A Yardi bank reconciliation agrees one bank account's statement with the cash recorded for every property that uses that account. You enter the statement's ending balance, clear the receipts and payments the bank shows, and explain what remains as outstanding items. The extra work in property accounting is proving each property's share of a pooled account, not just the total.
Why Yardi bank reconciliation is organized around property cash accounts
Yardi bank reconciliation follows the property accounting structure: each property, or entity, has its own books, and one bank account may serve one property or many. The bank sees a single balance. The ledger holds a cash balance per property. A reconciliation has to prove both the total and the split.
Two patterns are common in property management, and they reconcile differently:
- One bank account per property. Every receipt and payment belongs to one property's books. The reconciliation looks like any small business's: statement balance, cleared items, outstanding items.
- A pooled account shared by several properties. Rents for twenty buildings land in one operating account, and vendor checks for all of them go out of it. The bank balance equals the sum of twenty property cash balances, and every line on the statement has to be attributed to the right property.
Pooled accounts are efficient for the manager and harder for the accountant. A deposit coded to the wrong property still clears the bank, so the total reconciles while two properties are misstated by equal and opposite amounts. Owner statements built on those books will be wrong for both owners, even though the bank rec balances.
Configurations differ between companies, and screen names in Voyager depend on version and setup, so this guide describes the work rather than specific menus. Use your own Voyager documentation for the exact steps.
Clearing checks and deposits in a Yardi Voyager bank reconciliation
Clearing items in a Yardi Voyager bank reconciliation means marking each check, payment and deposit recorded in the books that also appears on the bank statement. Whatever stays uncleared becomes an outstanding check or a deposit in transit. The reconciliation is finished when the statement balance, adjusted for those open items, equals the book balance.
A monthly order of work that suits property accounts:
- Post all receipts, payables and journal entries for the month, including any rent batches still waiting.
- Get the bank statement for the account, the PDF itself rather than a download of activity, and note its ending balance and date.
- Foot the statement: opening balance plus credits less debits should equal the ending balance.
- Clear the deposits first. Property receipts are often deposited in batches, so one bank credit may represent many tenant payments. Clear the batch as one item.
- Clear the checks and electronic payments.
- Record bank-side items the books do not have yet, such as fees, returned tenant payments and interest, as entries for the correct property.
- Review what is left uncleared, by property and by age.
Returned tenant payments deserve their own step. When a tenant's payment bounces, the bank reverses the deposit and often charges a fee. The tenant's ledger, the property's cash and the fee all need entries, and the returned item must be charged to the property where the original receipt was recorded.
Electronic rent collection adds another wrinkle. Payment processors sometimes deposit the net of fees, or deposit several days of receipts together. Agree the processor's settlement report to the bank credit before clearing, so a fee or a missing day is caught at the deposit and not at month-end.
Security deposit and trust accounts in a Yardi bank reconciliation
Security deposit and trust accounts hold money that belongs to tenants or owners, not to the management company. Their reconciliation has to show that the bank balance covers every tenant's deposit liability. A trust account that reconciles to the ledger but falls short of the deposit liability is a compliance problem, whatever the bank rec says.
So a trust account reconciliation usually has three sides, not two:
- The bank statement balance, adjusted for outstanding items.
- The ledger cash balance for the trust account.
- The total liability to tenants or owners, built from the tenant deposit ledger or the owner balances.
All three should agree. If bank and ledger agree but the liability is larger, deposits were spent or never transferred into the trust account. If the liability is smaller, deposits were refunded in the books without being paid out, or move-out charges were applied without being recorded.
Rules on holding tenant deposits, interest and commingling vary by state and by lease, so check what applies to your properties. Whatever the rules, never use a trust account to cover a timing gap in operating cash, even for a day. It is the kind of transfer that looks harmless in one month and becomes impossible to explain in an audit or a dispute.
What should a Yardi reconciliation report show a property owner?
