Management Fees Posted to Your Books
For a management company: the fee shown on each owner statement, booked as income when the rent settles, and cleared when you move the fees out of trust.
Every owner statement deducts your management fee. With fee posting switched on, the same fee is booked in your company’s own books when the owner’s rent settles: Management Fees Receivable (1250) is debited and Management Fee Income (4600) credited. When you move the fees out of the owners’ funds, record it and the receivable is cleared against the account the money went to.
The fee is worked out exactly as the owner statement works it out — the same rate and the same rent — so your books and the statement the owner received never disagree. It is off until you switch it on, and it starts with rent settled from the first day of the month you switched it on; it never reaches back further.
When money comes back
If a rent payment is returned, refunded in full or charged back, the fee entry is reversed with a matching entry dated that day. The original is never deleted. The owners’ rent itself is not posted to your books — that money is held for the owner — only the fee you earned.
Related features and guides
- Trust Accounting for Management Companies — Documentation. Keep owners’ money and residents’ deposits apart from your company’s: a balance held for each owner, a block on paying an owner more than is held, a three-way reconciliation signed off by a second person, and a record of every uncashed check on its way to the state.
- Property Management Accounting — Feature. A full chart of accounts and general ledger purpose-built for rentals — income and expenses tracked to the unit, with rent, fees, and maintenance posting automatically.
- Bank Feeds & Reconciliation — Feature. Connect bank feeds and reconcile transactions against the ledger, so what the books say and what the bank says actually match.
- Accounting Policies & Settings — Documentation. What each Books setting does — numbering, terms, tax, late fees, deposits, reminders, statements, online payments, approvals, accounting basis, fiscal year, rounding, job costing and AI.
- Multiple Entities and Consolidated Statements — Documentation. Keep an LLC per building, or a separate equipment company, in the same books — switch between them, and add them up into a consolidated P&L, balance sheet or trial balance.
- Online Rent Collection Software — Feature. Online rent collection: bank transfers free to the tenant, card payments, AutoPay on the lease’s due date, automatic late fees, roommate splitting and receipts issued when rent settles.