Setting up properties and units

Property Management is an add-on module. It adds properties, units, leases, a rent ledger for each tenant, deposits, late fees, work orders, inspections and owner statements. Underneath, every rent charge is an ordinary invoice and every payment an ordinary receipt. The module organises them by building and by unit, so you never have to invent a customer per apartment.

The module has two switches. The plan must include it, and the owner of the books must turn it on in Settings → Property Management. Only the owner can turn it on. Anyone else who opens the module before that sees "Property Management is not turned on for these books. Ask the owner of these books to turn Property Management on."¹

Once it is on, the module's overview page carries an On chip beside its title and the line "Own portfolio (the books own the properties), on since 11/01/2026", and a new group appears in the sidebar. A Find a page box sits at the top of the group: type a few letters of a page name (for example units) to jump to it.

The overview, Property Management in the sidebar, is the operations board of the whole portfolio. A strip of readouts gives occupancy, units, rent collected this month, what tenants owe and open work orders. Below it the Tenancy lifecycle follows a unit from vacant to let and back again, in four lanes (Lease-up, Occupied, Delinquency, Turnover); each stage is a tile with a count, and a lamp on the tile says whether anything is waiting there. A fifth row in the same panel, Office, holds the desk tiles: Today board, Inspections, Month-end close and Trust reconciliation. Further down, Last 12 months charts the trend and Needs attention collects the cards that want a decision. Every tile and card opens the page where its work is done. On the day the module was switched on, with no property yet, every count was zero; the picture was taken later, when the rest of this volume had filled the board in.

The sidebar groups follow the year of a rental office. Each later chapter of this volume works in one or two of them:

The mode is set for the whole books, and a single property can override it on its own Settings tab. Summit stays on Own portfolio.

Open Settings → Property Management → General (the cog on the overview goes to the same page). The module's settings have two menus that lead to the same pages: a row of six tabs across the top (General, Fees and bills, Leasing, Tasks and inspections, Documents and messages, Data), and a sub-menu of fourteen entries under Property Management in the Settings sidebar (General, Late fees, Management fees, Templates and so on, down to Import and Custom fields). Use whichever is nearer. The General tab opens with a Plan card that confirms the module is included and on. Every property follows these values unless its own page says otherwise, so a few minutes here save a field on every property and every lease.

1. 1

   Check the mode and type the state

   The state is a two-letter code. It matters more than it looks: "Deposit deadlines, late fee caps and notice days follow it." The module started Summit on PA; Summit's building is in Oregon, so type OR.

2. 2

   Choose the day the statement period ends

   Pick 31 (the last day of the month) for calendar months. Rent rolls and owner statements close on that day.

3. 3

   Choose the default banks, then Save changes

   Deposits are held in takes security deposits and prepaid rent; Rent is banked in takes rent, fees and other income. Summit keeps deposits apart in its Money Market Savings account and banks rent in Operating Checking. The pickers list only the books' bank accounts; on Summit's books they also show Owner Trust Checking and Tenant Deposit Trust, the two trust accounts used for the house managed for an outside owner (Chapter 13.11). The page answers Saved.

Below the banks, the same form holds four more cards that later chapters use. Leases and rent sets what a new lease starts as (Fixed term), keeps late fees waiting for review, and blocks portal payments while an eviction is pending (Chapter 13.6). Accounting holds one picker, Rent concessions account: where a credit given from a lease (Financials → Give a credit) is taken off income. Leave it on Each property's own Rent Concessions (recommended); each property then gets its own Revenue:<property>:Rent Concessions account on its first credit (Chapter 13.5). Vendors holds one switch, Require current vendor insurance on work orders: on, a vendor whose insurance has expired cannot be put on a work order; off, the page only warns (Chapter 13.8). Payments holds the payment rules: oldest charge first, prepayments applied to the next charge, partial payments accepted (Chapter 13.5). All of them are saved by the one Save changes button at the foot of the form, beside the note "Applies to every property unless the property says otherwise."

Two cards sit under that button, outside the form, and each has a button of its own.

1. 4

   Set the bank roles, then Save bank roles

   The defaults above say where new money is posted. The roles say which bank plays which part when money goes out or is routed: "Refunds are written from the deposit bank; tenant receipts route to the operating bank; the company bank takes the books' own money." Summit names Money Market Savings as the Deposit bank and Operating Checking as the Operating bank, the same pair as its defaults. The Company bank stays Not set; it takes management fees and owner draws, which matter only for a managed property (Chapters 13.11 and 13.12).