A Yardi reconciliation report for an owner or auditor should show the statement balance, each outstanding item with its date and property, any adjustments posted, and the book balance they reconcile to. For a pooled account, it should also show the total cash split by property, so each owner can see their share is supported.
A useful package for each account and month:
- The bank statement PDF, unchanged.
- The reconciliation report from Yardi as at the statement date.
- A list of outstanding checks and deposits in transit, with dates, payees and properties.
- For pooled accounts, a schedule of cash by property that totals to the reconciled book balance.
- For trust accounts, the comparison to the deposit or owner liability.
- Preparer and reviewer initials and dates.
Owners rarely ask for the reconciliation itself. They ask why their cash is lower than expected. The package answers that question quickly, because every number traces back to a cleared item or an open one. When ownership is contested, such as when a building is part of a divorce settlement, the same records become evidence; forensic accounting in divorce shows what investigators look for in them.
A Yardi bank reconciliation worked for one pooled operating account
A worked example shows how a pooled account reconciles in total and by property. Three properties share one operating account. All names and figures are example values, made up for illustration.
| Line | Elm Court | Birch Lofts | Cedar Row | Total |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Book cash, September 30 | $42,180.00 | $27,915.50 | $18,404.25 | $88,499.75 |
| Add outstanding checks | $3,200.00 | $1,150.00 | $940.00 | $5,290.00 |
| Less deposits in transit | ($2,600.00) | — | ($1,075.00) | ($3,675.00) |
| Less bank fee not yet booked | — | — | ($25.00) | ($25.00) |
| Share of bank balance | $42,780.00 | $29,065.50 | $18,244.25 | $90,089.75 |
Each column starts from book cash and moves to the bank's view. Outstanding checks are added back, because the books have deducted them and the bank has not. Deposits in transit are taken off, because the books have them and the bank does not yet. The fee is taken off, because the bank has charged it and the books have not. The September statement shows an ending balance of $90,089.75, so the account reconciles in total, and each property's share of that balance is supported by its own items.
Once the fee is booked to Cedar Row, its book cash falls by $25.00 and the fee drops out of next month's reconciliation.
Now the split. Suppose a $1,075.00 deposit in transit was actually Birch Lofts' rent, coded to Cedar Row. The total still reconciles, but Cedar Row's cash is overstated by $1,075.00 and Birch Lofts' is understated by the same amount. Nothing in the bank rec flags it. Only a review of the deposit's tenant detail does.
That is why pooled accounts need a by-property check each month, not just a balanced rec.
Why won't a Yardi bank rec balance?
A Yardi bank rec will not balance when the cleared items do not total the statement's activity. The usual causes are an item cleared in the wrong month, a batch deposit cleared as several items or several items cleared as one, an entry posted to the wrong bank account, or a prior reconciliation that was changed after it was finished.
Narrow it down by the size of the difference:
- Equals one deposit or check. Something on the statement was not cleared, or something cleared is not on the statement. Search for that amount on both sides.
- Equals a batch total less one tenant payment. A deposit batch was split differently from how the bank credited it. Compare the batch detail with the deposit slip or processor report.
- Equals a fee or a returned payment. A bank-side item still needs an entry.
- Equals last month's difference. The prior reconciliation was edited or never finished. Check its beginning balance against last month's statement.
- Divisible by nine. A transposed amount. Compare digits on the item that cleared for a different figure.
When an entry turns out to be posted to the wrong bank account, fix the entry rather than clearing it to make the numbers meet. Clearing a check that never left this account just moves the problem to the other account's rec.
If you manage properties in more than one system, the same discipline applies to each. AppFolio bank reconciliation for operating and trust accounts covers the most common alternative, and Sage 100 bank reconciliation or reconciling in QuickBooks Desktop often sit beside Yardi for corporate entities.
Statement work is where most of the hours go when a portfolio has dozens of accounts. PreciseBankFlow reads each statement, checks that it foots, flags possible duplicate charges and lists the lines that do not match your register, so you can request a spot and keep the judgment calls for the property-level review.