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Podcast

Expert advice and discussions to elevate your property management game.

Don’t Let an Audit Turn Your Business Upside Down: Simple Steps to Stay in Compliance

Host: Pete Neubig
Guest: Mohamed Hussein

Audits are a reality for most property management businesses, whether triggered by regulatory requirements, tenant complaints, or random selection. And the stakes are high: failed audits can result in significant fines, operational disruptions, and even license suspension.

They don’t have to be overwhelming or disruptive, though. Focusing on a few key practices ensures your business remains compliant and ready for any audit.
In this webinar, you will learn how to comply and identify potential issues before they become problems by:

Implementing practical self-review strategies to stay audit-ready.
Ensuring trust accounting and GAAP compliance without added stress.
Leveraging property management software for compliance checks and reporting.
Whether you’re preparing for an upcoming audit or just want peace of mind, you will be equipped with the knowledge and tools to protect your business and maintain confidence in your operations.

Listen Now:

Transcript

0:01

[Music] today we have Muhammad Assin from

0:08

Balanced Asset Solutions he’s been he’s been doing this for property managers for over 15 years now and uh he is going

0:18

to talk to us about are we audit ready uh especially from a property management

0:23

point of view um just like all other webinars this webinar we make it within we make it 30 minutes just so we can get

0:30

uh people in and out we know everybody’s day is super busy so with no further ado Muhammad you are up man

0:37

beautiful uh thank you for that warm introduction Pete i’m happy to be here um hello everyone my name is Muhammad Mo

0:44

Hussein i’ll be your presenter today and we get to talk about the wonderful and exciting topic of audits um are you

0:51

audit ready no I’m kidding steps uh and uh to avoid pitfalls and

0:58

and ensure compliance um so as I’m going through the presentation here uh Pete is

1:04

generous enough to be able to check on the any questions so if you have any questions feel free to add it in the Q&A

1:11

uh you can also raise your hand if I see that as I’m going through particular topics i will take a pause if it’s

1:17

related to topic if not um we’ll I may save it for the end and we’ll have some time at the end to do some Q&A um so

1:24

today’s agenda uh we’ll talk a little bit about um what GAAP compliance is uh

1:30

the role of trust accounting um strategies to conduct self- reviews and

1:36

things you need to kind of look for in preparing for an audit and how you can leverage your software for compliance

1:42

and then we’ll leave some time at the end again for for some Q&A um so let’s

1:47

go ahead and get started so uh today’s goal uh from a high level is to provide

1:53

insight into uh my experience and our organization’s experience on kind of going through audits we’ve been around

1:59

uh for a little over eight and a half years i’ve been in this industry for close to 15 years and work with clients

2:05

all throughout the US um we are CPA and accounting firm and and constantly are working with clients um that are going

2:11

through department of real estate audits and so today we’re hoping to provide some information collateral and tools uh

2:18

to equip you with the necessary information and knowledge to ensure that you are audit ready why audits matter so

2:27

a lot of folks in this industry usually start off in uh as a broker uh buying

2:33

selling real estate on behalf of your clients and and usually over time a client or two may ask you to actually

2:38

manage their real estate and uh uh their their their actual portfolio from a property management perspective and

2:44

that’s where we see a lot of folks kind of jump into uh property management um property management does have kind of

2:50

strict certain compliance and rules depending on the state that you’re in i’m sitting here in the state of

2:55

California which is very strict um in terms of like trust accounting um but in

3:00

general you know audits are usually kind of an afterthought um it’s similar to kind of insurance you want to make sure

3:06

that you have it and you are ready um in the instance where you do get called up

3:11

um what we see is usually folks that are being audited it’s usually one of three

3:16

reasons that an audit is kind of triggered keep in mind in the US alone there’s probably close to uh a little

3:23

over 220,000 different management companies there’s no there’s no you know

3:28

similar size of an army with the department of real estate that’s technically able to audit everybody um

3:34

and so usually there’s three kind of like cues that the department of real estate will get on an organization that

3:40

they’re looking to audit it’s you know disgruntled owner that wasn’t receiving reporting or accurate financials that

3:47

gave an anonymous tip there’s a disgruntled tenant that doesn’t feel like their maintenance requests or that their concerns are being heard by their

3:53

management company or you know when it comes to fair housing prospects um and so you know I always say that I’ll give

