Getting Started with Propra Service Accounting

Modified on Wed, Jun 12 at 4:19 PM

Propra offers a comprehensive service accounting module for property management, enabling accrual-based accounting down to the unit level. Seamlessly integrating lease information, maintenance tracking, and owner and tenant records already in the platform, it simplifies managing receivables and payables. Propra accounting enhances efficiency with real-time updates, accurate record-keeping, detailed financial reporting, and automations for recording rent charges, deposits, maintenance billing, and more.

This article provides an overview of Propra Service Accounting and how you can get started.

Quickly Navigate This Article

Activating Accounting in Propra
- Chart of Accounts
- Financial Settings
Navigating Accounting
Your First Accounting Cycle

Activating Accounting in Propra

A user with a Books Admin role can activate accounting. To activate accounting, click on Accounting on the left-hand menu, then click Let's Get Started.

Chart of Accounts

The set up will start off with offering a standard Chart of Accounts. You can customize the chart of accounts at any time. Don’t worry about creating a set of accounts for every property; our system automatically keeps records for each property by owner so you always have independent financial records.

Owner-operators can ensure that the business’s administrative transactions are not mixed with a portfolio’s transactions by selecting the company name as a property when posting transactions.

Financial Settings

After creating the Chart of Accounts, you can define your Financial Settings:

Company Information: Enter your fiscal year end and GST/HST information, if applicable.
Account Mapping: Designate which accounts will be used for transactions related to accounts payable, operating bank, GST etc. Used by the system when posting automated and batch transactions available under Tasks.
Fee Mapping: Assign revenue accounts to various lease fees for your rent roll.
Charges Mapping: Customize charges that users can apply to tenant and/or owner records.
Maintenance Billing: Enable automatic billing for maintenance requests to ensure that accounting expenses for labor and material costs are recorded upon completion. Set your labor rate, apply material markups, and customize account mapping based on request category.
Accounting Tasks: Define which fees contribute to management fee calculations and specify whether to track this revenue for your business. Customize cheque printing and income payout options to suit your needs.

Navigating Accounting

Accounting has six additional menu options across the top:

Tasks: where all the accounting activities are available
Accounts: where you access the chart of accounts
Receivables: where you manage accounts receivables and any money received
Payables: where you manage accounts payable and any payments made
Charges: where you can review, approve, or decline charges submitted
Reports: where you generate financial reports

Tasks

Consolidation of all the regular accounting activities in one easy place to navigate. Here you can:

Run rent roll for residential and commercial tenants
Process monthly condo fee collection
Enter bills and expenses
Print cheque runs
Record pre-authorized debit entries for rents and condo fees
Manage recurring entries
Charge management fees
Create invoices for tenants or condo owners
Create special levy invoices for condo owners
Create rental owner income payouts
Perform account reconciliations
Create GST/HST remittances
Import transactions
Manage property budgets
Record fund transfer between properties

Accounts

Where the Chart of Accounts live. Propra provides a customizable template chart of accounts, eliminating the need to create new accounts for each property or owner. The system automatically maintains independent financial records for each property by owner, ensuring accurate and streamlined financial management.

Receivables

Keep track of all funds to be collected in Receivables. The following tasks will have their resulting transactions posted in Receivables:

Commercial and residential rent roll
Condo fees and special levy
Create invoice and multi-unit invoice

The accounting feature works cohesively with all of the other features in Propra. This ensures that transactions are made correctly and quickly. The following automated transactions will also populate in Receivables:

Security deposits for new leases: When adding a new lease for a property our system recognizes that a new lease with a security deposit amount has been added and automatically makes the accounts receivable transaction for the security deposit.
Retained funds to apply to rent: When issuing a deposit, if funds are retained to apply to outstanding charges, such as rent, a credit receivable transaction will automatically be posted.
Approved charges: charges applied to owners or tenants from their Financial pages will automatically be posted according to the Charges Mapping.

Outstanding charges can be selected to apply a deposit against, ensuring you know what has been collected and what hasn't.

Learn more: Receivables

Payables

Keep track of all money to be paid in Payables. The following tasks will have their resulting transactions posted in Payables:

Enter bill
GST remittance
Income Payout
Management fees

The accounting feature works cohesively with all of the other features in Propra to ensure that transactions are made correctly and quickly. There is the option to automate maintenance billing. Once a maintenance request has been resolved and marked completed, a payable is posted for the time spent and any material costs that were entered by the operator or other users.

Outstanding payables can be selected to apply payments to, ensuring you know what has been paid and what is still owing.

Learn more: Payables

Charges

Any one time charges that are pending review to be approved or declined. Options for charges available to your users can be configured with specific amounts, accounts, and approval limits in your account's Financial Settings.

Learn more: Setting Up and Approving Resident Charges

Reports

Find all the important reports in one place. Reports can be produced by property or consolidated for an owner:

Income Statement by property, owner or consolidated
Balance Sheet by property, owner or consolidated
Trial Balance by property or consolidated
Property Statement of Account
Payee Statement
GST Return and detailed by transaction
Deposits
Property Receivables
Property Payables
Rent Comparison
Property Rent Roll
Property Unit Fees

Property managers also have

Trust Liability
Income Payout

Use Bundled Reports to easily generate multiple report packages at once. Once generated, simply review and share as needed.

Learn more: Reports

Your First Accounting Cycle

Once accounting is activated, here are suggested next steps:

Review and Update Your Data

The accounting tasks use data from your property, owner and lease records when creating transactions and batches so it’s important to ensure your records are up to date. Below is a guide to help you identify and address if there are is any data missing or not up to date that will be used in accounting processes. Taking the time to review data before you get started will reduce the risk of mistakes that may end up taking more time to correct later.

