: bank = trust ledger = sum of owner ledgers, on the same day. When they don't match, you're commingling and don't know it.
Books that prove whose money is whose
The monthly three-way trust reconciliation is the spine: bank equals trust ledger equals the sum of owner sub-ledgers, documented, every month. Security-deposit liabilities are tracked by tenant and segregated the way your state requires. Owner draws are checked against each property's available balance before they go out, not explained after.
Every property gets its own P&L and an owner statement that ties to the bank. Rent rolls reconcile to the GL. For commercial, we run CAM reconciliations so tenant billings square with actual costs. Repair-vs-capital calls get made deliberately and flow into per-property fixed-asset schedules your CPA can depreciate from.
We work inside Buildium, AppFolio, or Yardi and reconcile it to QBO rather than trusting either alone. Vendor 1099s run on a W-9-before-first-payment rule. Where each property is its own LLC, we keep the entities clean and consolidate them, inter-company balances included. Where a 1031 exchange is in play, we track the basis alongside your CPA. For the anatomy of a deposit cleanup, read the deposit shortfall teardown.
Where software stops and a person starts
Software can flag a draw that exceeds a property balance, and we let it. It can't decide whether a $9,000 invoice is a repair or a capital improvement, whether a deposit is refundable under the lease, or how a shared expense splits across an owner group.
Those calls change the owner statement and the tax return. They need a person — one who has made them before and writes down why.
Where it lands depends on three things: how many doors you manage, how many separate owners you report to, and what shape the trust ledgers are in today. Tell us those and you'll have a real figure inside a day. Pulling deposits back out of operating, if that's needed, is quoted separately.
Get your numberWhat property managers ask us
RE-1Do you do a real three-way trust reconciliation every month?
Yes — bank balance, trust ledger, and the sum of owner sub-ledgers, matched on the same day, with the workpapers saved. A bank rec that only proves the total isn't trust accounting, it's hoping.
RE-2Can you produce a separate P&L and owner statement per property?
Yes. Every property carries its own income and costs, and the owner statement ties to the bank activity for that property. If an owner calls and asks where a number came from, you can answer in one click instead of one weekend.
RE-3How do you keep security deposits segregated and compliant with my state?
Deposits are tracked as liabilities by tenant, held apart from operating funds the way your state's rules require. Exact requirements vary by state — where yours has specific account or interest rules, we set the books up to match them rather than a generic template.
RE-4Do you work inside Buildium / AppFolio / Yardi and reconcile to QBO?
Yes. The PM system stays your operational source and QBO stays the book of record, and we reconcile the two monthly. Most of the errors we find live in the gap between them.
RE-5How do you handle repair vs capital improvement classification?
Deliberately, invoice by invoice, with the reasoning documented. It changes the owner statement now and the depreciation schedule at year-end, so we don't let the bank feed decide it by default.
RE-6Can you handle one LLC per property and consolidate them?
Yes. Each entity keeps clean books, inter-company balances get reconciled instead of accumulating, and you get a consolidated view on top. This is normal structure for us, not a surcharge surprise.
RE-7Do you track CAM reconciliations for commercial tenants?
Yes — actual costs against estimated CAM billings, trued up on your lease cycle. Done late or not at all, CAM is money left on the table or a tenant dispute waiting; done monthly it's routine.
Show us the property file you're least confident about.
Thirty minutes, your books on screen. We'll tell you what's actually wrong with them and what it costs to fix. If they're fine, we'll say that instead.
Run something we haven't listed?
Most of what breaks in a set of books is universal — miscoded owner money, unreconciled deposits, a plug nobody cleared. Tell us what you run and what's going wrong, and we'll tell you straight whether we're the right fit.