4:00

you a fourth one Mo i’ll give you a fourth another another agent or broker that’s

4:07

unhappy they’ll even though they’re not supposed to we we’ve seen that from That’s right that’s right that’s right

4:13

so this goes back to you know one of the fundamental concepts in business and just like communication and you know the

4:18

old adage of like karma you know what goes around kind of comes around you want to make sure that you know you’re running your business in a manner that’s

4:25

you know fairly ethical and that you are you are uh working with people in a in a very fair manner audits are are very

4:32

very business disruptive you know and failing these audits will definitely put risk and potentially you know you’ll

4:38

lose your actual uh your broker’s license um when we look at just even the

4:44

state of California about on average per per year there’s about 5% of companies there’s close to about 50,000 management

4:50

companies headquartered in the state of California about 5% are audited uh yearly so it’s not a matter of if it’s a

4:57

matter of when so one out of every out of 20 companies are being audited each year audits if you’re using a third

5:05

party firm usually cost somewhere ballpark about $25,000 however the typical fine is

5:12

somewhere to the ballpark of about $35,000 and these range we’ve seen audit

5:17

you know um fines from you know a couple thousand up to you know well into the

5:23

six figures depending on how egregious the violations are and I’ll talk through some of those as we go through our

5:29

presentation here um excuse me I keep going back um next we’ll talk about

5:36

understanding GAP compliance so GAP stands for generally accepted accounting principles in accounting there’s no such

5:44

thing as creativity if you have a creative accountant I would be highly skeptical there’s always a right and

5:53

exactly and actually this this is exactly why these standards were established the generally accepted

5:58

accounting principles was known as GAAP was established by the financials accounting standards boardby and there’s

6:04

one for the government also and these organizations were put together after Enron the whole Enron scandal so there’s

6:11

no such thing as as uh as creative accounting there’s always a right answer and the whole point of GAP is to

6:17

standardize the way that financial reporting and information is shared with investors with stakeholders and with the

6:22

general public this ensures that there is cohesive kind of a uh um consistency

6:28

across you know reading and understanding kind of financial reports um talked about GAP compliance within

6:36

the the real estate industry we have Whoops within the real estate industry we have what’s called trust accounting

6:42

compliance um before I go into that I forgot I have this slide on GAP um so uh for those of you that don’t understand

6:49

uh GAP there’s kind of three main components to it you have revenue recognition which is you know ensuring

6:54

that revenue is recognized when it is earned so for example you know uh in the beginning of the month the first of the

7:00

month when a tenant pays rent that is when rent revenue is recognized if they pay rent the day before the first of the

7:06

month that is technically a liability that’s what’s called prepaid rent right um so ensuring that you’re recognizing

7:12

revenue when it is actually earned um it’s different for both cash and acrruel basis you have what’s called expense

7:19

matching which is aligning the expenses with the revenues that are generated in that same period and this ensures that

7:25

there’s you know a corresponding revenue for each expense and then the iconic

7:30

canonical kind of financial statements the big three what we call the balance sheet the income statement and the cash

7:36

flow um and this ensures that you know all these different financial reports are reported in a cohesive kind of

7:44

manner uh next we’ll talk a little bit about trust accounting so within the

7:49

within real estate you are you are and it’s not even only just real estate it’s

7:55

just the the the scenario of where you’re working and touching other people’s money other people’s assets on

8:02

their behalf it’s what’s called trust accounting you’re managing funds on behalf of a client um there’s some core

8:08

tenants that you need to kind of take into consideration one is it needs to be separated away from your business

8:15

operational funds so you as a corporate company your property management business your brokerage business that

8:21

needs to be separated away from what are called your trust funds your trust funds is the uh the accounting and also the

8:29

monies associated with the operations of the properties that you are managing on behalf of your owners or even entities

8:36

okay um this is the main reason that the department of real estate exists is to ensure that owners uh are are protected

8:44

and that you know they’re one not taken kind of advantage of if you will by management companies but also additionally that the management

8:50

companies are managing their funds correctly and in a compliant manner um

8:56

you know strict adherence to this is very important and violations like you know comingling things like security

9:02

deposits or comingling funds uh between your corporate and your trust accounting carry very heavy heavy penalties um and

