Property Management Accounting Software

Today all business owners think of automating and optimizing the work processes to increase general productivity. The crucial part of any company is finances, especially for real estate. The financial department needs particular attention and accuracy in every tiny detail. 

Thanks to modern smart technologies and financial custom software development, it can be much easier than it seems to be. Property management accounting software is the solution for tracking all expenses, payrolls, bills, and invoices. Investing in developing a custom accounting management system can bring a significant profit to your company, save the budget and time.

What is accounting software?

An accounting management system is usually a cloud-based real estate software solution that automates the financial flow of the company. It includes a wide range of options that optimize and make productive all company aspects connected to money management. This software manages all financial operations like payments for brokers’ rent and services, tracking the bills and keeping invoices, property ( inventory) management, and custom report generation.

Things to consider before the development

Before you start developing and integrating an accounting management system, you need to consider the first steps that will help you quickly find the right team to create and implement your custom system.

Why do you need an accounting management system?

Accounting software is a demanded tool for efficient management properties. Every owner of a real estate company has to track the flow of finances of their business, save important data about properties and customers. The property industry usually deals with huge sums and each of them should be under control. Implementation of accounting software for property also helps to generate reports and analyze all operations, pay taxes in time, and improve the business plan in case of decreasing productivity. 

According to the recent polls among accountants, they concluded: 64% of interviewed specialists think that implementing accounting software increases the efficiency of the company; 44% think it improves the quality of services, and 42% predict it will attract more new clients.

Accountant poll report

Business Goals

All business companies set the main goals that are needed to reach in any effort. Accounting software can make the process of reaching these goals easier as it tracks the key work processes like:

• Cash flow
• Profit and losses
• Net worth

Taxes

Paying taxes is a complex process that demands scrupulous attention to every detail. Yearly the company accountants are forced to find all necessary information for the past year and fill in the needed document to pay taxes. The number of documents can be enormous so it is impossible to do it manually. Accounting management software comes to the rescue. It allows companies to keep and structure all important data about the work process, costs, and each employee in one accessible place, so accountants easily can find the required information.

Growth comparison

As all data about the company’s financial workflow is saved thanks to the accounting software solution, it gives the possibility to track the development of your company and its growth for the past years. Revealing your weak sides in that way, you can always change the business strategy to improve some aspects of your accounting. It also shows the most profitable deals for the past several years and defines the most profitable properties.

Common features of the accounting management system

Bookkeeping management

Bookkeeping control helps to see the general statistics of your company’s finances – deals, general income, taxes, etc. It allows you to understand if your business strategy is suitable and make decisions if any changes are needed. 

Payment Processing 

The accounting management system provides the maintenance and execution of scheduled payments like salaries, taxes, and payments for third parties like vendors and renters. It sends notifications to you or to third parties with reminders about coming payments. 

Transaction Management 

The real estate business and its agents have deals with transactions on a huge sum every day. It is critical to manage and control the number in all of them if you don’t want to fail and lose your money. It is very hard to keep in mind or in your notebook as it can be easily lost. Accounting software is a necessity in this case that will automate this process and provide statistics.

Document Organization

Manual document organization is a hard task that usually leads to mistakes, mix-ups, and losses. Accounting software digitalizes this process and reduces the efforts needed to record and save important papers. It helps to track the documents like:

• Invoices
• Contracts
• Taxes payments
• Bank statements

Bank Reconciliation

All your accounts and documents have to reconcile with the bank you have chosen along with tracking the inside financial operations. It helps you reveal the mistakes, gaps, delays of payments, bank errors, etc. To go through this stage successfully, your bookkeeping should be constantly maintained during the whole time. An accounting software solution is what you need for this process.

Payroll Tracking

The accounting software system is also a virtual assistant when it comes to the payroll process. It automatically dilutes the contractors by classes due to the U.S. Department of Labor’s economic realities test.

Property Management 

Each object should be managed due to the vast number of properties available in one real estate company. Among the payments need to be controlled are:

• Calculation adjustments
• Paying bills and taxes
• Vendor ledgers 

Technical adoption in accounting is required for a modern business to make the company efficient and competitive on the market. Accounting management software increases functionality, improves usability, and analytics with the implementation of technologies.

