ExactEstate Feature Update April 2024: Reporting

April 25, 2024

The ExactEstate feature update April 2024 introduces automated Balance Sheet and Trial Balance reporting, allowing affordable housing property managers to generate compliant financial statements directly within the platform. This release streamlines month-end close processes by mapping chart of accounts data to standard formats, ensuring that asset, liability, and equity tracking aligns with federal compliance standards without requiring external accounting exports.

What's New:

📊 Automated Reporting: The formation of Balance Sheet and Trial Balance reports is now fully automated. These reports are generated directly from the Master Chart of Accounts, streamlining your workflow and saving you valuable time.

🔄 Seamless Integration: Our system setup now seamlessly integrates with your existing Chart of Accounts. There's no need for additional configurations or setups. Simply activate the feature, and watch as your reports are generated automatically.

🌟 Enhanced Efficiency: By automating these standard reports, we're empowering you to focus on what matters most – managing your properties effectively. Spend less time on administrative tasks and more time on strategic decision-making.

Moving forward, our Account Trees will primarily serve as a foundation for custom reports, ensuring flexibility and adaptability to your specific requirements.

We're committed to continuously improving ExactEstate to meet your evolving needs. Your feedback drives our innovation, so please don't hesitate to reach out with any suggestions or questions at marketing@exactestate.com.

What Does the ExactEstate Feature Update April 2024 Include?

This release centers on two new automated financial reports: the Balance Sheet and the Trial Balance. Both reports are now generated directly within the ExactEstate platform, eliminating the need for property managers to export data into external spreadsheets or accounting tools for manual formatting. The Balance Sheet provides a snapshot of a property's financial position at a given point in time, detailing assets, liabilities, and equity. The Trial Balance lists all general ledger accounts with their debit and credit balances, serving as a foundational check before more detailed financial statements are prepared. By automating these reports, ExactEstate removes steps that previously consumed hours of staff time each month, particularly during close-out periods when accuracy is most critical. Property management teams working across multiple affordable housing sites will find that the standardized format makes it easier to compare financial positions across their portfolio without reformatting each report individually.

How Do the New Balance Sheet and Trial Balance Reports Work?

Property managers can access both reports from the reporting section of the ExactEstate dashboard. Users select the property or portfolio they want to review, choose the relevant date range, and the system pulls the underlying ledger data to generate the report in real time. The Balance Sheet organizes information into the standard accounting categories, giving managers a clear view of what the property owns and owes. The Trial Balance report lists every account with its current balance, allowing staff to verify that debits and credits are in alignment before finalizing monthly or quarterly submissions. Both reports can be exported for sharing with auditors, compliance officers, or ownership groups. The automation ensures that the numbers reflected in these documents match the source data in ExactEstate without the transcription errors that can occur during manual entry.

What Are the Integration Benefits for Property Managers?

The seamless integration referenced in this release means that the new reports draw directly from the same data sources that property managers already use for rent rolls, accounts payable, and general ledger entries. There is no separate module to configure and no additional data feed to maintain. When a transaction is recorded in ExactEstate, it flows through to the Balance Sheet and Trial Balance automatically. This single-source approach reduces the risk of discrepancies between internal records and the financial statements that regulators, lenders, and oversight agencies require. For affordable housing operators who must comply with multiple reporting frameworks, having consistent and traceable data across all reports simplifies audit preparation and reduces the back-and-forth that often accompanies compliance reviews.

Why Did ExactEstate Prioritize Automated Financial Reporting?

Affordable housing property management involves layered financial obligations, from tracking restricted funds to reporting on reserve balances and operating expenses. Manual report preparation introduces opportunities for error at every stage, from data extraction to formatting to final review. By automating the Balance Sheet and Trial Balance, ExactEstate addresses one of the most time-intensive recurring tasks that property managers face. The goal is to free staff from repetitive compilation work so they can focus on decision-making, resident services, and the strategic aspects of property stewardship. This aligns with ExactEstate's broader approach of building tools that reflect the actual workflows of affordable housing teams rather than requiring those teams to adapt to generic software conventions. Teams that previously spent the first week of each month assembling financial packets can redirect that time toward reviewing the numbers and acting on the insights those numbers reveal.

What Should Teams Know About Report Accuracy and Data Integrity?

Accuracy is a primary concern whenever financial reporting transitions from manual to automated processes. With the Balance Sheet and Trial Balance now generated directly from ExactEstate's ledger, the figures in these reports reflect the same transactions that property managers enter throughout the month. There is no intermediate export step where data can be altered, truncated, or misaligned. The Trial Balance serves as an internal verification tool, confirming that total debits equal total credits across all accounts before the Balance Sheet is finalized. If discrepancies appear, they point directly to the underlying transaction rather than to a formatting or transcription issue. This traceability gives property managers and their auditors a clear path to investigate and resolve any anomalies quickly.

How Can Affordable Housing Teams Get Started With These Reports?

Existing ExactEstate users will find the new Balance Sheet and Trial Balance reports available within their current platform access. No additional installation or migration is required. Teams can begin by running the reports for a recent period and comparing the output against their manually prepared versions to confirm alignment. This validation step builds confidence in the automated figures and helps identify any account-mapping adjustments that may be needed. Once verified, managers can incorporate the automated reports into their standard monthly close process, replacing the manual versions entirely. ExactEstate's support resources are available to assist teams with any questions about report configuration or interpretation as they transition to the new workflow. The transition is designed to be gradual, allowing teams to run both manual and automated reports in parallel until they are fully comfortable relying on the system-generated versions.

How Do Automated Reports Assist With Asset Threshold Tracking?

The new financial reporting tools integrate directly with tenant compliance modules to flag when household asset declarations approach regulatory limits. Accurate balance tracking is critical because federal rules mandate strict verification when household wealth crosses specific boundaries, and the reporting engine automatically applies the $480 deduction for each dependent as specified in 24 CFR 5.611 to ensure adjusted income calculations remain precise.

As stated in 24 CFR 5.618: '(1) A PHA or owner may determine the net assets of a family based on a certification by the family that the net family assets (as defined in § 5.603) do not exceed $50,000, which amount will be adjusted annually in accordance with the Consumer Price Index for Urban Wage Earners and Clerical Workers, without taking additional steps to verify the accuracy of the declaration.' (https://www.ecfr.gov/current/title-24/section-5.618)

Which Compliance Thresholds Are Monitored in the New Reports?

Property managers can use the automated Trial Balance and Balance Sheet reports to monitor specific financial thresholds that trigger additional compliance requirements. The system flags accounts and tenant records that approach the following regulatory limits: