The APM Help Blog

Find out how to select the best property management software to streamline your operations and improve efficiency.

Explore the top 10 property management tips that every landlord should know to effectively manage their rental properties.

Should you build a lifestyle business or a leveraged, growth-oriented company?

Due to the competitive nature of property management, standing out from the crowd and carving out your niche is crucial for long-term success. While the temptation might be to cater to a broad range of clients and property types, specialization offers a strategic advantage, unlocking doors to increased profitability, streamlined operations, and a well-defined growth trajectory.

As a property manager, you understand the importance of keeping your rental properties in top condition. Regular condition reports, complete with photographic documentation, are a cornerstone of this process.

Welcome back, property management professionals! In our last installment of PM Level UP, Bob Preston of North County Property Group shared his inspiring journey of building a successful company, achieving the significant milestone of managing 100 properties. Now, Bob sets his sights even higher, guiding us through the challenges and rewards of scaling your business from 100 doors to a thriving 500-door operation. Check out the 2nd episode of the video series for the full conversation here!

Welcome back to PM 101! In our previous articles, we explored lead generation strategies and the power of CRMs to streamline your sales process. Now, let's look into two crucial elements for converting leads into clients: crafting a compelling value proposition and developing a structured sales process.

This blog series dives into the PM Level Up Podcast, hosted by Bob Preston and produced by APM Help. Geared towards aspiring and existing property managers, the podcast promises a roadmap for success in the property management field.

Efficiently converting leads into loyal clients is paramount to success. While generating leads is crucial, nurturing them and guiding them through the sales process requires a structured and organized approach.

APM Help is here to revolutionize your world with the launch of the Clean Books Club, the first-ever membership program designed specifically to empower property management companies like yours to achieve unmatched efficiency, profitability, and control.

In the last installment, we emphasized the importance of systematizing your growth through a well-defined PM philosophy and strategic planning. Now, let's look into specific lead generation strategies to turn your plans into action and attract your ideal clients.

Growing your property management portfolio takes more than just wanting more clients; it requires a strategic approach. To achieve long-term success, it's crucial to differentiate between growth (attracting new clients) and scaling (building the infrastructure to handle those clients). Let’s dive into building a strong growth foundation so you can effectively scale and manage expansion.

Building a thriving property management company takes more than just knowing the basics. It requires a continuous thirst for knowledge, a willingness to learn from others, and embracing the incredible resources and support available within the industry. This installment of our PM 101 series focuses on how networking and utilizing industry resources can propel your growth and set you apart in a competitive market.

In a move set to reshape the landscape of property management, Beekin Inc. has announced its strategic partnership with Buildium, the premier property management platform for small and medium-sized property owners. This collaboration brings forth a powerful fusion of advanced AI technology and property management expertise, aiming to optimize rental portfolios and streamline decision-making processes for investors, lenders, and property management companies.

Picture this: the confetti settles, the last strains of Auld Lang Syne fade, and you, weary property manager, are left staring at a mountain of maintenance requests and a calendar circled not with festive dates, but with lease renewal deadlines. While others dream of tropical beaches and extravagant galas, your mind flickers to leaky faucets and clogged drains.

As a property manager, you know the struggle. You're constantly juggling a million tasks, from managing properties and tenants to handling finances and marketing your business. Unfortunately, administrative tasks like bookkeeping often take a backseat, stealing valuable time away from the things that truly drive growth.

Effective financial management is crucial for a thriving property management business. Avoid potential pitfalls by uncovering the top five bookkeeping mistakes that can lead to financial disarray, ensuring your company stays on the path to success.

Property managers are constantly on the lookout for ways to gain an edge in growing their clientele. But, what's the secret to winning over new clients and retaining existing ones? The answer lies in showcasing your expertise. As a property manager, you're not just a caretaker of your clients' investments; you're their strategic partner, responsible for optimizing their returns.

Meet Tal Kramer, owner of Avalon Property Management and President-elect of Atlanta NARPM. Gain insights on scaling property management in three nuggets from his extensive experience.

The Balancing Act: Rent Increases vs. Tenant Satisfaction‍: Achieving the delicate balance between increasing rental income and maintaining tenant satisfaction is an ongoing challenge for landlords and property managers. In today's competitive rental market, the fear of tenant turnover can make this balance even more challenging. Landlords must carefully consider the potential risks and benefits of rent increases and assess the impact on their relationships with exceptional tenants.

