Specialized Bookkeeping for Property Managers
Your trust accounts stay compliant. Your owner statements are clean. Your books are ready for your CPA — or a state auditor — at any moment. We deliver that outcome by working directly inside your property management software, every single business day.
Between tenant payments, owner disbursements, management fees, and maintenance billing — the numbers drift. When books are only touched at month-end, small mistakes become expensive audit findings.
When books are only balanced once a month, a misposted payment on day three compounds silently for weeks. Daily monitoring catches the same mistake before your owners ever see it.
A security deposit posted to the wrong property. A management fee applied twice. These are quiet mistakes — until a state audit makes them expensive. Trust violations carry fines of $10,000+ per infraction and in severe cases, license suspension.
Management fees, work order charges, vendor bills staged for approval — these need consistent daily attention. When you're also managing leases and maintenance, billing gets deprioritized.
Trust fund accounting, per-owner ledger separation, management fee structures, work order billing — a general bookkeeper doesn't know the specific rules of your industry. We work in it every day.
We log into your property management software — AppFolio, Buildium, or Rent Manager — and work directly inside your accounting ledgers. No data exports, no parallel software, no reconciling between two separate systems. Your books stay where they belong — in your system.
Most outsourced bookkeeping firms reconcile monthly or deliver results within 5–10 business days. We monitor daily — because a variance caught on day two costs nothing to fix, and the same variance caught on day thirty costs a client relationship.
We receive user-level access to your software's accounting functions. Disbursement, payment, and bank transfer capabilities stay with you exclusively — we don't need them and we don't request them.
Your bank transactions are matched to your PMS entries and tenant records daily. Any unmatched entry is flagged immediately, investigated, and documented before it compounds.
Management fees verified. Vendor bills entered and staged for approval. Work order charges billed correctly. When you sit down to process payables, everything is organized and ready for your single sign-off.
Reconciled reports, per-owner statements, a complete unmatched transaction log, and supporting documentation — formatted for your CPA or any regulatory review.
What is a three-way reconciliation?
Your bank records what money moved. Your PMS records what should have moved. Your tenant ledgers record what each tenant owes or paid. All three must agree — and without daily attention, they drift. We make sure they match, every day.
Meridian's methodology was built by a practitioner with direct experience managing audit-ready compliance across 23 bank accounts and a 200+ unit residential portfolio — including investor reporting and distribution analysis. Every process we deliver was designed to institutional standards, then systematized so a trained operator executes it with the same precision, every day.
Every tier guarantees audit-ready trust compliance, a dedicated manager who knows your portfolio, and a signed NDA. The difference between tiers is portfolio complexity — not unit count. All work order billing is included across every tier.
"Is this you?" You built this business yourself. You're doing the books alongside everything else. You want your weekends back and the assurance that your trust accounts survive a state audit.
Best fit: 15–40 units, 1–4 owner relationships, no internal maintenance team
"You've hit the wall." You crossed 40 doors and your manual systems broke. You're paying for enterprise software and using it as a rent portal. You know you'll never break through 100 doors like this.
Best fit: 41–75 units, 4–8 owner relationships, internal maintenance team or complex fee structure
1099 preparation: we flag, organize, and prepare. Client retains responsibility for vendor compliance and payment timing.
Your tolerance for error is zero. A trust account violation at this scale doesn't just cost money — it threatens a license you've spent years building. You need daily visibility, not month-end reports.
Best fit: 76–100+ units, multiple LLC entities, or 8+ owner relationships with institutional reporting requirements
All reports are PMS-native. No manual external templates.
For GPs operating syndicated properties with LP investors using AppFolio Investment Manager. A different structure requires a different conversation.
Engagement agreement explicitly limits our role: we prepare reports and provide financial information only. All distribution decisions and executions are made solely by the General Partner. We have no access to the distribution execution module.
Software can match transactions. What it can't do is sign off on your trust compliance, flag a misclassified capital improvement before your CPA sees it, or explain a variance to a state auditor. You're not paying for data entry — you're paying for a compliance partner who knows your portfolio and stands behind the numbers.
Platform compatibility confirmed during your discovery call. Additional platforms beyond AppFolio, Buildium, and Rent Manager available — contact us to discuss.
You've moved past spreadsheets but you're not a 500-unit operation with a full accounting department. The bookkeeping keeps slipping — and you know it.
You're running everything yourself. The books get done at 11pm on the last day of the month and you're not confident they're right. Every hour spent reconciling is an hour not spent on leasing, maintenance, or the next door. You need someone to make the books invisible so you can focus on growing.
→ Starter tierYou've made your first hires and invested in real software — but the transaction volume has outpaced your manual systems. Trust account variances are accumulating. You know you'll never break through 100 doors if you're still closing books manually at month-end. This is the most dangerous phase in a PM company's life — and the most common trigger for our clients.
→ Growth tierYou're running a real company. Zero error tolerance. Regulatory bodies expect flawless trust accounting. Your owners expect daily financial visibility. You need a financial partner who operates at your standard — not a bookkeeper who catches up once a month.
→ Portfolio tierCompliance Standard
Our bookkeeping methodology aligns with NARPM Accounting Framework guidelines — the industry standard for residential property management trust accounting and financial reporting.
Property managers rarely seek outsourced accounting when their books are pristine. They seek immediate intervention when trust ledgers are negative, reconciliations haven't balanced in months, and a state audit is looming. The cleanup service is forensic accounting — not onboarding.
Not yet on AppFolio, Buildium, or Rent Manager? We handle the migration. Chart of accounts setup, historical data import, fee structure configuration, and opening balance reconciliation — then you move directly into the monthly retainer with clean books from day one.
Complete teardown and rebuild to NARPM standards. Property-level accounts separated from company-level accounts. Capital improvement categories properly distinguished from routine maintenance.
Trust funds forensically separated from operating capital. Negative property ledgers identified and cleared. Historical three-way reconciliations completed month by month until the books are clean.
State real estate commission compliance re-established. Beneficiary records corrected. Documentation organized so you can walk into any audit with confidence.
If you're migrating to AppFolio, Buildium, or Rent Manager, we manage the financial side of the transition — data scrubbing, COA configuration, and opening balance verification before you go live.
Scoped after your discovery call based on months in arrears and severity of discrepancies.
Schedule a no-commitment discovery call. We'll review your current setup, confirm which tier fits your portfolio, and tell you honestly whether we're the right fit.
Book Your Discovery CallNo commitment required. Response within one business day.