HOA budgeting is never particularly fun, but the last few years have made it even more challenging. Inflation, rising insurance premiums, and rising interest rates have made financial planning and forecasting more difficult for HOAs and condo communities. While inflation is cooling and the Fed appears poised to cut rates, no association wants the risk of special assessments due to budget shortfalls. 

Most boards begin scrambling to prepare budgets for the following year in late summer. However, Lindsey Richardson, a CINC Systems sales engineer with deep experience in association management, property management, and retail banking, recommends a more prolonged approach that can help with budgeting accuracy and alleviate that last-minute stress.

“Start a draft of next year’s budget at the beginning of the year,” she says. 

The first draft should consider your association’s goals and priorities, such as making repairs or increasing reserves. You can also use past financial statements and tools like the CINC Budget Module to view your association’s financial data over time and make more educated guesses about the following year’s needs.

Once the initial heavy lifting is over, monthly check-ins and tweaks will help you fine-tune the budget to account for evolving needs, cost increases, or unexpected expenses. 

“Set a calendar reminder to review your budget draft regularly,” Lindsey recommends. “Consistency is key to making this process smooth and stress-free!”

While this agile approach requires some discipline, it reduces the headache of tracking expenses and paperwork later in the year. Did your landscaper or sanitation service announce a fee increase? Open the budget draft and edit the recurring expense while it’s already top of mind. Were you informed your clubhouse needs a new roof within the next two years? Add it to the budget now.

By the time budget season actually arrives, all that’s left to do is double-check numbers and make any final adjustments before submitting the budget to the board for final approval. Busy board members are sure to appreciate your vigilance and attention to detail throughout the year.

Pro tip: Budget planning season is also the perfect time to consider what investments you can recommend now to help your associations run more smoothly and efficiently. Tools like CINC’s AI-powered Homeowner App can help improve communications, free managers from answering routine calls and emails, improve homeowner data security, and streamline payments. Take a tour here!

Welcome to HOA budget season 2024! Community association managers (CAMs) know how crucial it is to help HOAs and condo communities develop sound financial plans for the upcoming year, but in the wake of massive changes to the CAM industry, and an increasingly volatile economy, doing so is becoming more and more difficult. 

Right now, interest and inflation rates remain staggeringly high (and still look to climb), and insurance premiums increased by outrageous amounts. Last year in California, one community’s fire insurance increased by almost 900% (no, that is not a typo). In Florida, the average anticipated increase is 40% but has been as high as nearly 1000% (again, not a typo). This is going to be a challenging year for many communities, not only when attempting to plan, but when it comes time to actually collect. Some communities had this struggle going into 2023, and ended up short, requiring special assessments on top of a monthly fee increase. It will be important to prepare your boards and community residents for the reality that these increases will lead to higher regular payments, and may need additional financial support throughout the year. Here are the most important takeaways when it comes to increases in insurance premiums, interest rates, and inflation:

Interest Rates Rising: A Challenge for Financial Planning

After a prolonged period of historically low rates, experts predict that interest rates will gradually increase in 2024–something we’ve already witnessed throughout much of 2022 and 2023. These higher rates can have a significant impact on borrowing costs and financial planning for HOAs and condo communities.

When building the budget, it is essential to consider potential increases in interest rates that will affect loan payments, refinancing options, and future capital projects. Working closely with your HOAs and condo communities to identify cost-effective financing options and develop strategies to mitigate the impact of rising interest rates on long-term financial plans will be essential for unavoidable capital projects or maintenance needs. 

Insurance Premium Increases: Protecting the Community

In recent years, insurance companies have faced rising claim costs due to natural disasters, vandalism, and other unforeseen events. As a result, insurance providers have significantly increased costs, which has directly impacted HOA and condo community budgets.