9:09

sometimes usually if you get audited um if you do not pass the first audit um

9:15

the the the department of real estate will definitely circle back usually within 18 months time and the penalties

9:21

will continue to increase if you continue to kind of fail on those um uh

9:28

next we’ll talk about the importance of uh best practices when it comes to kind

9:34

of trust accounting so there’s three main kind of tenants you want to kind of keep in mind one is fund segregation

9:40

again that’s kind of having you should have a separate bank account for your corporate entity than that of what is associated with your your trust

9:47

accounting um oh we have a question here real quick do you recommend having a

9:52

separate bank account for security deposits versus um versus rental or or

9:59

the owner accounts good good good question so this would be the operating funds versus the security deposits which

10:04

are considered kind of a liability if you will so um the department of real estate doesn’t really stipulate hey how

10:11

many different bank accounts you have we’ve seen multiple different types of setup you can have a separate bank account for every single owner that has

10:17

both their security deposit and the operating funds you can have one operating funds that’s an aggregate of

10:22

all your clients’s uh properties and owners for the operating and then a separate one for the security deposit or

10:29

we’ve also seen scenarios where every single property has its own operating account and its own security deposit

10:34

account and so um the Department of Real Estate doesn’t really dictate which setup that you can have but there’s a

10:40

couple things to kind of keep into consideration is that in instances where you want to co-mingle like your security

10:46

deposits for example with your operating funds in the same bank account ideally what you should have is at least what’s

10:51

called two different cash accounts um so you should have an operating cash account and a security deposit cash

10:57

account and so think about if you have one bank account for all your clients think about it as a pie you can split

11:03

that between operating funds and the security deposit um that is completely fine you just need to make sure that

11:09

you’re following proper accounting and that you’re constantly doing a check and a reconciliation at the end of the month

11:15

to ensure that you have enough funds in the security deposit cash account as you have in your liability account your

11:21

liability balance which show up on your balance sheet also what is showing on the actual tenant level liability um you

11:28

know if you have separate bank accounts for every single property and have separate you know operating in security deposit it makes it very difficult for

11:35

you to potentially you know this have scenarios where you steal from Bob to pay bill and things of that sort however

11:41

having more and more bank accounts increases your your you know your uh the

11:46

amount of the amount of bank accounts and additional accounts you need to consider on kind of a monthly basis so it’s kind of a trade-off right um

11:53

ideally you know we always suggest to our clients that you should uh um to

11:59

keep things simple it’s best to have as little number of bank accounts to reconcile as possible but um in in that

12:05

scenario you need to make sure you have the right especially like accounting systems um to be able to segregate or show that segregation of funds on a per

12:12

owner basis if you have one bank account that’s housing all your owners properties and operations you need to

12:17

make sure you don’t dip a property into a negative balance because that bank account is shared across multiple other

12:23

owners you know if you dip a property to a negative balance that check or that payment won’t necessarily bounce because

12:28

you’re stealing from another property’s funds and other owners funds and this is a very important concept especially in

12:34

certain states like California where like the Department of Real Estate is very strict about this even if you have an owner that has multiple properties

12:41

and one property is at a negative balance and another propertyy’s at a positive balance you can’t just take the

12:46

net and and figure out what payments go out to vendors or owners or distributions you should move funds from

12:52

the property that has a positive balance to cover the balance on the property that has a negative balance so then that

12:57

way all properties are always showing at least a balance of zero if not more

13:04

um good question though um bank reconciliations this is something that

13:09

you should be doing on a monthly basis and there should be some compliance and kind of oversight on this you want to

13:14

make sure that you know a lot some of these accounting systems do a really good job of of what’s called like tying

13:20

out the trust account which is the property cash balances to the balance that’s in the bank account and so

13:26

ideally you know if in some scenario all your owners wanted to cancel their agreements with you and you need to

13:32

handle hand back the funds associated with all your properties there should be enough funds in the bank account to be

13:37

able to pay back the cash balances on all the properties and cover any unclearared items okay um detailed

13:43

recordkeeping is also another question here Mo real quick um what day of the month should you have all your

13:49

reconciliations done by is there like a standard operating procedure or something that you like or you or that

13:55

you guys uh determine what’s best yeah great great great great question so usually what we suggest is at you know

14:01

as of the end of the month the last day of the month you should you know and most of these accounting systems like I folio and you already allow for you to

