When you’re managing properties for multiple owners, keeping their finances cleanly separated is not just a best practice. It’s a compliance requirement. Mixing funds, even accidentally, can lead to audit issues, legal trouble, and a loss of trust with your clients. Segregated accounting is the foundation for transparency, accountability, and clean books.

In this blog, we’ll walk through how to set up segregated accounting for multiple owners or properties and explain how tools like Yardi Breeze make it much easier to do things the right way.

What is Segregated Accounting?

Segregated accounting means keeping financial records, bank balances, and transactions separate for each property or ownership entity. Instead of lumping all revenue and expenses into one big pot, you’re tracking everything on a per-owner or per-property basis. This allows you to:

• Ensure funds are not accidentally co-mingled
• Reconcile trust accounts accurately
• Provide clear reporting to each owner
• Comply with trust accounting rules

Without segregation, you can’t confidently show how much is owed to whom, which becomes a huge liability during audits or owner disputes.

Key Components of Segregated Accounting

Here’s what you need to set up properly segregated accounting:

1. Separate Bank Accounts (When Required)

While not always legally required, many states or management agreements mandate separate trust accounts for different owners or entities. At minimum, you should maintain:

• One trust account per ownership entity
• A separate security deposit account
• A clear chart of accounts that allows per-property GL tracking

In Yardi Breeze, you can assign bank accounts at the property level, so all transactions route to the correct place automatically.

2. Property-Level GL Tracking

Every transaction should tie back to a specific property and owner. Your chart of accounts must support this by linking income and expense categories to individual properties.

In Yardi Breeze: – Each property is its own accounting unit – GL codes are applied consistently – You can run income statements and balance sheets by property or portfolio

This ensures owner statements are accurate and complete.

3. Segregated Reporting

Owners want transparency. They don’t want to see other owners’ numbers. With segregated accounting, you can generate:

• Owner-specific income statements
• Cash flow summaries
• Trust liability reports
• Transaction ledgers

Yardi Breeze makes this easy with built-in owner reports and dashboards.

4. Trust Liability Reconciliation

If you manage trust accounts, you need to reconcile total liabilities (what you owe to each owner and tenant) against the actual bank balances. If these don’t match, it’s a compliance red flag.

Yardi Breeze’s Trust Account Reconciliation tools help you: – Track trust liability by property – Identify uncleared transactions – Spot imbalances early

How to Set It Up in Yardi Breeze

Setting up segregated accounting in Yardi Breeze is straightforward if you follow these steps:

1. Create Each Property with Its Own Profile Each property has its own address, unit list, owner assignment, and accounting profile.
2. Assign Owners Correctly Link each property to its respective owner or ownership entity.
3. Set Up the Chart of Accounts Use standard GL codes across properties but apply them per property to ensure clean reporting.
4. Connect Bank Accounts at the Property Level Breeze lets you assign different bank accounts to different properties or owners.
5. Configure Owner Reporting Preferences Customize report access so each owner only sees their own properties.
6. Train Your Staff on Workflows Ensure everyone enters transactions at the correct property level, attaches documentation, and reviews for errors monthly.

Why It Matters

Segregated accounting is not just about organization. It’s about:

• Avoiding audit risk
• Meeting legal requirements
• Building trust with your clients
• Reducing time spent fixing errors

Once it’s in place, it becomes easier to automate tasks, streamline month-end closes, and grow your portfolio without adding back-office chaos.

Need Help?

Setting up segregated accounting can be overwhelming if you’re transitioning from a messier system or trying to fix legacy issues. Balanced Asset Solutions helps property managers clean up their books, implement software like Yardi Breeze correctly, and stay compliant year-round.

If you’re managing for multiple owners, now is the time to get your accounting structure right.

The Hidden Costs of Bad Data in Property Management Software

In property management, clean data isn’t just a nice-to-have. It’s critical to daily operations, financial accuracy, compliance, and owner trust. Bad data creates ripple effects that affect every department — from accounting and leasing to maintenance and reporting.

Let’s break down the true cost of bad data and how to fix it before it costs you revenue, efficiency, or even clients.

What Does “Bad Data” Mean?

Bad data can show up in many ways: – Duplicate tenant or vendor records – Incorrect move-in or move-out dates – Unreconciled transactions – Outdated chart of accounts – Missing or inaccurate owner assignments – Broken integrations or sync errors

These issues lead to inaccurate reporting, misapplied charges, lost revenue, and wasted time.

Common Causes of Bad Data

1. Manual Entry Errors
   Teams often rely on manual processes, especially during onboarding or conversions. Mistyped names, skipped fields, or incorrect GL assignments can go unnoticed until month-end.
2. Inconsistent Naming Conventions
   If different users enter property, tenant, or vendor names in different formats, it becomes hard to search, match, or run clean reports.
3. Legacy System Migrations
   Data imported from older systems (or spreadsheets) often includes years of errors that carry over into your current software.
4. Poor Workflow Discipline
   Skipping required fields, using workarounds, or ignoring system prompts can accumulate thousands of small data problems.
5. Lack of Training
   When new hires aren’t trained properly on how to use the software, they can unintentionally create chaos in your database.

What It’s Costing You

Bad data doesn’t just sit in the background. It actively hurts your business:

• Financial Mistakes: Duplicate payments, incorrect rent charges, or inaccurate owner draws due to mismatched records.
• Audit Risk: Reconciliation errors or unsupported balances on your books.
• Time Wasted: Staff spend hours each week fixing errors, double-checking reports, or fielding owner complaints.
• Compliance Risk: Trust account violations often trace back to bad data that wasn’t caught early.
• Client Confidence: If owners or tenants receive inaccurate reports or charges, they lose trust fast.

How to Fix It

Here are practical ways to improve data quality in Yardi Breeze:

1. Run Diagnostics Regularly
   Use built-in tools like Financial Diagnostics to catch unbalanced GLs, unreconciled transactions, or system mismatches.
2. Standardize Naming Conventions
   Enforce a consistent format for entering properties, vendors, tenants, and GL codes.
3. Audit Data on a Schedule
   Review your database monthly or quarterly to identify duplicate records, inactive tenants, or outdated information.
4. Automate Where Possible
   Reduce manual input by setting up automation rules, workflows, and integrations that minimize human error.
5. Invest in Staff Training
   Make sure your team knows the correct workflows for everything from move-ins to owner draws.

Yardi Breeze Helps You Stay Clean

Yardi Breeze includes several tools that help keep your data clean:

• Property-level accounting controls ensure transactions stay linked to the right assets
• Audit logs and user roles help track who changed what and when
• Trust accounting workflows ensure deposits and liabilities stay aligned
• Diagnostics tools flag imbalances before they cause problems

Don’t Let Bad Data Snowball

The longer bad data lingers, the more damage it does. By building good habits, leveraging your software tools, and occasionally cleaning house, you can protect your operations from unnecessary errors and risk.

Balanced Asset Solutions helps property managers clean up legacy data, rebuild their GL structure, and set up clean processes inside platforms like Yardi Breeze. If your data is holding you back, now’s the time to fix it.