To help anticipate future insurance premium increases, community association management companies must thoroughly review past claims data, assess the vulnerability of the community to potential risks, and work closely with insurance brokers to identify the most suitable coverage options. They must also look at the landscape of the state’s insurance providers (for example, if a slew of providers are pulling out of the state, as is happening throughout Florida, Louisiana, and Texas) to get an understanding of what other factors may be causing the massive spikes in insurance premiums. By being proactive in addressing insurance premium increases, community association management companies can help HOAs and condo communities allocate the necessary funds and prioritize risk management initiatives accordingly.

Inflation Rate Influence: Balancing Cost and Revenue

Inflation is a fundamental economic concern that can directly affect the budgeting process for HOAs and condo communities. Understanding the current and anticipated rates of inflation is crucial for accurately forecasting expenses and revenues.

As of this writing, the inflation rate is about 3%–a blessing considering 2022’s 9% peak–but experts predict that it may increase again in 2024. With rising prices for essential goods and services, community association management companies must help HOAs and condo communities account for potential cost increases. This may include higher utility costs, maintenance expenses, and labor costs for contracted services.

To navigate these challenges, community association management companies must consider a combination of cost-saving strategies, such as energy-efficient upgrades, negotiating vendor contracts, and exploring alternative revenue streams like community events or rental programs. By taking a proactive approach to mitigate the impact of inflation, HOAs and condo communities can maintain financial stability and avoid unexpected shortfalls.

Prepare for a Successful Budget Season and Beyond

At the end of the day, your managers play a vital role in helping HOAs and condo communities build strong budgets for 2024. Although everything looks pretty challenging financially, it’s important to encourage communities (condominiums specifically) to avoid the dangerous practices of deferring maintenance or minimally funding reserves. 

Staying ahead of the anticipated trends of rising interest rates, insurance premium increases, and the current and anticipated rates of inflation will help your communities stay informed and make sound financial decisions. If your managers and staff accountants are handling this on their own, CINC Systems can help. 

Contact us today to learn more about how CINC can support your community association management company during the budgeting process. Together, let’s build a strong financial foundation for a prosperous future!

Tax time is over, and for those of us who have been crunching numbers and supporting the treasurers of our HOA/COA boards, now may feel like the perfect time to kick back and relax. You absolutely should, because you deserved it! However, let’s not forget our learning lessons from this season. What caused troubles for you and your community association management company, and what can you do for the next season to make processes more efficient? Before you spend too much time moving on from the grueling tax season, here are five things you should do right now to prepare for the upcoming year:

1. Re-evaluate task overload

Sure, tax season can be tough on accounting teams. But there’s no reason to experience burnout because of a busier-than-usual time at work! Take a moment to assess the times in which you were completely overwhelmed, and see how you can better delegate in the future. Perhaps you can pass on administrative duties to fellow co-workers, or perhaps you need to find a way to automate bank reconciliation. By evaluating pain points while they are still fresh on your mind, you’ll be in a much better position to discuss your needs with your boss.

2. Brush off your to-do list

During the last-minute needs that approach at the looming tax deadlines, there are bound to be some projects you had to complete haphazardly, if you even had the chance to complete them at all. Rather than leaving this mounting to-do list on the back burner, only to amplify anxiety and stress in the near future, take time now to prioritize what you need to adjust and accomplish now. Find ways to move these tasks to the top of your list each day so that feel more organized and accomplished.

3. Consider your bank integration relationship

How strong is the integration between your association management software and your bank? If the programs don’t speak well with one another, tax season was likely brutal. Traditional accounting techniques with fragmented systems make budget reconciliation a very daunting task every month, especially when filing taxes for HOA/COA clients.

Knowing the integration points that are helping and hurting you during tax season is extremely important, as there’s a chance you may not be taking full advantage of the relationship. Understand, for instance, your current payment match rates and review the number of exceptions you have to match. You can read more about what to expect with your banking relationship in our simple banking integration guide.

4. Optimize your use of technology

Having the right digital tools is paramount to accounting productivity. Yet oftentimes when we’re wrapped up in completing our to-do lists, we forget all of the advantages our tech stack has to offer to our company. Take time to review what features are available for accounting within your association management software, and any other integrations your company has to simplify your day-to-day. Now would also be a great time to reach out to your Account Success Manager to discuss your challenges during the season; they would be able to set you and your team up with training and refresher courses to improve the way you work within the system for the new year.

