Reconciling a master utility bill against unit allocations
Everything allocated to units, once the vacant share and the common area load are added back, has to equal the master invoice from the utility. In practice the invoice arrives as a PDF whose read dates do not match the billing cycle, a unit changes hands mid cycle, and a meter that was meant to revert to the owner between residents stayed in the name of somebody who left months ago. Where a jurisdiction puts the vacant share on the owner, an allocation run spreading it across residents produces an error found later and in bulk.
The management system is authoritative for money and knows nothing about the phone call where the owner approved the repair.
A management company runs two ledgers that must never mix: the money it holds for owners and tenants, and its own. Everything downstream of that separation is regulated, which shapes what automation is allowed to touch.
- AppFolio
- Yardi Breeze
- Excel
When this is the wrong thing to build
Pick something else if a third party billing agent already owns the calculation. Where a firm like Conservice produces the resident bills, your reconciliation runs against a statement you cannot recompute, and the useful work shrinks to checking that the total landed and that vacant units were treated correctly.
The constraint that shapes it
In most states property management is licensed brokerage activity, which means the company operates under a broker and its handling of client funds is supervised, with segregation from operating money and periodic reconciliation expected. More on how this sector works.
Two sources of truth. One queue of the rows that do not line up. Read what this shape is, or start from one of these.
- Rebuilding an annual operating expense reconciliation from the lease
- Reconciling a broker trust account three ways every month
- Matching a closed transaction back to the lead that produced it
- Collapsing two overlapping MLS feeds into one property list
- Widening a conflicts search past exact spelling
- Rebuilding a billable day from the trail the systems already keep
- How do I check a RUBS allocation against the master bill?
- Who pays the utility share for a vacant unit?
- Why is a utility account still in the name of a former resident?
- How do I bill a partial month of utilities at move out?
- Does the common area load come out before the allocation?
Back to property management, or see how this is priced and scoped.