Property Management Bookkeeping Services

Property management bookkeeping for management companies, owner-operators, and landlords running other people’s properties. Trust accounting that ties out, owner statements that make sense, and management-fee revenue tracked cleanly — every month. Remote, serving property managers nationwide, with a Georgia base.

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Property management books break differently

A property manager isn’t just a landlord with more doors. You’re holding other people’s money — rent that belongs to owners, deposits that belong to tenants — and the accounting has to prove, at any moment, exactly whose money is whose.

That’s where most property management books fall apart. Owner funds and company funds blur together. Security deposits get booked as income. Management fees hide inside a wall of pass-through rent. And when an owner asks “where’s my money?”, the answer takes three days to reconstruct.

We build books where trust liabilities, owner draws, and your actual management revenue are separated cleanly — so your statements are defensible and your real profit is visible.

The Georgia rule that makes this non-negotiable

Georgia adds a specific reason this matters. Under O.C.G.A. 44-7-30 through 44-7-37, security deposits generally have to sit in a dedicated escrow account at a bank or lending institution regulated by the state or federal government – not a landlord’s operating account, and not mixed with rent. Individual owners holding ten units or fewer are exempt from the escrow requirement on their own, but that exemption disappears the moment they hire a property management company. In plain terms: if you manage property for someone else in Georgia, the escrow requirement applies to the funds you hold, regardless of how small the individual owner’s portfolio is. Tenants also have to be told in writing where that escrow account sits. This is exactly the trust-liability structure we build – deposits and owner funds held separately, reconciled to the penny, with a paper trail that answers a state inquiry the same way it answers an owner’s question.

What we handle for property managers

Trust accounting. Owner funds and tenant deposits held as liabilities, reconciled to the penny. Your trust balance always ties to what you actually owe.
Owner statements. Clean monthly statements per owner — rent in, expenses out, management fee, net disbursement — that owners can actually read.
Management-fee revenue. Your fee income separated from the pass-through rent it’s buried in, so you finally see what the company earns.
Platform reconciliation. We work inside AppFolio, Buildium, and DoorLoop, and from Rent Manager and Propertyware reports, and reconcile them against QuickBooks and the bank — the gap between the platform and the bank is where errors hide.
Multi-entity structures. Management company, holding entities, and owner LLCs kept straight, with intercompany transfers booked as due to / due from.
Security deposits. Booked as the liability they are, moved to income only when actually retained under the lease.

What property management accounting actually involves

Property management accounting is the bookkeeping a property manager needs beyond ordinary business accounting. It keeps owner money and tenant deposits separate from the management company’s own money, and it proves each pool of money against the bank every month. It produces an owner statement for each owner and a profit and loss for each property rather than one total for the portfolio. It also ties the management software, such as AppFolio or Buildium, back to the accounting file so both systems agree.

The core test is the three-way trust reconciliation. The adjusted bank balance, the trust ledger balance and the sum of every individual owner and tenant balance must match as of the same date. When they do not, the difference is traced to a specific transaction instead of being adjusted away. Our walk-through of the trust account reconciliation shows each step.

How the month-end close works

Bring every feed current. Each bank and card transaction gets a payee and a property. Nothing sits in an uncategorized account.
Reconcile every account to its statement. Operating, trust, reserve and card accounts each tie to zero. A difference is investigated, not plugged.
Prove the trust account three ways. Bank, book and the sum of individual balances, all as of the same date.
Tie the software to the books. Rent collected, fees charged, owner contributions, owner draws and deposits held are compared between the platform and QuickBooks. Any gap is traced to a transaction.
Produce the reports. Property-level profit and loss, a balance sheet for the management company and the reconciliations that back them up.

The close is the product. A trust account that reconciled in March and was not looked at again until June is not a controlled account. It is a reconciliation that worked once.

Where property management books usually go wrong

Deposits booked as income. A deposit you hold is owed back to the tenant. Booked as revenue, it inflates income and makes the trust account look short. See how deposits should be recorded.
Owner draws and contributions treated as expenses or income. They are movements of owner funds, not operating results.
Repairs and improvements mixed together. A repair is an expense this year and an improvement is capitalized. Here is how to tell them apart.
One entity’s money paying another entity’s bills. Without a clean due-to and due-from record, nobody can say what is owed between companies. More on multi-entity books.
Software and books that no longer match. Usually a payment applied in one system and not the other, or a fee charged on a date the books did not pick up.

Bookkeeping, accounting, or a bookkeeper — what you actually need

People come to us searching for different things. Some want property management accounting services, some want property management bookkeeping services, and some just want to hire a property management bookkeeper. In practice the request behind all three is usually the same: the trust account has to tie out, the owner statements have to be defensible, and the management fee has to land in the right place.