5. Take a break

Finally, do take time for you! Tax season is hectic regardless of the level of preparation, organization, and technological efficiencies you have available to you. Unwind a bit with your teams, spend some valuable time with friends and family, and find ways you can boost your motivation for the remainder of the year.

The tax season rush is over, but that doesn’t mean that opportunities to contribute to business growth for your association management company are long gone. Now is a crucial time for you to help your company have a prosperous financial year. To learn more about ways in which you can improve financial health in your role, check out our Complete Guide to HOA Financial Management.

It’s officially that time of year again! Budget season has arrived, and you’re probably getting on your boards right now about their budgets. But they aren’t the only ones who should be planning out next year’s expenses–you should be, too! If you haven’t started considering your own budgeting needs, consider this your own reminder: it’s time to get started on your management company’s annual budget.

Budgeting Built for You

Working with community associations, you know that your clients are all special and unique in their own ways, and you’ve probably spent a good deal of time making sure they know that. Because that’s how they look after their needs best–understanding what those needs are and how specific they are to each and every community. But as a management company, you’re not in the same boat. You cater to uniqueness, but your business model is not all that different from other businesses out there today. So planning your budget is going to be a little simpler in that regard.

Start with the Basics

Budgeting isn’t quite an exact science, but it does have some pretty standard processes. For example, taking a look at your previous year’s revenue is often the first step to creating a business budget, and one you’ll have in common with your boards. Examining how much your company made from incoming payments and comparing that number to last year’s projection will be very telling. It will show how well you followed your own expectations, and where adjustments need to be made in the coming year’s planning.

Take a Deeper Look

Budgeting is more than just the money coming in, though. It’s the projection of potential expenses you’ll be making and how they impact your company in the long run. You should be taking a serious look at how much you’re paying versus how much you’re getting from things like service providers, software solutions, and your marketing efforts (which you’re paying for, even if you don’t think so). Keep in mind that these expenses are all areas where the money you’re spending should be saving you at least as much in what would have been time spent on those tasks.

Questions Your Budget Should Be Answering

Your budget isn’t just a guide to survive the next year–it should be your map to success, to seeing your business thrive. With that in mind, there are a few big questions your budgeting process should be answering:

Where Can I Afford to Grow, and Where Should I Cut Back?

This is a multi-step process if you really think about it. One of those steps is assessing the value of your service providers and their own price changes could have a moderate impact on your expectations in the coming year. Looking to those numbers and determining the value being provided is where you will start to see where cutbacks can be made if needed. Taking a look at your staff and the work burdening your teams is where you’ll be able to determine how much growth you can and should be considering as well.

Can I Afford to Upgrade My Software?

Similarly, you should be assessing the cost of your current software partner. And more often than not, this question will actually be, “can I afford NOT to upgrade?” Because even if that cost says $0 spent on your expense line, unless your software is built for a community or property management company, you’re likely wasting money via time spent on daily, weekly, and monthly management and accounting tasks. This is an area where budget management can get a little tricky, because the way to save the most money could actually be spending more than whatever you’re currently paying out. Start by assessing the time your team is spending on repetitive or time-consuming tasks, and consider which of those tasks could be automated by an industry-specific platform. Pricing out how much time you’ll save as dollars (dollars spent on the employees handling the tasks, dollars spent on additional softwares needed to better complete the tasks, etc) is a good way to determine if you should be considering a software switch.

Should I Raise My Prices?

Bumping up the price of your services is a daunting concept. You want to be adequately compensated for all of the hard work you put in, but you know that your clients are working on a tight budget. Community association management isn’t exactly the most lucrative field out there. Your management company probably feels similar stress when your partners or vendors raise their prices. But in business, this is an imperative step in growth and continued success. Cost of living alone needs to be a consideration every single year, as should any additions being made to your suite of service provisions. Price increases are a given, and as long as they are kept reasonable and predictable, are not necessarily deal-breakers for clients.