As a property manager, you know how crucial it is to maintain accurate and transparent accounting records. However, the complexities of property management accounting can often become overwhelming, leading to costly mistakes and sleepless nights. Fortunately, there's a solution that can alleviate these burdens and pave the way for a smoother, more successful property management business – APM Help.

In the ever-evolving world of property management, education plays a pivotal role in shaping the future of the industry. At the forefront of this movement is Peter Lohmann, the CEO of RL Property Management and a proud member of the National Association of Residential Property Managers (NARPM). His passion for knowledge sharing has been instrumental in empowering property managers worldwide. In this interview, we delve into Peter's journey of creating educational content, his vision for the industry, and a celebration of his 10 years of success in property management.

In property management, the word "audit" has negative connotations for a reason. Accounting books are often overlooked due to immediate operational or growth demands. Given the constant influx of tasks and responsibilities, it's challenging to prioritize unseen risks. To further complicate matters, the term audit itself carries a few different meanings. Today we’ll take a closer look at property management external audits to better understand their implications, and how to remain vigilant in preparation to protect your business.

I met Keri Picciolo today of Palomar Property Services to find out more about what led her to finding a viable property management maintenance solution. You can read more about this company at PalomarPropertyServices. I was interested to learn that Palomar Property Services Property Management was founded in 2008 by its founder John Vogel. Keri…

In the realm of property management, tenant turnover poses a constant challenge, affecting both financial stability and reputation. Among the various factors contributing to tenant dissatisfaction and subsequent turnover, poor maintenance coordination stands out as a prominent culprit. When maintenance issues are left unaddressed or poorly managed, tenants experience neglect and frustration in their living spaces. In this article, we will explore the top 3 reasons why poor maintenance coordination can lead to tenant turnover.

Start new tenancies off on the right foot by nailing the initial move in process. If you struggle moving in tenants without challenges, then continue reading and get confident utilizing Rentvine’s move in flow.

You may already know that in the property management industry, one important aspect of managing rental properties is creating a structured move-out process. In this article, we'll discuss how to properly record a move-out in Rentvine to ensure accurate accounting as well as happy owners and tenants.

Trust accounts are used to hold money for other people until a trigger of some kind releases it. In the property management industry, these accounts hold funds for customers who are entitled to the money being held there. However, some bankers make a common mistake by opening a general business account and calling it a trust account. This article covers the terminology and regulation of trust accounts in the property management industry to ensure that property management companies and their clients are protected.

We are thrilled to announce that APM Help has received over 70 reviews on Trustpilot with a TrustScore of 4.9/5! We couldn't have done it without our amazing customers, and we wanted to take a moment to thank them for their continued support and gracious comments on our services and outstanding team members.

As AppFolio experts, we’re familiar with every feature the software and wanted to share some of our favorites that you may not be using.

ACB, TTO, RUBS, CAM... the list goes on! AppFolio has a lot of great features, but what do they mean? Here's our "cheat sheet" for all those acronyms you're wondering about.

1099 season is already stressful, so don't let them get you in trouble with the IRS! Did you know THIS must be reported?

Bank switches in AppFolio don't have to be hard or scary. Follow these few simple steps and your bank switch will be a breeze!

The General Ledger and Property Performance reports are our two favorite reports in AppFolio! We'll teach you how to customize them to be useful in multiple situations.

You can customize online payments for specific tenants AND properties in AppFolio! Continue reading to learn how.

AppFolio's "Pay Owners" feature could accidentally cause you to commingle funds. We'll teach you how to prevent this!

What does this mean to double dip on lease fees and management fee commissions at move-in? Let’s start with where the issue begins.

The Financial Diagnostics report is one of the most useful tools in AppFolio, however, most people don't know that it exists. Do you know how to make the corrections properly? We'll teach you!

Collecting and reimbursing NSF fees from tenants in AppFolio is easy! Here are our step-by-step instructions.

How can you keep bookkeeping simple in the property management industry? Here are some of our tips and tricks.

Completing a move out in AppFolio is one thing, but completing a clean move out is entirely different. Read our tips and tricks for accurate move out accounting!

All about the Positive and Negative Additional Fee section of the Financial Diagnostics report.

We're here to help you determine the best options for managing your vacation rentals in AppFolio in today's blog!

Did you acquire a new property with an Owner Held Security Deposit? Make sure you process the move out accounting properly!

Keep your owner relationships strong with transparency! In this post, we discuss ways that you can provide your owners with everything they need using AppFolio.