Where the words genuinely differ: bookkeeping is the monthly work of recording and reconciling what happened. Accounting usually means that plus the interpretation on top — how the entity is structured, what the statements say about the business, what your CPA needs at year end. We do the first as routine and the second where it is useful. What we do not do is file your returns; that stays with your CPA, and we make their job cheaper by handing over books that reconcile.

If you want to know where you stand before speaking to anyone, run the self-check first: seven signs your property management books will not reconcile.

Who this is for

Third-party property management companies managing single-family or small multifamily across Metro Atlanta
Owner-operators who self-manage a growing portfolio and have outgrown the spreadsheet
Short-term rental managers running units on behalf of owners
Associations and HOAs needing clean, auditable books

Property managers outside Georgia

Trust-account, security-deposit and owner-funds rules differ by state, and some states license property managers and set their own trust-account practices. We work from the rules as you and your broker or CPA confirm them for your state. The monthly work is the same everywhere: a three-way trust reconciliation, an owner statement for each owner, and a tie-out between your management software and the books. Because we are fully remote, where you are does not change how we work. Georgia is the example described above because it is where we are based.

Serving property managers across Metro Atlanta

We work with management companies throughout Metro Atlanta and North Georgia — Buckhead, Midtown, Decatur, Sandy Springs, Alpharetta, Roswell, Marietta, Kennesaw, Woodstock, Duluth, Lawrenceville, and the surrounding counties.

How we work: Profit Partners is a fully remote firm. Everything runs through QuickBooks Online, your management platform, secure document sharing, and scheduled calls — which keeps our fees lower and our turnaround faster than a traditional Atlanta firm. We don’t do in-person visits, and our clients prefer it.

Pricing

Essentials. Single entity, monthly bookkeeping, reconciliations, and financial statements.
Growth. Multi-entity or multi-owner books, trust reconciliation, class tracking, and monthly review calls. Most management companies land here.
CFO Partner. Everything in Growth, plus cash flow forecasting and strategic guidance as you scale doors.

How to hire a property management bookkeeper: six questions to ask

Whoever you hire handles other people’s money, so the interview should test the trust accounting first and the software second.

Do you reconcile the trust account every month? The bank, the book balance and the owner and tenant ledgers should all agree, with no unexplained difference.
How do you keep owner funds, tenant deposits and the management company’s own money apart? They should never sit in one balance.
Which property software do you work in, and how does it tie to QuickBooks? AppFolio, Buildium and DoorLoop each need a monthly tie-out.
When do owner statements go out, and who checks them? A fixed day each month, reviewed before they are sent.
How do you handle management fees, leasing fees and reimbursements? Each should post to the right income or expense line and to the right owner.
What do you hand your CPA at year-end? Clean reports and the vendor and owner payment records. Your CPA or tax preparer prepares the 1099s and the return.

Our answers are on this page. If you want to hear them for your own books, book a free call.

Frequently asked questions

Do you work inside AppFolio / Buildium / DoorLoop?
Yes. We pull from your platform directly and reconcile it against QuickBooks and the bank. The platform and the bank rarely agree on their own — closing that gap monthly is exactly the work.

Can you fix trust-account books that are already a mess?
It’s a lot of what we do. Commingled funds, deposits booked as income, owner balances that don’t tie — we’ve untangled all of it.

Do you produce the owner statements?
We make sure the numbers behind them are right and reconciled. Many managers generate statements from their platform; we ensure the platform and the books agree so the statements are defensible.

Do you meet in person in Atlanta?
No — we’re 100% remote and upfront about it. Video calls, shared drives, and QuickBooks Online. Faster service for less than a local office charges.

Do you do taxes?
We don’t file returns. We prepare tax-ready books and work directly with your CPA.

Do you work with property managers outside Georgia?
Yes. We are fully remote and work from your management platform, your bank and QuickBooks Online. State trust-account rules differ, so we work from the requirements your broker or CPA confirms for your state.

Which property management software do you work with?
AppFolio, Buildium and DoorLoop most often. We also work from Rent Manager and Propertyware reports. In each case the platform is reconciled to QuickBooks and the bank every month.

Get your trust accounting under control

Start with a free books review. Thirty minutes, no pitch. We’ll look at how your owner funds, deposits, and management fees are being tracked and tell you honestly what’s working and what isn’t.

Book your free books review →

Or reach us directly: 678-221-6186 · chriss@myprofitpartners.com

This page is general information, not tax or legal advice. Confirm trust-accounting requirements with your CPA and applicable Georgia regulations.

For the QuickBooks side of per-property reporting, see how to track multiple properties in QuickBooks Online.

Running your own portfolio on AppFolio? See AppFolio bookkeeping for real estate investors in Atlanta.

Property Management Bookkeeping and Accounting Services