Get To It!

It’s already October, which means you’re already riding your boards about their own budgets. So consider us your very friendly, yet still very firm reminder that your budget needs attention, too! This list is just the tip of the iceberg, so don’t put it off any longer. Get your shareholders together this week to start the conversation about your 2022 budget, and if you need assistance in determining your software decisions for the upcoming year, take a peek at our ultimate buyer’s guide to association management software.

Proper budgeting can be an art. When carefully planned and well-executed, a homeowners association (HOA) budget can serve to improve the lives of everyone in the HOA community. A reasonable HOA budget helps ensure that the association has a bright future. It creates more resources for improvements, maintenance, and amenities for residents.

However, an improper HOA budget can have the opposite effect. If done poorly, an HOA budget can potentially disrupt new projects, force cutbacks, or even bankrupt the association in extreme cases. An improper HOA budget opens the door to long-term financial problems that may take years to undo.

As an HOA manager, there are aspects of your clients’ finances that are beyond your control. In most cases, this includes budgets. You may be responsible for carrying out the budget, but your clients’ board members will be the ones who create it.

That said, many association boards turn to their management companies for budgetary advice. If asked to consult on a budget proposal, you can provide your client with sound financial guidance. Whenever possible, steer your client away from making costly mistakes in their HOA budget.

When it’s time to create a new budget, here are five HOA financial mistakes to avoid:

Mistake #1. Cutting Corners With Itemization

An HOA budget is very detailed, and it may feel overwhelming. For many, this leads to a temptation to cut corners. Instead of itemizing expenses by category, some individuals may provide a broad overview of costs.

Failing to itemize may seem harmless but can lead to costly headaches later on. For example, let’s say you create a budget with a category for “maintenance.” A smart HOA budget will include an itemized list of specific expenses in this category, such as plumbing, electrical repairs, roofing, landscaping, and so on. Each of these itemized expenses is then allocated a specific amount within the budget. Categorizing expenses allows HOA managers to disperse funds with greater accuracy to cover particular costs.

Without itemization, a budget can quickly become imbalanced. For example, the HOA may accidentally overspend on landscaping using roof maintenance funds. If this happens, money will need to be moved from another part of the budget, like the reserve fund, to cover roofing. In extreme cases, cutting corners and failing to itemize can disrupt an entire HOA budget.

Mistake #2. Forgetting to Provide “Cushions”

Another costly financial mistake occurs when HOAs fail to provide “cushions” within their budgets. Often, people focus on keeping expenses low when they create a budget. Although nothing is wrong with this practice, it can create costly mistakes if the budget has no margin for unexpected costs.

Whenever possible, advise your HOA clients to leave room for unplanned expenses in their budget. These cushions can help prevent future overspending, debt, and other issues. Give each budget category a little extra money, just in case. After all, it’s always better to end the fiscal year with a budget surplus than overdrawn accounts.

Mistake #3. Skimping On Insurance

HOAs need to carry liability insurance as well as insurance against property damage. Unfortunately, some associations skimp on coverage and only purchase the bare minimum required by law. Budgeting for cheap insurance plans can create costly financial problems later.

An HOA without adequate insurance coverage may find itself hit with high deductibles — or, worse, won’t be fully covered for damages in the event of a disaster or emergency. Insurance may seem unnecessary, but it’s far better to be prepared. Always include insurance premiums and other fees in the HOA’s budget to avoid this costly financial mistake.

It’s also a good idea to re-evaluate the association’s current insurance plans annually. If fees have risen significantly, the HOA may be able to switch to a new provider and save money without sacrificing coverage. Regardless, the association budget should always include proper insurance.

Mistake #4. Using Out-Of-Date Software

Using out-of-date software is another costly financial mistake. Maintaining an HOA budget means keeping track of a high volume of financial data. HOA managers and accountants need to record every transaction, receipt, bill, and invoice, while also tracking income deposits and fees. If the software you’re using to process this data isn’t nimble enough to keep up with the HOA’s needs, your client will miss out.

