Facility Services
Property management companies handling trust funds, building maintenance firms juggling multiple contracts, and security services tracking labor across sites.
The Industry
Property management companies handle money that belongs to other people. You collect rent from tenants, pay vendors for repairs, hold security deposits, and distribute what’s left to property owners. Your actual revenue is the management fee, usually a percentage of rent collected. Everything else passes through your hands but was never yours to begin with. That distinction sounds simple until you’re managing 30 units across multiple owners and trying to keep trust funds separated from your own operating account. One wrong transfer or one misclassified expense and the numbers stop adding up in ways that are hard to trace backward.
Building maintenance firms and security companies share a similar challenge. You’re servicing multiple properties under different contract terms, sending different crews to different locations, and billing each client based on their specific agreement. Some contracts are flat monthly fees. Others are time-and-materials. Security companies in particular are labor-heavy, with guards posted at various sites on rotating schedules at different billing rates. When labor makes up 70 to 80 percent of your revenue, losing track of hours or missing overtime adds up fast. The margins in facility services aren’t forgiving enough to absorb sloppy record-keeping for long.
Who This Covers
Who This Covers
Property management companies, building maintenance firms, commercial cleaning under contract, and security services across Long Beach, the South Bay, and Greater LA. Any facility services business managing multiple properties, clients, or job sites with recurring contracts and field-based staff.
What Makes It Complex
What Makes It Complex
Trust accounting obligations for property managers. Security deposits held as liabilities, not income. Owner distributions that need to match actual net rent collected. Multiple contract types across different properties. Labor costs spread across sites with varying schedules and rates. Vendor payments made on behalf of property owners that must stay separate from your operating expenses. 1099 filing for subcontractors and vendors.
What We Handle
For property management companies, QuickBooks Online gets configured to separate trust funds from operating funds clearly. Every property is tracked individually so rent collected, repair expenses, and management fees are accounted for per owner. Tenant security deposits are recorded as liabilities rather than income, which is how they should appear on your books until the tenant moves out and the deposit is either returned or applied. Owner statements come from actual financial data instead of a side spreadsheet that may or may not match the bank account. Accounts payable covers vendor payments for maintenance and repairs tied to specific properties so the right owner gets charged for the right expense.
For building maintenance and security companies, we track revenue and labor costs by client or property so you can see which contracts are profitable. Invoicing happens on schedule based on your contract terms, whether that’s a flat monthly fee or variable billing based on hours and materials. Payroll for crews working different shifts at different sites gets handled with proper overtime tracking. Subcontractors get 1099s filed at year end. The goal is a clean set of books where you can see how each contract is performing, not just how the business looks as a whole.
Property Management Accounting
Property Management Accounting
Trust fund and operating fund separation in QuickBooks Online. Per-property tracking of rent collected, expenses paid, and management fees earned. Security deposit liability tracking by tenant. Owner distribution records that reconcile to actual bank balances. Vendor bill management for property-related repairs and services. Monthly reconciliation so owner statements reflect what’s really there.
Maintenance and Security Operations
Maintenance and Security Operations
Revenue and expense tracking by client or contract. Invoicing based on contract terms whether flat-rate or time-and-materials. Payroll for field staff across multiple sites with varying schedules. Overtime monitoring so labor costs stay within the margin your contracts allow. Subcontractor tracking and 1099 preparation. Bill payment so vendors are paid on time and recorded against the correct job or property.
What Goes Wrong
The most common and most serious problem in property management bookkeeping is commingling funds. Trust money and operating money end up in the same account, or expenses get paid from the wrong one. It usually starts small. You cover a repair from operating funds planning to reimburse yourself later, then forget. Or you pull management fees from the trust account without recording the transfer properly. Security deposits get deposited into the general account and show up as income on your profit and loss statement. Over six months or a year, the trust account balance no longer matches what you actually owe owners and tenants. Reconstructing where it went wrong takes hours, sometimes days, and the longer it goes the messier it gets.
Maintenance and security companies run into a different version of the same visibility problem. You have 15 properties on monthly service contracts and the business overall looks profitable. But you’re not tracking costs per property, so you can’t see that three of those contracts eat twice the labor hours the flat fee covers. You’re subsidizing unprofitable contracts with profitable ones and have no way to know which is which. Security companies often discover overtime issues months after the fact because actual hours worked never got reconciled against hours billed. By then, the margin on that contract is gone and you’ve already committed to another quarter at the same rate.
Trust Accounting Problems
Trust Accounting Problems
Owner funds mixed with operating funds making it impossible to tell what belongs to whom. Security deposits recorded as revenue instead of held as liabilities. Repair expenses charged to the wrong property or paid from the wrong account. Trust account balances that don’t match the sum of what’s owed to individual owners and tenants. These problems compound over time and get exponentially harder to fix the longer they go unaddressed.
Contract Profitability Blind Spots
Contract Profitability Blind Spots
Flat-rate maintenance contracts that looked profitable when signed but now require more labor than originally estimated. No per-property cost tracking so unprofitable accounts hide behind overall revenue. Overtime hours absorbed as a general expense instead of allocated to the sites that caused them. Time-and-materials work where actual hours and supply costs don’t get billed because nobody tracked them against the contract closely enough.
What Changes
Property management books show clean separation between trust and operating funds. Every dollar of rent collected ties to a specific property and owner. Security deposits sit on the balance sheet as liabilities until they’re properly resolved. Owner statements come directly from your accounting data and reconcile to what’s actually in the trust account. When an owner asks where their money went, the answer is clear and documented. You stop guessing at distributions and start generating them from numbers you trust.
Maintenance and security companies gain per-contract visibility. You see labor costs, supply expenses, and subcontractor charges by property or client. Contracts that consistently run over budget get flagged so you can renegotiate or adjust staffing. Invoicing stays on schedule and accounts receivable gets tracked so you know what’s outstanding and follow up before balances age. Payroll runs without eating your evenings. 1099s get filed without a January scramble. Your books are organized and ready for your CPA at tax time, which means fewer hours billed just to clean things up before they can even start the return.
Trust Account Confidence
Trust Account Confidence
Trust balances that reconcile to individual owner and tenant obligations every month. Security deposits properly tracked and accounted for. Owner distributions calculated from actual data. Clean records that hold up to scrutiny from owners, auditors, or regulators. No more side spreadsheets trying to track what QuickBooks should already be showing you.
Contract-Level Clarity
Contract-Level Clarity
Per-property and per-client reporting showing which contracts make money and which ones need attention. Labor costs allocated to the sites that incur them so overtime doesn’t hide in general expenses. Invoicing that matches contract terms and goes out on time. Financial statements that reflect how each piece of your business is actually performing so you can make decisions with real information instead of gut feel.
Long Beach's Trusted Bookkeeping Partner
The Next Step:
A Quick Discovery Call
Tell us where things stand with your books. We'll listen, ask a few questions, and give you a clear quote to get it handled.