Outside services lists the other companies' services the books could use: electronic signing, tenant screening and listing sites. "Each is off until it is turned on here; while it is off, nothing is sent to anyone." Summit leaves all three off. Signatures are then typed in person or recorded from a signed paper, screening is done outside the books and recorded by hand, and listings stay on the books' own Listings page. The Listings row is the exception worth knowing: switched on, even with no listing service connected, it gives the books a listing feed and public pages for their listed units (Chapter 13.3).³ The card underneath, Outside service events, logs every call to or from such a service; on Summit's books it reads "Nothing has gone to or come from an outside service."

Property Management → Properties and people → Properties opens an empty list with Add the first property. Summit's bookkeeper filled in the form and clicked Add property. Nothing was saved.

Why? A property is not only a record; it is a set of accounts. Adding one builds, under existing headers, a group of asset accounts (land, building, improvements, depreciation), a deposits liability, a revenue group and an expense group. Summit's chart was built for a store. It has Revenue, but no Rental Property group under Assets, and its expenses sit under Operating Expenses rather than a top-level group called Expenses. The module needs four things:⁵

1. 1

   Open Accounts → Chart of Accounts and click Add account

   Choose the Asset tab. Name the account Rental Property, put it under Assets (1000), give it a long-term asset detail type and tick Header account. The grey line shows where it will land: Assets : Rental Property (1600).

1. 2

   Add Security Deposits Held on the Liability tab

   Under Liabilities (2000), detail type Other Current, a header. Check the grey line before saving: it must read Liabilities : Security Deposits Held.⁶

2. 3

   Add Expenses on the Expense tab

   Under Top level (no parent), detail type Expense, a header. It sits beside Operating Expenses and will hold the building's costs, kept apart from the store's.

Back on Properties, click Add property again. The form has two cards: The property (what and where) and How it is run (who and which banks). Blank fields in the second card follow the books' settings from Procedure A.

1. 1

   Name it and choose the kind

   The kind is not a label only: "The kind sets up the property's own accounts ... the way Books setup does." The eight kinds follow the property types of Schedule E, line 1b. Two apartments and a storage room over a shop is Multi-family; a building rented wholly to shops would be Commercial.⁷

2. 2

   Type the address

   The form has two address lines, a state and a locality, but no separate city or ZIP box. Put Bend, OR 97703 on the second line. Use Locality only when a city or county has its own rules (for example its own deposit or notice rules).

3. 3

   Fill in how it is run, then Add property

   Summit sets Alex Morgan as manager and a $500.00 reserve. The reserve matters most for managed properties, where it is "kept back from owner draws and statements"; for an owned building it is a reminder of the repair cushion.

The save opens the property's own page with a green banner, "Property added. Add its units next on the Units tab.", and its Activity tab records the first line of its history: Property added with 22 accounts.

Every property page has the same row of tabs. The ones this chapter uses are Summary, Units, Activity and Settings; the rest are filled in by later chapters.

The Owners tab appears once the books, or any one of their properties, are run in Managed for owners mode. Summit's books manage one house for an outside owner (Chapter 13.11), so every property page shows it, Galveston Building's too; on Galveston it simply has no owners to list.⁸

Search the chart for Galveston to see what the property built. Every account carries the property's name, so a Profit and Loss by account becomes a Profit and Loss by building.

The five-digit numbers come from the module's catalog, so a second property lands at 16200, 45200 and 85200. The expense rows line up with the lines of Schedule E, which is why the Tax Report (Chapter 6.8) can place them without help. Rows the catalog only makes for a mortgage, a property manager or short stays were left out.

To read these accounts property by property later, open Reports and, in the Taxes group, Rental Properties: one column per property, on the lines of Schedule E (or Form 8825), for the tax year you choose. Chapter 13.16 reads it in full.

Open the property's Units tab. It is a grid: one row per unit, with three blank rows ready and Add row for more. Blank rows are ignored. Summit's three spaces:

1. 1

   Type one unit per row and click Save all

   Leave Status on Vacant: a lease will change it. The bookkeeper copied the first row to save typing and forgot to change the number on the second.

1. 2

   Correct the row and save again

   The rows keep what you typed. Change the second 2A to 2B and click Save all. The page answers 3 units were saved. A unit number must be unique within a property; two different buildings can each have a 2A. Each saved row now ends with an Open button, which opens the unit's own page, and a More button (···) whose one item is Delete unit; a blank row ends with Clear instead.