14:07

be able to have what’s called a soft close so that all transactions from the prior month are kind of not locked in

14:13

but at least not give you the ability to backdate transactions now you know user permissions and stuff will give you some

14:19

of that flexibility ideally you want to make sure that you’re entering transactions kind of in real time this

14:25

is something and a point that is very easy to kind of overlook you know you may have auto payments that are coming

14:30

out of the bank account and things of that sort but it’s very key that you use your accounting system as your guide on

14:37

understanding everything that’s happening and that it’s being updated kind of in real time so rather than looking at your bank account

14:44

consistently you just need to look at the trust account balance and the balances on the properties of the that you are managing and so um ideally you

14:52

should you know you should have the bank reconciliations completed ahead of doing owner distributions um we usually

14:59

suggest owner distributions usually be done on the third week of the month the reason for that is usually the first week of the month you’re getting tenant

15:05

payments you know applying late fees maybe there’s some moveins and some moveouts the second week you should be

15:11

paying off vendors the invoices for any you know work orders things of that sort then your management fees and then your

15:18

owner distributions before you do your owner distributions you want to do your bank reconciliations do a review of all

15:23

the financial reports including the bank reconciliation the big three reports which is the balance sheet income statement and cash flow on a per

15:30

property basis and then when you send out your owner distributions like all that reporting and everything should be locked in and all that should be

15:36

validated and uh and the month should be closed out usually for us we we close

15:41

out books at the latest by the 17th of uh of the next month so you know in 2

15:46

days we’ll be done with the accounting and and all the bank wrecks and everything for our clients as of you know for the end of

15:53

February good question um so the purpose of trust

16:01

accounting so uh one is is it I think I actually went over this slide maybe I

16:06

might be going backwards um this is just a great visualization to show on kind of best practices so again fund segregation

16:13

regular reconciliations detailed recordkeeping um and having these things will help

16:19

ensure that you know you don’t you don’t coingle funds there’s inade inadequate

16:25

documentation in frank infrequent bank reconciliations and then you have the benefits of compliance protection of

16:30

client funds and enhanced trust and transparency uh next uh so we’ve talked

16:36

about GAAP compliance what the role of trust accounting is next we’ll talk a little bit about conducting your

16:41

self-reviews so um you know nobody wants to go through an audit but the matter of

16:47

fact is is that they do kind of come up and so this is something that you should be consistently kind of prepared for if

16:53

you will in the instance where you are called up for an audit um we suggest that you should be doing an internal

16:58

audit at least on a monthly basis if not on a quarterly basis and you should be tasked with a team that is not uh doing

17:06

the accounting you can hire a third party company like ourselves to conduct that for you or you have another team

17:12

within your organization and have a check and balance uh between you know the folks that are doing the accounting

17:17

and also uh the folks that are doing kind of the audit um a lot of these property management companies have

17:23

built-in features and reports that allow for you to be able to easily surface up the information um that you need to kind

17:28

of review during your audit process at FFolio does a particularly good job on uh having audit logs and bank activity

17:35

report financial diagnostics um you want to embrace you know automation so you

17:40

know a lot of these software companies have different kind of controls if you will and role based access and the

17:46

ability to prevent things like you know or having kind of review process for example on like AP to ensure that

17:52

they’re coded correctly um and you’re not hitting things like liability accounts like a security deposit account

17:57

during like a moveout for example that should be hitting a clearing account um and so you know instituting and kind of

18:04

implementing these controls and having kind of strict SOPs on how things are done within the organization will also help ensure that you’re in a constant

18:11

kind of compliance uh status um uh kind

18:16

of go going through kind of a a self audit um these are kind of the steps that we suggest and implore our clients

18:22

to do is you know set objectives and assemble a team gather you know there’s set of documents that need to be kind of

18:28

gathered you know financial statements bank reconciliations trust account records um and even lease agreements and

18:34

and contracts um you should review financial transactions that revenue is properly being recognized um that

18:41

expenses are being properly matched um that the trust accounts are segregated

18:46

if you will um and that there’s regular reconciliations done and then that the

18:51

transactions that are showing up on the properties are all correct accurate um you want to ensure that things like your

18:57

reporting adheres to generally accepted accounting principles you should be doing kind of spot discrepancies to to

