Top 7 Finance Maintenance Tips for Property Management Companies

Property management companies deal with several tasks. Some of their roles include marketing and leasing, accounting and rent collection, screening and selection of tenants, and property maintenance.

Financial management is a crucial aspect for a property management company. Without proper financial management strategies, it’s easy for real estate businesses to collapse.

Property managers should take accounting seriously to realize profits. They are responsible for preparing budgets to estimate the cost of maintaining and improving the clients’ property value.

Here are 7 financial management tips for property management companies.  

1. Staying Organized

Property management companies should know everything about the finances of the properties they oversee. Therefore, they need to be organized in every aspect of their work. 

Communication is a core element of being organized. It doesn’t matter if it’s from them to a tenant or a property owner. With clear communications, it’s difficult to lose money in the process.

Staying organized also involves building effective systems to find the right tenants. The systems should help in screening the tenants, automate processes like background checks, related paperwork, and security deposits.

They should have separate files for insurance information, purchase documents, tenants’ complaints, and receipts. It’s necessary to organize all property documents to enable easy accessibility.

2. Use Financial Management Software

A finance maintenance software is essential for organizing finances. It comes with advantages, and most are customizable to fit different business models. 

For property management, the software should assist in financial accounting and reporting. Additionally, it needs to be good for facility management, leasing, and contract management.

Financial errors can be disastrous for any organization. It doesn’t matter if it’s tax errors or payroll errors. Fortunately, financial management software automates most financial processes; thus, there are minimal chances of error.

Also, it optimizes cash flow to help organizations plan better for daily, weekly, monthly, quarterly, and annual operations. Excellent financial management software should have inbuilt reporting and analytics to assist in measuring growth. This gives an insight into the growth across the market.  

You get to plan and strategize better. It makes it easier as it projects revenue, liabilities, assets. This helps property management companies plan for the months and years to come.

Since most of the financial work is automated, it leaves room for the employees working in the department to focus on different areas, for instance, leasing.

3. Hire a Financial Expert

Advanced tools exist to make manual labor easier and more efficient. The need for human intervention and decision-makers still stands. A good property management company should have a strong team to ensure the organization’s success.

One of these individuals is a financial expert. A financial expert should work with the property manager and guide any financial matters. 

Financial experts can assist property owners in creating more sales and reducing costs. Also, they can ensure mortgages, payrolls, insurance premiums, payroll, and maintenance bills are collected on time.

Sometimes, they prepare financial statements and report to the property management managers about the status of the property, date of lease expirations, occupancy rates, among other things.

4. Prepare for the Unexpected

The real estate market is always unpredictable. Thus, property management companies should keep up with the market trends to stay relevant. 

Several things can disrupt the normal flow of things in this entity, including societal changes. Societal changes result from political, social, and economic influences. There are also technological advancements that facilitate these changes.

Property managers need to have an emergency fund to cater to unexpected changes. This includes maintenance, repairs, or anything that might require money. There will be no need to touch funds allocated for different tasks with proper preparation.

5. Manage Finance Reports

Finance management reports show how poorly or well a property is performing. It involves a lot of processes. Examples include preparing the budget, collecting rent, analyzing variances, rental collection, scheduling expenditures, and initiating corrective action.

A finance management report is necessary to prove your company complies with the industry standards, thus ensuring you don’t fall on the wrong side of the law. You need to comply with different regulatory agencies like:

• State real estate board
• State tax board
• Internal revenue service (IRS)

 It also builds trust with tenants and owners.

Also, Check – Five ways to pay your home loan faster

6. Develop Comprehensive Budgeting

Comprehensive budgeting is necessary for property management to maximize rental income. With a reasonable budgeting plan, it’s easy to increase the return on investment. Also, it enables the property management companies to use the money for their allocated task.

Here are some of the ways to develop comprehensive budgeting.

• Develop Excellent Marketing and Advertising Strategy

There is a need for a marketing plan and advertising budget to be competitive in the market. Budgeting sets you for success. Marketing and advertising assist in acquiring new tenants resulting in more revenues. You can also market when announcing renovations or improvements to attract more tenants. 

Developing a budget is vital to facilitate these advertisements. The budget should include the cost of maintaining the online listings. Also, they can cater to increased marketing when vacation rates increase.

• Capital Expenditure

Remodelling, renovation, and modern appliances are vital in increasing the rent value of a property. Budgeting for such elements assists older residential properties to compete with newer residencies. Also, budgeting for such properties will increase the value of any property.

Property management companies should record property incomes and expenditures accurately. This makes it easier to track money flows or make annual budgets.

7. Managing Risks

Property management companies should take proper measures to protect companies against liabilities. An example is regularly inspecting a property to prevent a substantial physical attack. 

To be excellent at risk management, the property management companies should religiously pay the monthly expenses,  be excellent at financial management, do annual budgets and handle payment receipts.

Final Thoughts

Rental properties require a lot of time and effort to run them. Financial management plays a crucial role in the whole of this process. Thus, property management companies should have effective financial management strategies to prevent property owners from suffering huge losses.

A good property management company takes financial management seriously. The above tips are great ones to keep you started.