Evgen Bryl – Altamira CTO

Ready-made Accounting Management Software

 QuickBooks 

This ready-made AMS solution includes a wide range of useful options for real estate. It suits property owners as well as brokers. Quickbooks is available for medium-sized real estate companies. It comprises features like transactions, inventory, location management. This cloud-based solution is considered to be popular in this area. It also can be easily integrated with other applications. Although Quickbooks is a real help for real estate accounting, it has a range of cons and can not suit all companies. Quickbooks disadvantages are:

• limitation to adding users
• constant increasing of pricing plans for use
• payroll management is not efficient

 FreshBooks

Freshbooks is a web-based accounting software that can be a perfect match for real estate companies. It includes features like payment and custom invoices tracking, expenses and time management, automatic reminders about upcoming payments, and others. Along with its benefits, we would like to emphasize the main disadvantages of Freshbooks ready-made solution:

• available for small and medium-sized companies only
• poor report generation in the mobile version
• lack of management tools
• no ability to reconcile with bank

 Multiview Software

This accounting software solution can suit different business industries, and real estate is not an exception. It implies a wide range of management tools like analytics and report generation, general ledger, custom invoices, high-security level, and others. Although this solution includes many options, it also has its weak sides:

• no mobile app available
• poor report customization
• presence of bugs and incorrect work

Xero

This ready-made solution covers almost all work processes of real estate companies. It provides such features as invoices, expenses tracking, project and payroll management, online payments via Stripe and Paypal, etc. It also can be integrated with other companies’ applications. Moreover, you can manage the workflow from any location in real-time. However, ready-made solutions like Xero can be used by many real estate companies, and it can not be a perfect match for all of them. Among the main disadvantages of this software are:

• notifications about upcoming payments are not available
• a limited number of transactions – only 2000 per month
• provides only one payment for the invoice
• complex installation

What developers do you need?

After reading the descriptions of the ready-made accounting software solution,  you could have noticed that their functionalities are not enough to cover all the company’s work processes. No ready-made solution can not replace a custom software system and its privileges. Custom development of accounting software system implies defining the main problems your company faces every day and finding the right solution to solve them and digitalize your real estate business. you need to hire a full team of developers to build your custom accounting software.

Product Owner – a manager who will help you with defining your main need and build the right strategy for creating your custom solution. You will also need HTMLCSS, JS, and PHP developers for the frontend and backend parts of your system. The next specialist is a designer who will create a unique, creative, and brandy design for your accounting system to be recognized by users and customers as well. Testing is a crucial part of all software development as it is important to reveal all bugs and errors before the release with the help of QA specialists. All stages of real estate software development are tracked by a Scrum master who also explains the progress to clients. We prepared an MVP estimation for the development of custom property management software. The numbers are approximate and depend on the range of options that will be included in your system.

How to find developers for your project?

As you decided to develop a custom accounting management software, the next step is to choose the team to work with. The modern market is full of different software development companies. Due to the current world’s situation, almost all of them provide remote work with customers. However, not all solutions can be developed on outsourcing; it also depends on the business industry. We would like to bring to your attention several crucial steps about choosing the right outsourcing company:

• make sure that the company does not go bankrupt
• check how long the company is on the market and the reviews about their developments
• compare the best variant you chose between each other
• find the portfolio to find out more about the company’s experience, especially in accounting management software
• check the documentation package

FAQ

To end up

Real estate companies deal with huge amounts of information, most of which are connected to financial operations. There is no chance for error in invoices, customer data, back reconciliation, analytics report. Implementing an accounting management system automates all these processes makes them faster and more efficient. There are hundreds of ready-made solutions on the modern market that would suit your company, but you need to understand that they are not enough. Most of them have a wide range of limitations and can not cover all financial operations. The best decision, in this case, is the development of a custom accounting management system that will meet all demands of your company. Considering all risks and hesitations, custom software is an investment in your business’s future as it can grow and improve together with your company.