19:03

see if there are any errors and then and when there is an error that’s recognized you should figure out what the kind of

19:10

the root cause is of that particular error and then document that error and that correction and establish as part of

19:16

your you know audit kind of SOPs evaluating internal controls this is something that is very much kind of

19:23

overlooked and we see um uh we see this a lot with clients when um you know

19:29

unfortunately this industry is somewhat notorious for things like embezzlement happening um it is not uncommon um if

19:36

you have you know wide ranging access that your users have across the org um

19:42

and this includes even folks that are that are like the CFO and whatnot um they shouldn’t they shouldn’t be able to

19:47

you know create new properties or create fictitious properties or fictitious bank accounts and what have you that are tied

19:52

to real bank accounts it’s very easy with these new software or just software uh options and what’s available out

19:59

there to give you know kind of wide ranging access and not be able to identify when there’s like you know um

20:06

negative or kind of concerning activity and stuff that’s happening um you know we had a we had a client uh a few years

20:12

back who was going through an audit and um you know unfortunately their CFO had

20:18

disappeared a couple of like a couple weeks before the audit that was coming um they had reached out to us and when

20:23

we were doing our forensic accounting analysis what we saw was that the there was fictitious properties that were

20:29

created in the client’s database and those properties were tied to the same trust account the bank account that they

20:35

h that they are house that they’re housing their owner’s funds and this individual was writing checks to

20:40

themselves and to you know to entities and they were essentially embezzling money out of the account however they

20:46

were overseeing the bank reconciliation process and so they were creating adjustments and so their executives were

20:51

getting these reports and not seeing like hey any foul play or anything until they went through a hard audit by the

20:58

Department of Real Estate who looked at their actual liability balances and what they actually had in their bank account

21:03

they’re showing a shortage of close to $350,000 um this isn’t this isn’t a bespoke

21:09

scenario this is actually very very common and we see it a lot um you know

21:15

trust but verify right and you should I mean this is this is just kind of like something the way you should approach

21:20

business in general right um and leveraging kind of a third party and having the right internal controls is

21:26

very very important things like if in your accounting system folks that have the ability to create additional

21:32

properties to create bank accounts to reconcile bank accounts um you know should also be checked in a manner

21:39

whether it’s like externally or by another individual in the organization and so and having these internal

21:44

controls is it is very important um you should be able you should be putting together a summary report and and

21:49

developing kind of a plan to address these unresolved issues this is our comprehensive

21:56

checklist of all the kind of reports and uh financial and other information you

22:01

should be taking a look at and kind of preparing for an audit again we suggest kind of doing this on kind of a monthly basis but at a minimum you should be

22:09

doing it on a quarterly basis um um there’s a lot to kind of unpack here so

22:14

I’ll kind of quickly go through kind of the highle items uh but we have you know your financial statements you have your bank reconciliations you need to make

22:21

sure that they are actually balanced you know simply checking off items that are on your bank account activity or on your

22:27

bank statement is not enough to ensure that that is completed you need to make sure that things like journal entries are not being used incorrectly journal

22:33

entries should only be used when you have a bank fee um or your your login depreciation or amortization or um uh

22:41

things of that sort but if it’s an actual payment that went out including a mortgage you should show that as a

22:46

payable and as a payment um if it’s revenue that’s received that should show as a receipt somewhere on a tenant

22:52

ledger or another receipt and a deposit you want to verify that your trust accounts are actually balanced that your properties all have a positive balance

22:59

um revenue and expense verification security deposits that you’re processing the tenant deposits correctly systems

23:05

like IFO do a really good job of bubbling up discrepancies and security deposits using the financial diagnostic

23:10

report your bank account activity report should be able to reconcile activity and

23:15

uh with that’s on your properties with what is in your bank account and then ARP

23:21

um and then there you know reviewing of course your internal controls insurance or risk management and then putting together that audit findings report um

23:28

main bit pitfalls that we see with folks that struggle laps bank reconciliations this needs to be done monthly once

23:35

you’re behind you know time keeps going and so you can’t arbitrarily start on a bank wreck if you haven’t done it for

23:40

years or months you can’t just say “I want to ignore what’s happened in the past.” Accounting is a building and a

23:47

moving story um it builds off of the last month where it stopped comingling funds unbalanced bank reconciliations