Unpaid tenant balances are never fun to deal with, but today we'll discuss all of your options to handle bad debt from renters.

Property management is full of competition. We'll share some important things potential renters need from you and your rental properties.

We handle maintenance emergencies every day, but sometimes they aren't straightforward. Read this client testimonial about a mysterious clog...

We're glad you asked! Find out who APM Help is and how we help property managers clean up their books and stay clean.

The switch from a software you've been using for years to a new solution can be exciting and challenging. Read how to make the transition less overwhelming!

A major source of confusion in the Property Management World is when there is a need to post charges to a Tenant Ledger. Any money received from a tenant is income and should be coded to an income GL account. For the purpose of this discussion, we will use the example of a duplex at…

In an ideal world, your owners would never be paid too much or too little. They would be paid "just right". In today's blog, we are going to explore reports and work flows that will make your owners Goldilocks-happy.

Accrual basis accounting is when revenue and expenses are recorded at the time they are “earned”, regardless of when the money was actually received or paid. Cash basis accounting is when revenue and expenses are recognized at the time they are received or paid. ‍

Here’s a scenario in which the Tenant has bounced payments more than once and you no longer want to allow this to continue. What are the Property Manager’s options? To start, it is important to consider that most property managers prefer that payments are made electronically. This saves time and virtually eliminates the possibility of…

Don't wait until the last minute to start prepping your 1099s! We are here to make your 2022 tax season quick and easy.

Avoid the stressful, sleepless nights by preparing your AppFolio database for tax season now! We've simplified and explained the 1099 filing process.

Our best practices to help you file W-9s and 1099-NECs quickly and accurately this coming tax season! We've outlined the steps for success in this blog post.

Our very first recurring Trust Bookkeeping client using AppFolio went live in July 2017 and since then we've brought to market additional products & services such as Daily Audits, Daily Bank Recs, Corporate Bookkeeping, After Hours Call Center, Maintenance Coordination. When we introduced these new offerings, we didn't know how to price them so we went with whatever was easy. Along the way, even our Trust Bookkeeping pricing was adjusted to account for clients of different size, location, and business (SFR, MFR, HOA, commercial, etc) and we ended up with over 60 different pricing models and a billing nightmare.

The first step is to diagnose the issue as either negative or positive additional fees.

Once the charge is posted, make sure that the tenant payment is applied to the clearing charge.

You can only pay management fees once the rent has been received. The system will not calculate percentages before income has been paid on the property

Ideal bookkeeping is good judgment and intelligent organization within the bounds of regulation. While consolidation is often the key to organization, in some cases modest additional detail, or extension of a process can drastically improve property bookkeeping processes. Sensible choices when setting up the company banking and chart of accounts will put the books on track for smooth upkeep and painless auditing, internal or third party, but not all best practices are applied through the bookkeeping itself.

We recommend recording the deposit via JE on your corporate property (a zero unit multi-family property for recording errors like this) by debiting Operating Cash/your main cash account, crediting some offset like Retained Earnings (it doesn't matter because it will cancel out)

1. Run a General Ledger, add a "Created By" and "Created At" Columns, and under Grouping select "Created By". Set the date range to your desired window of time, check "Show Reversed Transactions" and that will provide a report of every entry and reversal in the system in your 30 day period.

A quick guide on how to enter pet information in the tenant's application.

You can group the outstanding transfers or select one from the list and select "Mark as Completed".

Is anyone having problems with leads going to the user who activated the listing? Appfolio used to feed into our leasing CRM just fine until about 2 weeks ago, now it completely ignores who is listed on the property as the leasing contact and sends all lead emails to whichever user created the campaign or vacancy posting.

If you need to record the emails on the tenant and owner pages then they would need to be manually added by taking a screenshot of the email and adding the file under "Attachments".

I have an owner that owns 100% of 5 properties and 50% of a 6th property.

Billable items can be things like labor and supplies that will add up to be the grand total for the amount of the work order bill.

NACHA files are set up on the bank page themselves. Note that if the banks are enabled for online payables they will not be able to generate NACHA files. To then generate they can find this in pay bills flow. (see images in AF Consulting chat)

Is there a way to send one invoice with multiple CAM charges?

Your late fee settings need to be adjusted. You have two options:

Send a Tenant Statement to all tenants who received a Rent Increase letter under Communication > Letters > Send Statements. This includes all current and future charges to the tenant.

How can I pick and choose which units to notify of a work order? Example: I would like to change the heater air filters for upstairs units only.

