Plan your expenses and deductions strategically each year
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Maintain accurate and organized financial records for easy reporting
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Talk to a tax professional for expert guidance
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Personalized Marketing: AI helps in analyzing customer data to create personalized marketing campaigns
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Use accounting and tax software to make management easier
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Property managers often discover just how messy their AppFolio file is right before tax season—owner balances don’t look right, bank reconciliations are behind, and your CPA is asking for clean reports you don’t fully trust. Getting your AppFolio cleaned up before tax season is one of the highest‑ROI projects you can tackle, because it protects owner relationships, speeds up your tax prep, and reduces audit risk.
Why a clean AppFolio file matters before taxes
When your AppFolio data is clean, your year‑end owner statements, 1099s, and internal financials all tell the same story. A messy AppFolio file, on the other hand, can hide misapplied owner contributions, incorrect management fees, and unrecorded expenses that lead to owner disputes and CPA rework. For a growing property management company, consistently clean AppFolio books become a real asset when you’re renewing contracts, onboarding new owners, or preparing for a potential sale.
Step 1: Start with bank reconciliations
You can’t fix a messy AppFolio file for tax season until your bank reconciliations are current and accurate. Focus first on getting every trust and operating account reconciled through year‑end, checking that the adjusted cash balance matches your property and owner ledgers. If any months are missing or out of balance, prioritize cleaning those up now so every tax‑season report you run is built on solid numbers.
Step 2: Review owner and property balances
Next, scan owner and property ledgers for balances that don’t make sense, such as large negative owner equity, old unapplied credits, or security deposits sitting in the wrong place. A tax‑ready AppFolio file should show clear, supportable balances for each owner: what they’ve contributed, what’s been distributed, and what remains in trust. Correcting mis‑coded deposits, refunds, and transfers now prevents awkward owner questions when you send year‑end statements and 1099s.
Step 3: Clean up your chart of accounts and coding
Over time, many AppFolio accounts turn into a catch‑all for random expenses and income, which makes tax prep and benchmarking almost impossible. Before tax season, take time to simplify your chart of accounts, merging duplicates and clearly mapping each category to the tax lines your CPA relies on. Train your team (or update internal SOPs) so recurring items—like management fees, maintenance, utilities, and application fees—are coded consistently in AppFolio every month.
Step 4: Fix unapplied credits, prepayments, and deposits
Messy AppFolio files often contain lingering tenant credits, prepayments, and security deposits that were never properly applied or moved. Work through open credits and unapplied cash on tenant ledgers to either apply them to the correct charges or refund them as appropriate. For security deposits, verify that balances in your deposit liability accounts match the detail in AppFolio and that move‑out dispositions are fully processed so you aren’t overstating liabilities at year‑end.
Step 5: Align AppFolio reports with your CPA
Even a clean internal file can cause friction if your CPA can’t easily tie AppFolio reports to their tax software. Before tax season hits full speed, ask your CPA which AppFolio reports they want to use for the return—typically a balance sheet, income statement by property or owner, and supporting ledgers. Then run test reports, confirm date ranges and account groupings, and adjust your report settings so your “tax package” can be generated consistently each year with a few clicks.
Step 6: Document your year‑end checklist inside your process
Once you’ve cleaned up your messy AppFolio file and made it tax‑ready, capture the steps as a repeatable year‑end checklist for your team. Documenting how you close the year—final reconciliations, review of owner balances, 1099 prep, and report delivery—reduces the odds that your AppFolio file drifts back into chaos next year. With a clear process in place, even new team members can help keep your AppFolio data clean throughout the year instead of cramming fixes every tax season.
If your AppFolio feels too messy to tackle alone before tax season, a specialized bookkeeping partner like Trinity Rivers Financial can step in to reconcile accounts, fix miscodings, and deliver a clean, tax‑ready file—so you and your owners can move through tax season with confidence instead of stress.