1. 3

   Check the module-wide list

   Properties and people → Units lists every unit of every property, with filters for property, status and class. Units are not typed in here; the page says so and sends you to the property's tab. Its Import button loads many units at once from a spreadsheet, which Chapter 13.2 uses for a whole building.

A property group is a named set of properties you look at together: a town, an owner's portfolio, the buildings one person runs. Once the books have a group, every list page of the module (Properties, Units, Rent roll, Work orders, Deposits and the rest) gains a picker in its header, All property groups; choose a group and the list shows only its properties. With one building the group changes nothing yet. Summit makes it now because it plans to buy a second building, and it wants one switch that shows "our own Bend buildings" and leaves out the house it only manages for an outside owner (Chapter 13.11).

1. 1

   Open Properties and people → Property groups

   The first time, the page reads "No groups yet." with a button Add the first group. Click it (later the button is called Add group).

2. 2

   Name the group and decide who may use it

   Type Bend portfolio. Leave Private: only I see and use this group clear: "A shared group is on everyone's picker in these books." A private group suits a personal working list; the office's own groupings should be shared.

3. 3

   Tick the properties, then Add group

   Tick Galveston Building and leave the others clear. With a long list, type in Find a property to narrow it; ticks you have made stay while you search. The list page answers Group added. and shows the row Bend portfolio · Shared · 1 · You.

1. 4

   Add later buildings by editing the group

   A few days later Summit bought the Riverside Fourplex (Chapter 13.2). On the groups list the bookkeeper clicked the group's name (the row's More menu, ···, holds the same Edit, and Delete), ticked Riverside Fourplex and clicked Save changes. The page answered Saved. and the row now counts 2 properties. The same can be done from a property's side: its Summary tab has a Groups card, with an Add to a group picker and an × on each group's chip to take the property out again.

To use the group, choose Bend portfolio in the picker on any list, or click Show properties on the group's row. The list then holds only the group's properties (the Properties list adds a chip, Group: Bend portfolio, whose × clears it), and the choice stays as you move from list to list until you pick All property groups again.¹⁰

Every office keeps a few facts the software has no box for. At Summit it is the parking space: each apartment comes with one numbered space behind the building, and the lease will name it. A custom field adds such a box to every record of one kind: properties, units, leases, tenants, prospects, applicants or listings.

1. 1

   Open Settings → Property Management → Data → Custom fields and choose the record type

   The Data tab has two sub-tabs, Import (Chapter 13.2) and Custom fields; the Settings sub-menu also has a Custom fields entry that goes straight there. Custom fields opens on Properties. A parking space belongs to a unit, so click the Units sub-tab. It reads "No custom fields for units yet. Add one: a parking space, a gate code, a pet deposit paid." Click Add field.

2. 2

   Name it and choose the type

   Name Parking space, type Text (Summit's spaces are numbered P-1, P-2, so a number field would refuse the letter). The other types are Long text, Number, Money, Date, Yes / No and Choice list. Group is optional: fields of one group sit together under its name on the card.

3. 3

   Leave the three boxes clear, then Add field

   The first box, Required: records must fill it on their Custom fields card and on import rows, would force every unit, and every row of a units import, to carry a value; the storage room S1 has no parking space, so Summit leaves it optional. Show as a column in the Units list and its export and Show in reports (a column of the vacancy report) can be ticked later. The page answers "Field added: Parking space." and lists it as Text, Active, used on 0 records.

1. 4

   Fill it in, unit by unit

   The field appears in two places at once. Each unit's page (the row's Open button) gains a Custom fields card, below Inventory, with its own Save. And the property's Units tab grid gains a Parking space column, so a whole building can be filled in one pass and saved with Save all. An import file fills it too, with a column named cf:Parking space (Chapter 13.2).

• [x] Property Management shows On, in the right mode.
• [x] The state on the General tab is the building's state.
• [x] Deposit and rent banks are chosen, and the deposit bank is separate if your state asks for it.
• [x] The chart has Assets:Rental Property, a top-level Expenses and Liabilities:Security Deposits Held.
• [x] The property's activity says it was added with its accounts.
• [x] Every unit is on the Units tab with its class and market rent, and the count matches the building.
• [x] The bank roles name a deposit bank before the first refund, and every Save button you needed was clicked.
• [x] The property sits in the groups the office uses, and those groups are shared.
• [x] The custom fields you need exist on the right record type, and only facts every record has are Required.