To avoid this mistake, HOAs should switch to multitenant, cloud-based accounting software like CINC Systems. CINC offer specialized accounting tools uniquely crafted for the needs of an HOA, including:

• Deep Banking Integration: This gives HOA managers and accountants access to banking transactions, account statements, and check imaging from one convenient platform.
• Real-Time Payments: Including a dedicated lockbox, this service enables expedited payment processing with fewer errors.
• Invoice Management: This feature creates a smooth workflow that requests and tracks invoices, then initiates automatic payment.
• Financial Reporting: Generate and email clear, customizable financial reports to board members and other relevant parties. Organize business data by category, transaction date, and other unique parameters for your client’s HOA.

Additionally, because CINC Systems is a true multitenant cloud-based platform, your HOA’s financial data is stored online across remote servers. Cloud-based data storage offers greater security and largely eliminates the need to keep paper files. By switching to the latest association accounting software, HOAs can eliminate costly budgeting mistakes.

Mistake #5. Putting Operational Costs On Autopilot

Finally, don’t make the mistake of putting operational costs on autopilot. Don’t assume utility bills, landscaping services, security, and other ongoing expenses will remain the same year-to-year (or even month-to-month).

Unfortunately, some associations may “copy and paste” these costs from the previous year when they’re doing a new budget. While some operational costs may not change significantly, even a small raise can negatively impact the budget. Always refer to vendor contracts and read the fine print carefully, primarily if your client’s association uses an automatic bill pay service for these transactions.

Let CINC Systems Help Your Client’s HOA Avoid Budget Mistakes

With a little extra time and effort, you can help your HOA clients avoid costly financial mistakes when planning their annual budgets. To see how CINC Systems can assist with budgeting and other financial services, try a free demo.

When you manage a homeowners association (HOA), it’s important to develop best practices for financial reports. Financial reporting is an integral part of your client services. From collecting resident fees to paying bills, and managing the general ledger, association management requires a lot of accounting. By implementing best practices for HOA financial reports, you’ll be able to help your clients run a successful, viable association.

If you’re new to HOA management, or just looking for a refresher, financial reports best practices are the various organizational tools and systems you use to share and analyze accounting data with your clients. Each set of best practices will be different to meet the needs of different clients. However, there are certain universal principles that all association managers should implement for HOA financial reports.

By learning financial reports best practices for HOAs, you can ensure each client’s association is always in prime financial health. The best kind of financial reporting helps clients make sure they’re staying within their budgets, meeting all goal targets for the HOA’s reserve fund, paying vendor invoices on time, and more.

Here are some important best practices for HOA financial reporting:

Learn State and Regional Law

Currently, there are very few federal laws that apply to HOAs. This means that all financial regulations, tax requirements, and civil codes for HOAs are governed at the state and regional level. As one of your best practices for HOA financial reports, make sure you always know the laws that apply to your clients.

Learning state law, as well as the laws for your client’s county and city, will help you determine what kind of guidelines the HOA needs to follow. With regard to finances, state and local legislation may require your clients to use a specific protocol for disclosing assets to the association members. For example, some states may require HOAs to implement an accrual method for financial reporting. There may also be specific deadlines related to taxes, licensing, and permit renewals.

Understand the state and regional laws that apply to your clients’ associations so you can assist them and provide clear, legally approved financial reports.

Set Clear Budgets with Your Client

An HOA financial report provides a valuable assessment of your client’s finances. However, the information contained in a financial report isn’t very useful unless you know what it’s actually measuring. Therefore, one of the most important best practices for HOA financial reporting is setting clear budgets with your client.

As an association manager, you won’t be setting the HOA’s budget yourself. That duty falls to the association’s board members. However, you can act as a consultant to the board, offering your knowledge and experience to help them set annual and monthly budgets. Once the HOA budget is in place, you’ll be able to customize financial reports to reflect different budget categories and goals.

