Trust Accounting for Management Companies
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.
Trust accounting is under Accounting → Trust accounting on the website and in the Accounting hub of the iPhone and Android apps, for management companies. It is off until you switch it on in its Settings tab, and it never moves money: everything here is a record you make or a figure worked out from your books.
Setting it up
- Make a bank account a trust account: in Settings, choose Make a trust account beside the register — an operating trust account for owners’ money and, if you keep one, a security-deposit trust account for residents’ deposits. Add the bank account in Banking first.
- Choose the day balances count from, and enter each owner’s opening balance on that day as an adjustment.
- Choose who bears Seayora’s processing fee on owner rent — the owner or the company. Until you choose, owners are credited the full rent and the reconciliation names the fees as the difference rather than guessing.
- Say where residents’ deposits are held, and how many days a printed check may go uncashed before it is listed for review (180 unless you change it).
What is held for each owner
An owner’s balance is worked out every time, never typed in: the opening balance, plus the owner’s share of rent that has actually settled into your account, plus other income, less expenses, less your management fee at the rate on their statement, less distributions paid, plus contributions and corrections. Tap an owner to see every line and record an adjustment — a contribution, a payment made outside a distribution, or a correction — with a reason that is kept with it.
No owner is paid with another owner’s money
With trust accounting on, marking a distribution paid for more than is held for that owner is refused, naming both amounts — the shortfall would come out of other owners’ money. There is no override: record the owner’s contribution first, then pay. You can switch the block off in Settings, which is not recommended.
The three-way reconciliation
In Reconcile, choose the trust account, the statement date and the ending balance on the statement. Seayora compares three figures:
| Figure | What it is |
|---|---|
| Adjusted bank | The statement balance, plus deposits in transit, less payments not yet cleared. With a bank feed on the account these are worked out from it; without one you type them. |
| Books | The trust account’s balance in your books on that date. |
| Ledgers | What is held for every owner, plus residents’ deposits, plus management fees not yet moved out, plus your company’s own funds in the account. |
When all three agree it is balanced. When they do not, the difference is named, and you write what explains it before it can be saved. A saved reconciliation is kept as it was prepared, with a PDF, and a second person signs it off — whoever prepared it cannot.
Uncashed checks
Printed checks that have not cleared the bank after the number of days you chose are listed, oldest first, with the state they are likely reportable to. Print a due-diligence letter to the payee and record each step — letter sent, reported to the state, remitted, or resolved with the payee. The check stays posted in your books: when you remit it, match that bank line to the check’s own entry in Banking.
State rules
Every state sets its own trust-account and unclaimed-property rules, and they change. Seayora shows a state’s rule — whether a trust account is required, how often to reconcile, how long until a check is unclaimed property — only once it has been checked and carries its citation. Until then it says to check the rule with counsel and shows no deadline.
Related features and guides
- Management Fees Posted to Your Books — Documentation. 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.
- Paying Bills by Check and Printing Checks — Documentation. Pay bills by check, write a one-off check, print on your own pre-printed check stock, record a misprint, void a check and download the issued-checks file for positive pay.
- 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.
- 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.
- Owner Portals & Reporting — Feature. Owner portals and multi-property accounting let property owners see performance and financials for their assets without a monthly email from you.
- QuickBooks Integration — Feature. Connect QuickBooks Online and bring the chart of accounts, customers, vendors, items, open balances and past transactions into Seayora — checked against QuickBooks’s own trial balance before anything is written.