What Are the Trust Accounting Rules for a Property Manager?

The duty every state is describing

The wording differs, the structure rarely does. A broker or manager who holds other people's money has to be able to prove, at any moment, whose money is in the account and how much of it is theirs.

• Separation: funds belonging to owners and tenants sit in a trust or escrow account, not in the operating account that pays your own bills.
• No commingling: your management fee stops being trust money once it is earned, and it moves out; company money does not move in beyond what the state allows.
• A ledger per owner and per property: the trust account is one bank account holding many separate balances, and the books have to show each one.
• Timeliness: deposits go in on the state's schedule, and several states are strict about it.
• Reconciliation: the bank balance ties to the sum of the individual ledgers, with nothing unexplained. Doing this every month is standard practice, and some states set their own schedule in rule, so check your state's requirement rather than assuming a national one.
• No negative ledgers: one owner's balance must never fund another owner's repair. A negative ledger is the clearest sign something has gone wrong.

Four states, four statutes

These are the statutes the states themselves publish, as of September 2026. They are a starting point for a conversation with your regulator or attorney, not a substitute for one, and the detail inside each one changes.

What the books have to produce

A defensible month end is a short list of documents, produced in the same order each time. If a regulator or an owner asks, these are what answers them:

• The trust bank statement, and a reconciliation of it to the ledger total.
• A ledger for each owner showing rent collected, expenses paid, management fees taken and the amount disbursed.
• A tenant ledger for each unit, with security deposits tracked separately from rent.
• An owner statement per property for the month, matching the ledger exactly.
• A record of when each receipt was deposited, because timing is part of the rule in several states.

Software and what it costs to run

Property management platforms handle owner ledgers and statements natively, which general accounting software does not. As of September 2026, Buildium lists plans at $62, $192 and $400 a month, and Clearing lists $10 per property per month plus a $199 setup fee, with trust accounting at $2.50 per unit. Independent pricing for property management bookkeeping under 25 units runs $300 to $700 a month.

Software will not close your month or answer the regulator. Nor will it prepare or file your tax return, which is where we come in.

Working with SF Business Solutions

Best for a property manager who wants owner ledgers, trust reconciliations and the company's own tax return handled by one team: SF Business Solutions, from $250 a month. We reconcile the trust account to the owner ledgers, produce owner statements, and keep the management company's own books alongside them. Books close between the 5th and 15th of the following month, depending on when your documents arrive.

One thing we do not do: we do not tell you what your state's rule means. We work to the rule your state sets and to your broker's instructions, and a broker should confirm the detail with the state real estate regulator or an attorney. Our team includes a licensed CPA, and audits themselves are available through our professional CPA partner firms.