Before Entering Transactions

How do you want your universal chart of accounts structured?
- Review Chart of Accounts. To find what you already have set up, go to Accounting > Accounts for the account listing or go to Accounting > Reports and run the Chart of Accounts report.
- Add or edit any accounts in the Accounts tab.
Are all the accounts mapped for the accounting tasks, lease fees, maintenance billing, and charges?
- Review and confirm your Financial Settings.
When will you get started?
- Determine a cut-off date that works for your business. Most customers select the first of the month as a or the day following an income payout to owners as a starting point.

Before Posting Rent Roll

Are current leases records set up with appropriate fees? Are condo units updated with the appropriate fees and owners?
- Review leases and ensure tenant information and fees are accurate. Create a report bundle with the Property Rent Roll report and generate a report for all properties as of the cut-off date to review lease information currently in the system.
  Learn more: Creating a New Lease, Adding a Resident to an Existing Lease
- Review condo unit information and ensure unit fees and unit factors (if applicable) are accurate. Run the Property Unit Fee report for your condo properties or review the All Units tab on condo properties.
  Learn more: Updating Condo Fees for All Units
Do tenants have preferred payment methods for their fees? Are you using a PAD system?
- Use the tenant table to see current preferred payment methods and the amount or run the Rent Comparison Report for all properties to see current rent amount and preferred payment methods for tenants.
- Update the preferred payment method for a tenant under Financial obligations on the Financials tab on their record
Do condo owners have preferred payment methods for their fees? Are you using a PAD system?
- Use the owner table to see current preferred payment methods and the amount.
- Update the preferred payment method for a tenant under Financial obligations on the Financials tab on their record
If you are a third party property manager, are management fees set up for your owners?
- Ensure your Financial Settings indicate what fees are included in management fee calculations.
- Run the management fee batch process for your start date and review/export what is generated to see if it calculates as expected. Do not post.
- Update management fees on the Financials tab of the owner record. If managing more than one asset for the owner with different fee structures for each asset, update the management fee on the Assets tab for each property/unit, as required.

Before Processing Payments, Running Financial Reports, and Completing Reconciliations

What properties belong to which physical bank accounts?
- Set up groups under Manage Groups on Account Reconciliation task.
Do you have carry-forward balances as of the cut-off date?
- Enter or import outstanding A/R balances for any tenants or owners as of the cut-off date.
- Enter or import outstanding A/P balances for any vendors, suppliers, or contractors as of the cut-off date.
- Enter or import account balances for non A/R and A/P accounts as of the cut-off date.

Run Your Monthly Processes

Let's get started with entering data in accounting!

Please note: If you are migrating from another accounting system, it is recommended to run your first month in a new accounting system concurrently with your existing one to ensure that everything is accounted for properly.

Charge Rent

At the beginning of each month run the Rent Roll task to charge tenants. The same can be done for commercial rent and condo fees depending on your portfolio. The first time you click on Rent Roll you will be required to select the main revenue account you want to use for that task. After posting, you will then be able to find all of your rents due waiting for deposits to be applied on the Receivables page.

Learn more: Creating Rent Roll, Creating Commercial Rent Roll, Recording Condo Fees, Adding Charges for Pro-rated Rent

Bills and Expenses

Throughout the month when you receive bills that need to be paid at a future date use Enter Bill from the task page. You will then be able to find all of your bills waiting for payment on the Payables page. If you used Cheque as a payment method you can then use the Print Cheques task to print all of your cheques at one time.

If you have expenses that are automatically paid through EFT or credit card use the Enter Expense task to enter those. For any transactions that repeat, you can post them as recurring so that they will automatically get entered for you in the future.

Learn more: Entering a Bill, Recording an Expense

Management Fees

Property managers can use the Management Fee task to create payables owners, owed to the property management company based on the fees that are set on an owner's record.

Learn more: Charging Management Fees

Income Payout

Property managers can use the Income Payout task to create a payable for the owner. The funds available are calculated from rents that have been deposited and expenses paid from the operating bank account as well as any outstanding payables for that property. The Income payout report gives a detailed breakdown of the funds available.

Learn more: Creating an Income Payout

GST/HST - Commercial Properties

When it’s time to remit GST/HST, review and download the GST/HST Return Report and then use the GST Remittance task to create a payable. Then, you are ready to file your GST online.

For property managers that wish to pay the GST/HST to their customers select `self` for the GST file on that owner’s record. This will ensure the payable is addressed to the owner.

Learn more: Creating GST/HST Remittances

Finish Onboarding Accounting

Before running financial reports and your first reconciliations within Propra, it's important to ensure balances have been entered and any liability accounts have been updated to ensure accuracy moving forward.

Opening Balances

Have a record of the balances for all your existing accounts as of the end of the day before you start using Propra Service Accounting. The Import task will allow you to add opening balances for each property. You can also import transactions to maintain a record of each outstanding rent due or bill payment owed.

Learn more: Entering Opening Balances, Importing Balances and Transactions

Reconcile and Balance

Now you are ready to finish your first accounting cycle in Propra.

Please note: If you are migrating from another accounting system and you've been running your systems concurrently, it's essential to take the time to ensure reports and reconciliations match between the two systems.

Account Reconciliation

After the rents and expenses have been paid you can use the Account Reconciliation task to match your bank statements to your accounting records. Use Account Reconciliation for any account that you make payments from: bank and credit cards. This way you can ensure you didn’t miss anything.

Learn more: Using Account Reconciliation

Financial Statements

Once you know your records are accurate, you can generate and review financial statements under Reports.

Learn more: Bundled Reports