Choose a Cash or Accrual System

Next, choose a cash system or accrual system for the HOA’s accounting. In a cash accounting system, you record your client’s income as they receive it. Similarly, expenses are logged whenever they are paid. This accounting system is fairly straight-forward but may offer limitations to HOAs that have more complicated investments, outstanding debts, and fee structures.

In an accrual system, you record the HOA’s income whether or not the money has been actually received. For example, you’d record fee payments from residents even if the payments are still being processed or outstanding. Similarly, an accrual system dictates that you record all incurred expenses even if they haven’t been paid yet. The books are balanced later.

Each type of system offers different benefits. For some HOAs, cash will be better than accrual. However, no matter which type of system your client implements, make sure you understand the process as it relates to your financial reporting.

Sync All Financial Accounts

When developing best practices for financial reporting for your HOA management business, organization is key. If you’re not organized, the financial data you process for your client can quickly become overwhelming. One of the best ways to keep your client’s financial information organized is to sync all financial accounts in one place.

With CINC Systems association management software, you’ll gain a powerful feature called automatic bank reconciliation. This allows you to integrate your client’s financial accounts into your management dashboard. View account balances, deposits, and withdrawals all in one place, rather than logging into different banking websites each time you need to see the client’s finances. And, the best part, data is updated in real-time.

By syncing your client’s HOA bank accounts, you’ll be able to monitor transactions and develop a detailed analysis of the financial data. This unique insight enables you to create more accurate financial reports. We recommend that all HOA managers implement this as part of their financial reporting best practices.

Use Software to Generate Reports

You can use your HOA accounting software to generate reports. The advanced technology in association management software helps immensely in financial reporting. Software like CINC Systems makes spreadsheets and paper ledgers obsolete. The reports are also more accurate because you’re not doing the calculations manually.

With CINC Systems, you can generate financial reports for your clients automatically. You can highlight specific data sets, such as expense categories or time periods, and then email these financial reports directly as digital files. To see how using CINC Systems association management software can improve your company’s best practices, request a free demo or call (855) 943-8246.

Perform Monthly and Yearly Analysis

Finally, all HOA managers should include regularly scheduled financial analysis as one of their best practices for financial reporting. Set up a time each month to go over your client’s financial reports and present the data to the HOA board. Then, plan a yearly audit to review overall financial health and plan for next year’s budgets.

By using these best practices for financial reports for HOAs, you’ll help your client’s association thrive. HOA accounting isn’t always the most exciting part of your job, but with best practices, it can be the most rewarding.

When you manage a homeowner association (HOA) or condominium association (COA), you have many responsibilities. One of your key roles is helping your clients’ HOA/COAs stay fiscally healthy. Expense management tips for association managers can help your business run more smoothly.

Whether you’re managing a big HOA or a smaller COA, be prepared to handle a lot of financial transactions. You’ll be responsible for collecting resident fees, paying bills, completing invoices for work orders, and more. As an HOA/COA manager, it’s also your job to balance your clients’ books. You need to make sure the association stays within its monthly and annual budget.

To keep an HOA/COA on budget, expense management is vital. An HOA/COA can be a very busy organization, with many projects happening at once. If you’re not careful, little expenses can start to add up and soon the association will be tapping its reserve fund, or worse, slipping into the red.

Keep your clients financially secure by learning to manage association expenses. Although every HOA/COA is different, there are several universal concepts that can help you ensure the balance sheets always add up. Help your clients’ HOA/COA stay financially accountable with these expense management tips for association managers.

Familiarize Yourself with the Client’s Budget

First, arm yourself with detailed knowledge of your client’s HOA/COA budget. After all, you can’t manage expenses unless you know the association’s baseline. You’ll also need to know the HOA/COA’s income, cash flow, and reserves. Learn how much money the HOA/COA has, whether as savings or liquid assets, and compare this to the association’s operational costs.

