Professional Property managers-keeping track of money

[Mary Jay]

Hi guys,

So I have a question for professional property managers, or people who have more than one property they manage...

I have a small property management company and I have 2 bank accounts where the tenants deposit their rents.

From those 2 accounts I pay to contractors, ets...

1) Do you have a separate bank account for each property you manage? Or how many bank accounts do you have?

2) If you dont have a separate bank account for every property, do you pay contractors for different properties from the same pile of money? And then you just document which property used up such and such amount of money , is that how it works?

Thank you

[Anna Sagatelova]

Originally posted by @Mary Jay:

Originally posted by @Anna Sagatelova:

The fewer accounts you have to keep track of, the better and easier your life will be. An operating account is your most important and frequently used account, this is where rents go in and operating expenses (utilities, vendors, rental registrations, etc) comes out of. It is also good to have a separate account for security deposits only. Keep it simple :)

 I like simple! :-)

How do you make sure you do not co-mingle the funds?

What are you trying to avoid co-mingling? Rents from different units? It does not matter that they are in the same account, as long as each property has its own ledger and you reconcile accounting. 

We are a professional management company, so of course we have to ensure no co-mingling of trust account funds (this is our clients' money, and this is where rents are deposited) and our own company operating accounts. In the case of self-management, this is not an issue.