On the tenant ledger, you will enter a charge to the Clearing Account for the SD and then a credit from Owner Held Deposit

You can take advantage of the new "End Management" task which will display a summary of all of the tenant prepayments, security deposits, and unpaid bills/work orders to close out.

Is there any way to disable a specific tenant to not allow pre-payments?

Management Fees > Edit > Add Additional Fee. If you don't have an Admin Fee income account then you can add one under Accounting > GL Accounts > New GL account

Is there a report that I can run that will show me what new properties were set up to rent in the previous month or a specific month?

Is there a way to add a widget to the dashboard?

We walk you through exactly how to pay the management company uncleared money

Does your bookkeeper have Bookkeeper/Accounting Experience? Does your bookkeeper have Trust Compliance experience? Does your bookkeeper have Property Management Software Experience?

The end of the eviction moratorium may still not mean everything for property managers is completely back to the status quo

You will simply need to make sure that any unpaid charges are reversed and then click the task on the right hand side on the tenant summary page "Hide Tenant"If the tenant has paid anything on the ledger

You can also check for Bank Adjustments by running the Bank Account Activity report for All Time > Run the Report > Double click the "Type" column to group all of the transaction types together. Scroll until you find the group of bank adjustments. These should net each other out to $0.00. If they do not, that's what is causing your discrepancy.

If you are an Owner Operator, or do not mind if the past balances change, then you can reapply the receipts paying the past HAP charges to Prepaid Rent by going to the receipt > Reapply Receipt > Check "Make Prepayment".

The future of the rental property management industry is going to see exponential dependence on technology and SaaS (software as a service) because this will be the most efficient and secure way to do business

Adjusted cash balance issues happen when the property balance(s) do not agree with transactions posted to the cash bank account. The database runs a check that involves the following process: Property balances (only from properties linked to the current bank account) Less unreconciled deposits Less unreconciled receipts deposited after the reconciliation period Plus unreconciled checks…

RUBS stands for Ratio Utility Billing. It requires a support request from AppFolio customer service and requires users to have the correct permissions enabled to allow access. This is the same thing with something like the Financial Diagnostic Report (FDR). Without the correct permissions, you don’t even know that it is there. I’ve looked into…

Have you used the ALLOCATION feature in a Payable? I have one word for this, WOW! Funny how one little word, at the simple flick of a check mark, can make you so happy. Here’s an example of true bliss. You have a client with a $15.00 payment that wants the expense distributed amongst 14…

Running a remote company and maintaining a culture can be a challenge. It requires more than a weekly meeting to keep your employees happy and morale high. We aren’t saying we’ve perfected this thing, but we have come up with a few tips and tricks that you can use in your own company to bring…

We are not legal professionals, and cannot provide legal advice. APM Help is a group of AppFolio, Propertyware, Buildium and Property Management experts and are happy to assist in the loan application process. This blog will be updated as new information comes available. Last updated: 7 April 2020 SBA Economic Injury Disaster Loan There are…

The following is a story told by a real Fyxed Maintenance client, the names and specific details have been omitted for privacy. We hope this story entertains you as much it did us! The Mysterious Movements We received a call from a tenant stating that they believed that someone had access to the property and…

This year has been far from normal, but there are ways to make the holidays feel somewhat normal despite everything. APM Help has been a fully remote company since we were established 3 1/2 years ago, so we know that virtual parties can be fun. We know, virtual? Not the same. But your co-workers or…

There are multiple options when issuing a credit to a tenant in Buildium, and they all have unique features and applications. In this article, we will go over all the different ways you can issue a credit to a tenant in Buildium, how they differ, and the best uses of each in our experience as…

If your trust accounts were audited today, would your books pass? The answer may surprise you. Check out today’s blog to determine how well your company would do.

This Halloween, APM Help is handing out all treats, no tricks! Our mission is to help our clients clean up their books, and then keep those books clean. No disguises, no masks, no gimmicks. Treat yourself, and learn more about how our company can help you get back on the broom. The Candy of the…

We are not legal professionals, and cannot provide legal advice. APM Help is a group of AppFolio, Propertyware, Buildium and Property Management experts and are happy to assist in the loan application process. The government has approved a second round of PPP loans and funding on April 27th, so it’s not too late to apply…

There has been an unanticipated shift in the way that we live, work, and interact. COVID-19 has led to a decrease in business activities which in turn has led to layoffs and panic among industries. Unfortunately, this has also resulted in requests for rent leniency and forgiveness. In a perfect world, you could give your…