Running a property management company means keeping the books for properties you don't actually own. Every dollar of rent collected belongs to an owner. Every repair invoice has to land on the right property's ledger. Every month-end, owners expect a clean statement showing what came in, what went out, and what's being remitted. Most general-purpose accounting tools force you to either run a separate file per property (a nightmare at scale) or commingle everything and hope you can untangle it at tax time. FreshLedger Pro is built around class-based tracking, so each property is a class inside one company file. Rent receipts, vendor bills, management fees, owner draws, and depreciation all post to the right property automatically. You get true per-property P&Ls, owner statements with full transaction detail, and tenant ledgers you can actually hand to a tenant during a dispute - all in a Windows desktop app you buy once for $799.
Class-based tracking per property. Every transaction in FreshLedger Pro carries a class tag. Set each property up as a class (123 Main St, 456 Oak Ave, the 12-unit on Pine), and every rent deposit, plumber invoice, management fee, and mortgage interest entry rolls up to that property's P&L. One company file, unlimited properties, no juggling. Owner statements with full transaction detail. Run a class-filtered transaction report for any date range and you have an owner statement: opening balance, every rent received, every expense paid on the owner's behalf, your management fee, and the net remittance. Export to PDF and email it. Owners see exactly what hit their property, not a one-line summary. Tenant subledgers via A/R by customer. Set up each tenant as a customer. Recurring rent invoices generate monthly. Partial payments, late fees, and security deposit liability all post correctly. Pull a customer statement and you have a defensible tenant ledger for court if it ever comes to that. Full MACRS depreciation. Residential rental buildings depreciate over 27.5 years straight-line under the mid-month convention; commercial property over 39 years. Appliances and carpet are 5-year property under the half-year (or mid-quarter) convention. FreshLedger's depreciation module handles all of this per asset, posts the monthly entry, and tracks accumulated depreciation per property class so it flows to the right Schedule E or 8825. 1099-NEC tracking for vendors. Flag each contractor - landscapers, handymen, plumbers - as 1099-eligible. At year-end, FreshLedger totals payments per vendor and prints 1099-NECs directly. No spreadsheet reconciliation in January. Trust accounting discipline. Because it's real double-entry, owner funds held in trust sit as a liability on your books, not income. Management fee revenue only recognizes when you actually earn and transfer it. Your CPA will thank you.
Workflow 1: Monthly owner remittance for a single-family rental. Tenant pays $2,400 rent on the 3rd. You record a customer payment against the recurring rent invoice, deposited to the trust checking account, classed to 123 Main St. Mid-month the HVAC tech bills $380; you enter the vendor bill, expense account Repairs & Maintenance, classed to 123 Main St, marked 1099-eligible. On the 28th you run a class report for 123 Main St: $2,400 income, $380 repairs, $192 management fee (8%), net $1,828 to owner. Cut the owner check from trust, post the management fee transfer to your operating account, and email the PDF statement. The owner sees every line. Workflow 2: Placing a new asset in service and depreciating it. Owner of 456 Oak Ave replaces the roof in July for $14,000. A roof replacement on residential rental property is generally capitalized as a 27.5-year improvement under the mid-month convention (not 15-year land improvement, not Section 179 - though bonus depreciation may apply for qualified improvement property in commercial contexts; check with the CPA). In FreshLedger you add a fixed asset, class 456 Oak Ave, in-service date 7/15, MACRS 27.5-year residential, mid-month. The system calculates the first-year deduction (5.5 months of recovery) and posts monthly depreciation automatically. Year-end, it flows to the owner's Schedule E line 18. Workflow 3: Year-end 1099-NEC run and W-2s for your office staff. Office manager and bookkeeper are W-2 employees of the management company. Payroll runs biweekly with federal withholding, Social Security, Medicare, and state. Form 941 quarterly, Form 940 annually, W-2s in January. Separately, you pull the 1099-NEC report - every flagged vendor paid $600+ during the year - review, and print on pre-printed forms. Done in an afternoon.
Property management accounting sits at the intersection of trust accounting, real estate taxation, and payroll. A few concepts that matter: Trust vs. operating funds. In most states, rent collected on behalf of owners must sit in a separate trust (or escrow) bank account and is a liability on your books until remitted. Commingling with operating funds is a license violation in many jurisdictions. Set up the trust account as a separate bank account in FreshLedger and use a liability account (Funds Held for Owners) to track per-owner balances by class. Form 1099-MISC vs. 1099-NEC. Rents paid to owners $600+ go on 1099-MISC Box 1. Nonemployee compensation to contractors $600+ goes on 1099-NEC Box 1. Both apply to property managers. Schedule E and Form 8825. Individual owners report rental income on Schedule E. Partnerships and S-corps owning rentals use Form 8825. Your per-property P&L should map cleanly to the line items: rents received, advertising, auto, cleaning, insurance, mortgage interest, repairs, supplies, taxes, utilities, depreciation. MACRS specifics. Residential rental real property: 27.5-year, straight-line, mid-month convention (IRS Pub 946). Commercial: 39-year. Land improvements (fences, paving): 15-year, 150% declining balance, half-year or mid-quarter. Appliances and furniture: 5-year. Section 179 generally not available for property held for the production of rental income by non-real-estate-professional owners; bonus depreciation rules have changed annually - confirm with the CPA.
A property management company running 30 properties on a subscription competitor at $55-$250/month is paying $660-$3,000 per year, every year, forever. FreshLedger Pro is $799 once. Add the optional $99/year payroll tax table update if you run W-2 payroll for your office staff - skip it if you don't. Year one: $898 with payroll, $799 without. Year five: $1,294 with payroll, $799 without. The same five years on a $99/month subscription is $5,940. The free Accountant Edition means your CPA opens your file directly at year-end - no export gymnastics, no extra seat to pay for. If you're managing 5 properties or 500, the price doesn't change.
FreshLedger Pro is not the right tool for every property management company. If you need a tenant portal where renters log in to pay rent and submit maintenance requests, FreshLedger doesn't do that - pair it with a dedicated portal product and import the deposits. If your leasing agents need to enter transactions from their phones in the field, there's no native mobile app. If two people in your office need to be in the books at the same time, the file is single-user at a time - one person works, the other waits. There are no automatic bank feeds; you'll download CSV/OFX/QFX files from the bank monthly and import them. And it's a Windows desktop app - Mac users run it in Parallels or a VM. If those are dealbreakers, a cloud-native property management platform will serve you better, even at the higher recurring cost.
One-time-purchase accounting software with built-in payroll, full depreciation handling, and a free Accountant Edition for your CPA.
Buy FreshLedger Pro — $799One-time purchase. No subscription. Free Accountant Edition included.