Propertyware Knowledge Base

Management Company Name

Enter the name of your management company.  This will also become the name of your management company portfolio that will be used to track the income and expenses for your management company.

Note
A management-company vendor record was automatically created for your management company and appears in Money Out | Vendors.  This default management-company vendor will be used when creating bills to your owners for your management fee.

Management Portfolio Abbreviation

This field gets generated automatically if you hit the TAB key on your keyboard after completing the Management Company Name field.  You can highlight and edit it to anything you like.  We recommend MGMT-CO if you don’t like what you see.

Management Bank Account

We recommend you maintain a separate bank account for your management company income rather than comingling funds with various owner portfolios.

The Management Bank Account is the bank account into which your management fee income is deposited when management fee bills are paid.

From the drop down menu, select the appropriate bank account.  If you don't see the account you want, you may create a new account in the chart of accounts.  

Track Management Income

Use this field to determine whether or not to track income for your management company when bills are paid to any of your management-company vendors.  Select one of the following:

Yes - Track the income whenever management-company vendor bills are paid.  This income may be viewed by selecting your management portfolio in the Other Customers area of the Money In tab.

No - Do not track the income whenever management-company vendor bills are paid. 

See Management Income Mapping below for more information on how your management-company vendor is used for tracking management income.

Portfolio Balance Mode

Select an option for how the portfolio balance should be handled.  You have three choices:

No restrictions.  Propertyware allows you to create transactions that will cause the portfolio balance to go negative.

Disallow negative for new transactions.  Propertyware prohibits you from creating new transactions that will cause the portfolio balance to go negative.  Note: If you switch to this method after your portfolio balance has gone negative, this setting will prevent you from creating additional transactions that would cause your balance to go even further negative, however, it will not “undo” the transactions that caused the portfolio balance to go negative in the first place.

Disallow below minimum for new transactions.  Propertyware prohibits you from creating new transactions that will cause the portfolio balance to go below the portfolio minimum. 

Owner Draw Mode

Select an option for how owner draws should be handled.  You have two choices:

Balance minus minimum.  Propertyware will pay the owner the entirety of their portfolio balance minus any portfolio minimum.

Balance minus minimum minus unpaid bills.  Propertyware will total any unpaid bills within the portfolio and subtract that total from the amount to be paid to the owner minus any portfolio minimum.

Management Fee Mode

Select an option for how your management fee will be calculated.  You have two choices:

Use Management Fee Calculator.  This setting requires that you manually process management fees on a periodic basis using the Management Fee Calculator.  For detailed information on using the Management Fee Calculator, refer to the related article titled Management Fee Calculator referenced at the bottom of this section.

Continuously Calculated.    Management fee rules are automatically calculated and paid whenever you receive income for those portfolios that have this option selected.    With this method, you always collect your management fees prior to paying your owners. 

Continuously Calculated is best suited to companies that pay owners more frequently than once per month and/or for those that charge based on percentage rather than a flat fee.

Management Statement Period

If your monthly statement period is a time frame other than a calendar month (i.e., 1st to the last day of the month), you can set the statement period in this field.   For example, if the statement period begins on the 15th of the month select custom from the drop-down list and select 15th.   The management fee calculator looks at transactions from the 15th of one month to the 14th of the next month.

Default Statement

This option lets you choose the default statement that will be used when generating statements with the “one click” method from the Management module’s summary and management fee calculator pages. Choose from the options in the dropdown menu. To view samples of these reports, view them from the Owners Statement folder in the Reports module.

Statement Comments

Enter any comments that you would like to appear on your owner statements.

Fee Type

Choose from one of the following options:

Greater of Flat Fee or Percentage. This option allows you to set a minimum amount – charged as a flat fee at the portfolio level – for your management fees.  If this option is selected, the flat fee amount you specify in the Flat Fee field is what will be billed to your owners unless the fees generated through your commission account/percentage fee setup exceed that amount, in which case the greater amount will be charged.  With this scenario some owners may be billed your minimum fee while others may be billed the greater amount.

Flat Fee + Percentage.  This option allows you to set a flat fee to be charged to the portfolio in addition to the fees charged through your commission account/percentage fee setup. 

Flat Fee

The Flat Fee will apply to each Fee Type above.  A Flat Fee may be used to impose a minimum fee in a greater of scenario or each time a management fee bill gets created.

If you charge straight percentage commissions, simply set the Flat Fee amount to $0.00.

Portfolio Minimum

The portfolio minimum balance should not be considered a reserve account for the portfolio since there is no bank account associated with this amount.  The Portfolio Minimum amount simply reflects the minimum amount that must be retained in the portfolio at all times and is referenced whenever bills are paid from the portfolio.  Propertyware will not allow a portfolio to drop below this minimum amount.

Commission Accounts

This field allows you to designate those accounts that you would like to charge a commission (i.e. income, expense or liability) when a transaction has been recorded in Propertyware. These commission accounts will be included in the management fee calculator when you generate your management fee bill.

To designate a commission account:

1. Click the Add Commission Account button.
2. In the percentage column, enter the percentage amount you will receive on the commission account.  For example, if you are to receive 10% of rent income, enter 10.00% in this field.
3. From the Commission Account drop down menu, select the account you would like to designate as commissionable.

• To help you with your selection, you may click the Show Chart of Accounts button to preview all accounts within your chart of accounts by Account #, Type, Account Code and Description.

4. If you pay a commission to your property managers, enter the percentage paid in the Manager’s Commission field. 
5. The Pass-Through option is a flag that can be set on commission accounts that causes income applied to these accounts to be broken out as separate line items in the management fee calculator.  Since pass-through accounts are their own line items in the management fee calculator, the income is “passed through” to the management company instead of appearing as a management fee expense to the owner.  The net of income collected and the income earned to the pass-through accounts is zero once you create the management fee bill; the sums are not shown on the Summary Owner Statements.
6. Repeat steps 1 - 3 to create additional Commission Accounts.
7. To delete a Commission Account, click the Del link that appears in the Action column.