Property Management Accounting in New Jersey
Outsourced accounting for property managers, landlords, and real estate owners across New Jersey and the New York metro area. Owner statements that reconcile, CAM reconciliations that hold up when a tenant questions them, and a close that lands on the same day every month. We work in AppFolio and QuickBooks.
Built for the way property companies actually run.
Property accounting is not general small business accounting with different account names. Money moves between entities, some of the cash in the operating account is not yours to spend, a single expense may be recoverable from tenants at year end, and the person who owns the building is not the person managing it. General accountants get this wrong in predictable ways. Diana Posner spent the first half of her career auditing real estate and construction companies, then served as the top financial executive inside a real estate management and development company, which is where she learned how owners actually read these reports.
Property management companies
You manage other people's buildings and answer to those owners every month. We run the accounting behind it: owner statements, trust and deposit reconciliation, management fee accounting, and the month-end close.
Owners and investors
You own property across several entities and want one clear picture. We consolidate, produce property-level reporting, and prepare what your lender or partners ask for.
Developers and construction
You are building or repositioning. We track development and capital project costs, prepare draw request packages, and handle job costing and placed-in-service timing.
How the month closes
A close you can set your calendar by.
Late books are rarely a bookkeeping problem. They are usually an order-of-operations problem, where reporting gets produced before the cash it depends on has been reconciled. This is the sequence we run every month.
- 01
Cash and deposits reconciled first
Operating, trust, and deposit accounts are reconciled before anything else, because every number downstream depends on them. Deposit liabilities are tied out tenant by tenant rather than in total.
- 02
Rent roll tied to the general ledger
Billed rent, receipts, concessions, and delinquency are agreed back to the ledger, so the rent roll you manage from and the financials you report from tell the same story.
- 03
Payables, recoveries, and accruals recorded
Vendor invoices are coded to the right property and the right expense, recoverable costs are flagged for CAM, and management fees and accruals are recorded in the period they belong to.
- 04
Property and entity financials produced
Property-level profit and loss, consolidated statements across entities, and intercompany activity handled so a portfolio does not look profitable only because a related entity absorbed the cost.
- 05
Owner statements and distributions issued
Owner statements that reconcile to cash, with distributions calculated from what is actually available after reserves and payables, on the same schedule every month.
- 06
Lender and investor reporting delivered
Covenant calculations, draw request packages, and the reporting your lender or investors expect, prepared from the closed books rather than assembled in a hurry when someone asks.
CAM reconciliations
Commercial tenants pay estimates through the year toward common area maintenance. At year end someone has to prove what was actually spent, work out each tenant's pro rata share, and bill or credit the difference. Done late or loosely, it turns into a dispute, and disputes are expensive whether or not you are right.
- Recoverable versus non-recoverable expense analysis
- Pro rata share calculations tied to lease terms
- Gross-up and exclusion provisions applied as written
- Tenant-facing reconciliation statements and backup
- Support when a tenant or their auditor questions the numbers
- Following year estimates reset off actual results
Reconciliation deadlines are set by your lease language, not by a general rule, so we work to the window each lease actually specifies.
Trust and security deposit accounting
Money held on behalf of tenants and owners is not operating cash, and the fastest way to a serious problem is letting the two blur together. We reconcile held funds separately, so what is in trust ties to what is owed, name by name, every month.
- Deposit liabilities reconciled tenant by tenant
- Held funds kept separate from operating cash
- Owner funds tracked distinctly from company funds
- Interest tracking on residential security deposits
- Clean records if a deposit disposition is ever challenged
- Internal controls reviewed by a Certified Fraud Examiner
New Jersey sets specific requirements for holding residential security deposits and paying interest to tenants, and licensed brokers have separate obligations for how client funds are held. We work to your obligations under those rules and will say plainly if what we find does not meet them. This page is general information, not legal advice.
AppFolio and QuickBooks.
You do not need to change systems to work with us. Most of our clients run AppFolio, QuickBooks, or both, and we work inside what you already have. Where the software is not the problem but the setup is, we fix that too: a chart of accounts that cannot produce property-level reporting, classes and entities that were never set up cleanly, or a migration that left balances behind.
AppFolio
Owner statements and draws, trust and deposit reconciliation, bank reconciliation, management fee posting, month-end close, and diagnosing the balances that stopped tying months ago.
QuickBooks
Chart of accounts built for property, class and location tracking, multi-entity structures with intercompany activity, consolidated reporting, and cleanup of prior periods.
Questions we get asked.
What does an outsourced property management accountant actually do?
We take over the accounting function of your management company or portfolio: recording and reconciling activity, closing the books each month, producing owner statements and property-level financials, and preparing the reporting your lenders and investors ask for. You keep leasing, maintenance, and tenant relationships. We make sure the numbers behind them are right and on time.
Why doesn't my owner statement match the bank balance?
Almost always one of a handful of causes: distributions recorded in a different period than they cleared, security deposits sitting in the operating balance, management fees accrued but not yet drawn, owner contributions posted to income, or a reconciliation that has quietly been off for several months. It is one of the most common reasons a property manager calls us, and finding it is a matter of working the reconciliation back to the last month that tied.
What is a CAM reconciliation and how often should it be done?
In a commercial lease, tenants typically pay monthly estimates toward common area maintenance, and at year end you reconcile what was actually spent against what was collected, then bill or credit each tenant for their pro rata share. Most leases specify a window after year end in which that reconciliation must be delivered, so the deadline is set by your lease language rather than by a general rule. We prepare the reconciliation, the supporting schedules, and the tenant-facing statements, and we back them up when a tenant questions the numbers.
Do you work in AppFolio, or do we have to change software?
We work in AppFolio and QuickBooks, which is where most of our clients already are. You do not need to switch systems to work with us. If your setup is the problem, for example a chart of accounts that cannot produce property-level reporting, we will tell you and fix it inside the system you have.
We are behind. Can you clean up prior periods?
Yes. Catch-up and cleanup work is a defined project with a fixed scope and fee, separate from ongoing service. We establish a point where the books last tied, work forward, document what changed and why, and hand you a clean starting balance. Most clients move onto a monthly arrangement once the cleanup is finished.
How do you handle security deposits and trust accounts?
Deposit and trust funds are reconciled separately from operating cash, so that what is held in trust ties to what is owed back tenant by tenant, and neither is quietly funding the other. New Jersey has specific requirements for how residential security deposits are held and what must be paid to tenants, and licensed brokers have their own rules about separate accounts. We work to your obligations under those rules and will tell you plainly if what we find does not meet them.
Tell us where things stand.
A free consultation, no pitch. If we are not the right fit, we will say so and point you somewhere better.
diana@posneraccountingsolutions.com
Cranford, New Jersey. Serving New Jersey and the New York metro area.