We recommend using the different HOA/COA management software features, one of which is called “bank reconciliation.” The monthly reconciliation of the association bank accounts is both fiduciarily important as well as time-consuming. With CINC’s Accounting Integrators system, monthly reconciliations as quick, simple and accurate. In addition, rather than logging into multiple websites, you can see the HOA/COA’s current transactions and account balances from one place in the CINC dashboard.

Once you know the client’s budget and you’re able to monitor transactions in real-time, you’ll have the knowledge you need to begin managing expenses. By understanding how much the HOA/COA currently spends–and what they’re spending on–you can begin to cut back.

Reduce Waste for HOA/COA Sites

Reducing waste is one of the best ways to begin managing HOA/COA expenses. Although every HOA/COA is different, most associations have common spaces that include utility costs. This can include lighting, heating and air conditioning, and water for lawns or plants. Utilities tend to be a significant source of waste.

To manage this expense, perform an audit of the HOA/COA’s utility accounts to understand how much power or water is being used each day. Then you can take steps to reduce waste in these areas.

To reduce electricity waste for your client’s HOA/COA, switch to energy-efficient LED light bulbs. Install motion-activated timers in common areas wherever possible. Although certain areas, such as walkways, may need constant lighting for security reasons, other shared spaces may not. Install motion detectors in laundry rooms, mailrooms, and other areas that don’t need constant illumination. As a long-term project, you can also encourage clients to switch to solar-powered fixtures.

To lower the HOA/COA’s water bill, consider watering on a different schedule, installing rain gauge controls or using greywater for external watering needs. Depending on the weather, most plants can still thrive if they’re watered every other day instead of daily. Talk to your client’s association board about landscaping with plants that require less water.

Review Vendor Contracts

Next, manage expenses for your HOA/COA clients by reviewing vendor contracts. Many associations retain the services of general contractors, professional landscapers, plumbers, pest control, and more. Although these services are important to the association’s operations, you’ll want to make sure the HOA/COA is truly getting their money’s worth.

If you discover that a certain vendor is paid for monthly services, but only performs them once or twice a month, consider hiring someone for specific jobs rather than retaining them for monthly services.

If the HOA/COA requires a new vendor, make sure you do your research and take multiple bids. This will ensure that the association is getting the best value for their money. Remember to check for business/workers compensation insurance and not use “fly-by-night” companies.

Get Smart with Tax Deductions

You can also help your clients’ HOA/COAs with expense management by optimizing their tax deductions. Although tax codes vary, there are certain principles that will apply to any HOA/COA. For example, property repairs and maintenance are almost always deductible.

Additionally, the HOA/COA can deduct costs associated with board meetings and operations, including transportation and office supplies. They may even deduct YOU!

Go Paperless

When it comes to expense management tips for association managers, the little things really do add up. A few dollars here and there might not seem like much, but over time, these trivial expenditures can accumulate. A lot of small expenses can end up making the difference between an HOA/COA that stays on budget, and one that dips into its reserve funds.

Going paperless is a great step toward easier expense management. For an association, there are two ways in which going paperless can make a big financial impact. The first is collecting resident fees; the second is processing work orders.

Collecting resident fees is easier than ever with accounting software like CINC Systems. Accounting software helps association managers create online payment portals. This allows residents to pay their fees online via credit card or e-check. Fees are automatically deposited into the association’s bank account. The payment portal will also generate a list of delinquent accounts, so there’s no need to print out and cross-reference accounts. Reduce paper use by NOT sending monthly statements; give homeowners access online to their account and payments.

For processing work orders, association management accounting software also gives managers the ability to process work orders online. Instead of printing out work order sheets for residents to fill out and turn in, a web portal lets them submit the work order online. Once the work order has been completed, you can use accounting software to pay the vendor’s invoice. This reduces the need for paper checks, envelopes, and stamps.

Upgrade to Association Management Accounting Software

With software like CINC Systems, managing expenses for your clients’ association will be easier than ever. Call (855) 943-8246 to try a free CINC Systems demo today.