Best bank reconciliation software for property management companies

Bank reconciliation software for property management compared

Property managers do not shop for reconciliation software the way a manufacturer does. The ledger already lives in a property platform, so the real choice is how much that platform clears on its own and what you add for the rest. These are the six options that come up, with the honest limits of each.

The percentages in the table are the vendors' or a consultancy's own figures, not independent tests. Your rate depends on how rent is collected. A portfolio where every resident pays through the platform's portal clears far more automatically than one with walk-in checks, housing authority payments and owners who wire contributions.

What property managers should look for

Generic roundups rank reconciliation tools on bank connections and AI. Property accounting has four needs those lists skip.

• Account count. An operating account, a security deposit account and sometimes a reserve for each property or owner. Forty properties is 80 to 120 reconciliations a month. Software priced per account or per entity gets expensive fast, and software with no status view leaves you tracking the close in a spreadsheet.
• One deposit, many receipts. Rent batches, lockbox deposits and housing assistance payments land as one bank credit against several receipts. One to one matching cannot pair them. This is the same problem as matching bank deposits to invoices.
• Returned payments. An NSF check or reversed ACH appears days after the receipt. The tool has to surface it as a missing reversal, not bury it in an unmatched pile.
• Trust accounting evidence. Many states expect a monthly reconciliation of trust accounts with records kept, and the three-way tie between bank balance, book balance and the total of owner and tenant ledgers. Whatever you use must produce a dated report per account that an auditor or regulator can read.

Where the built in tools win and where they stop

AppFolio. Bank Feed runs continuously, so teams can match weekly and arrive at month end with little left. It also lets you create a missing record and match it in one step. It stops at accounts the feed does not connect to and at the months before the feed was switched on. The detail is in AppFolio bank reconciliation software options.

Yardi. Voyager uses a cleared balance reconciliation, and the Automatic Bank Reconciliation module clears items from a BAI2 file. Large banks send BAI2 readily. A local bank an owner insists on may not, and batched rent deposits are often left for manual clearing. See Yardi bank reconciliation software for how teams close those accounts.

Buildium. Buildium's automatic reconciliation downloads transactions from the bank and matches them to what is already entered. Exact matches are shown, several candidates are offered when more than one record fits, and you can create a transaction when nothing matches. Buildium also describes a trust reconciliation package for audits. As with any feed, it covers the banks it connects to and the period since connection.

QuickBooks Online. Plenty of landlords and small managers keep the books in QuickBooks with classes or locations per property. Its reconcile screen is solid for the bank to book side. What it lacks is the tenant and owner subledger, so the third leg of a trust reconciliation is built by hand. If that is your setup, see bank reconciliation for QuickBooks.

Enterprise platforms. Tools built for banks, insurers and large corporates handle millions of lines and dozens of reconciliation types. They are sold by quote and implemented as a project. The ReconArt pricing breakdown shows what that buying process looks like. For a 60 property manager it is more machine than the problem needs.

Reconciliation is only one of the back office checks a property accounting team runs on vendors each month. If yours also has to track vendor certificates of insurance before a landscaper or roofer gets paid, close that loop separately; an uninsured vendor is a bigger exposure than an uncleared check.

When to add a statement matching tool

A matching tool does not replace the property platform and does not connect to it. You export the cash account for a property and month, download the bank statement, and upload both. BankReconciler runs six passes: exact amount and date, check or reference number, amount inside a date window, grouped matches where up to six receipts add up to one bank line to the cent, then duplicates and near matches such as transposed digits. You get the matched list, the missing and doubled lines, a CSV of adjusting entries for fees and interest, and a PDF and XLSX bank reconciliation report per account. Then you clear the items in your platform as usual. The same engine is described in more detail on automated bank reconciliation software.

Four situations justify the extra subscription:

1. Busy accounts. If the built in tool leaves 15 lines open on each of 120 accounts, that is 1,800 lines of research a month.
2. Banks with no feed or BAI2. A PDF statement is enough.
3. A backlog. A portfolio taken over from another manager, or months skipped after staff turnover. See catch up bank reconciliation.
4. A difference nobody can find. Matching the statement against the ledger line by line lists the cause instead of the symptom.

It is not the right tool if you need the owner and tenant ledger total for the three-way tie; that number still comes from your property platform. It also does not pull data from your bank, by design, so someone downloads the statement each month.

Which software fits which portfolio

Accounting firms that keep books for several managers sit in the third row too: one workspace per client, without a login to each client's property system. See bank reconciliation for accountants.

Property management bank reconciliation questions

What is the best bank reconciliation software for property management?

For most property managers the best first tool is the reconciliation inside the platform they already run: AppFolio Bank Feed, Yardi's Automatic Bank Reconciliation or Buildium's automatic reconciliation. For the items those leave open, the banks they do not connect to and any backlog, a statement matching tool at $49 to $399 a month is the usual addition.

How many bank accounts does a property management company reconcile?

Often two or three per property or per owner: an operating account, a security deposit account and sometimes a reserve. A manager with 40 properties can face 80 to 120 reconciliations a month, which is why the number of accounts, more than the number of transactions, decides which software fits and what it costs.

Can QuickBooks reconcile property management bank accounts?

Yes, for the bank to book side. QuickBooks Online reconciles each bank account against its register and works well for landlords and small managers. It does not keep owner and tenant ledgers the way property platforms do, so the third leg of a trust account reconciliation has to be assembled outside QuickBooks.

Do property managers need separate reconciliation software?

Not always. If the built in bank feed clears nearly every line and month end takes an hour, nothing else is needed. Separate matching software pays for itself when accounts are busy, a bank cannot send a feed or a BAI2 file, months sit unreconciled after a takeover, or one property is off by an amount nobody can find.