23:53

systems like QuickBooks don’t reconcile or I they don’t recognize a property and so um it’s best to use something like a

24:01

property based accounting system that will recognize the property and try to reconcile that with your actual bank

24:06

account balance properties of negative balances lack of doing a regular audit and incorrect handling of security

24:12

deposits in some states like California if you don’t return the deposit within three weeks 21 days you’re liable to

24:18

paying up to three times that then a lack of process and and and controls um

24:25

um preparing for an audit you know auditors are just like you and I people um they usually will look at things from

24:31

a very high surface level so they’ll ask for just maybe a handful of reports and

24:37

usually it’s a couple of months worth of data they may not ask for a general ledger but they may ask for just your trust account balance leasing agreements

24:43

agent agreements they want to make sure that you have agents that are actually doing the work the property management work and bank account activity usually

24:51

they’ll start things at a high level and they’ll sniff to see if there’s something that’s concerning if there’s something that’s concerning they will go

24:56

deeper and so uh maintain an open line of communication very transparent clearly articulate your process and

25:03

controls and be very prompt with your responsiveness you know from an auditor’s impression and perspective if

25:08

you seem very organized very very prepared and even in instances if you

25:13

are working with a third party accounting firm that specializes in audits it gives a lot of confidence to

25:19

the auditor that okay you know I probably don’t have to dig any deeper um leveraging software so a lot of these

25:26

software products have you know different uh features and reports that allow for you to be able to see

25:31

compliance and ensure that things are in in order so I fully has a great report called the financial diagnostic it

25:38

bubbles up things like bank wrecks that are very lapsed you know security deposit clearing accounts that have a

25:43

nonzero balance um and then uh errors and like escrow mismatches uh you want

25:48

to regularly review audit logs i would suggest you know nixing the ability for any users within your database to be

25:54

able to create things like bank adjustments bank adjustment is exactly exactly how it sounds it’s an adjustment

26:00

a band-aid if you will um and then as I mentioned before you know ensuring properties in your trust account that

26:07

don’t have negative balances security deposit funds and that you’re reconciling your balance sheet and that

26:12

you know you should be reviewing also your bank reconciliation report there shouldn’t be any deposits that are over 30 days old it doesn’t take 30 days or

26:19

more for a deposit to clear your bank account there are any positive items outstanding that haven’t cleared on your

26:25

bank reconciliation report is particularly concerning because you are artificially increasing the balances of

26:31

your properties and it’s not clear in the bank account and that balance is used to derive the balances that you’re

26:36

sharing with the owners how distributions are calculated as well um

26:42

preparing for an audit um you know use the software programs that you’re using you can work with a third party firm

26:48

like ourselves uh but make sure that you have kind of a process kind of in place you know minimize and reduce human risk

26:54

by using some automation uh we’ve created bots and stuff to help with like automating kind of compliance things and

26:59

doing things like bank reconciliations um but leveraging the software and controls and automation is usually going

27:05

to free up time for the organization so that when you know in the instance where there is an audit that starts it’s not a

27:12

crazy big shuffle and scramble in the organization and ideally you know these

27:17

systems if they are used correctly will ensure kind of long-term compliance at the end of the day last thing I’ll leave

27:23

you off with is you know the software companies that you may be using you know reaching out to Appfolio or whoever

27:28

software you’re using they’re not an auditor they’re not an accountant they are a software company they are not there to give you accounting advice and

27:35

so please be careful and be cognizant you know reaching out to your software provider to understand how to enter an

27:41

account you know an account and trans accounting transaction or understanding a financial report that is not their

27:47

forte and the feedback and advice they’re going to be giving you is from the perspective and lens of IT and technical support to ensure the product

27:53

is working correctly versus you know the accounting implications so um I know I

27:58

zoomed through that quite a bit uh but just to hit our kind of timeline here and we have a couple more minutes uh we

28:04

got we got a couple of questions here Mo so let me uh let me throw them out here if able to say it what what are the top

28:13

three PM software platforms that are most quoteunquote friendly in regards to

28:18

the content presented today uh I I try to I try to stay away from

28:24

you know making subjective type of comments and try to keep things very objective uh I will say that you know in

28:30

the SMB space or like small to midsize space when I say that you know clients with a couple hundred units up to a

28:35

couple of thousand the platform that we see that’s very very friendly if you will and very easy to kind of use and

28:41

bubble up compliance information and audit is is appolio i would say appolio breeze premiere’s SMB product um there

28:49

are other products that are in the space like rent manager buildium uh propertyware um but I will say that you

28:56

know over 80% of the audits that we work on are clients that are using those products those pro you know uh building

29:02

rent manager and propertyware do not have as good of a kind of audit trail controls and just reporting that ensures

29:09

kind of compliance it doesn’t mean that you can’t be compliant using those products it’s just going to take a little bit more work if you will

29:17

couple other ones here how often should I do a self audit good question so um you should have a

29:23

monthly closeout process monthly accounting closeout process that you should incorporate your self audit

29:29

during that same monthly kind of closeout process um ideally if not do it in a quarterly basis but probably highly

29:36

suggest not doing it annually because it’s way too much information and reviewing way too many bank

29:41

reconciliations and so ideally do it on a monthly basis is there any type of AI solution to do a

29:49

self audit that is a good question that’s something that we’ve been kind of pioneering and

29:54

kind of figuring out but you know usually what we see when we see issues associated with kind of compliance and

30:00

audit kind of a uh violations it’s it’s it’s human error um and so using AI to

30:08

kind of uh automate and kind of have controls on how things are done like you know we have a a a bank reconciliation

30:16

bot for example um that we that some of our clients kind of use um but I would say that there isn’t a solution that’s

30:22

out there today that’s completely you know foolproof if you will and just deploy it and it will audit although you

30:28

know we’re particularly work trying to work on a solution similar to that but I think we’re still a little ways away

30:33

yeah everybody’s got uh got AI on the on the brain these days that’s for sure that’s right

30:41

um All right let’s see i think Oh uh where do you come out on positive pay you a big fan or is it does it kind of

30:48

hinder yeah so positive pay is uh usually banks will kind of use uh

30:54

positive pay for um what’s uh for like approving or letting them know what

31:00

checks were cut so they don’t or they don’t reject those checks i think

31:05

positive pay is a great it’s a great check item or you know lack of better words pun intended it’s a great item to

31:12

to to have control over payments that are going out i wouldn’t necessarily say that it’s a mechanism used for

31:19

compliance when it comes to trust accounting or GAP it’s more of a control

31:25

when it comes to uh uh payments that are going out here’s what I will comment is most of these software companies

31:30

especially companies like Appfolio and Yardi have what’s called like approval workflows and so rather than having to

31:36

send the bank like “Hey I cut a check one6 make sure it doesn’t bounce.” you can in you can have that approval

31:42

workflow start at the time that the invoice is being approved even before the payment is made negating the reason

31:49

to have to do that additional work of reconciling the transactions that you created with your with your bank and so

31:55

again I think it’s a great tool for control on payments that are going out although I feel like you can have that

32:00

you should you can have that control at the point of when the invoice is created and approved um and so from our

32:06

perspective it seems a little bit like it’s redundant and there’s additional work there that’s not really fruitful if

32:11

you if you’re using the right software and already have an approval process all right thanks so much Mo um if anybody

32:17

has any other questions feel free to throw them into the chat next month we are we’re going to be talking to Leor

32:24

with Blanket on uh how to go from from rent collector I like actually saying how to go from property manager to asset

32:31

manager so if you click on the QR code here um go for it and you can you can go

32:36

ahead and schedule for our next webinar which is Tuesday May 13th same time um I

32:42

know we try to make them 23 minutes but we’re going about 30 minutes these days uh and if you want to hire a remote team

32:48

member that can do some of these bookkeeping items uh feel free to click

32:54

on here and do our white glove service or our go glove service uh we appreciate you guys being here thank you so much

33:01

and uh let’s see uh last tech check for questions no other questions feel free

33:07

to raise your hand all right we’re going to go ahead and end this now but if you want to stay on and ask a question feel

33:13

free to do that mo thanks so much for being here really appreciate you uh taking the time out of your day to

33:20

educate some of our some of our folks pleasure to be here and shameless plug

33:25

if there’s any questions or any of you that may need help with an audit or establishing that process internally or

33:31

need any kind of accounting CFO services we do you can reach us at www.balancedassetssolutions.com

33:40

all right thanks everybody hey Mo thank you