PayHOA Bookkeeping Services & HOA Accounting

PayHOA gives a self-managed association a real general ledger — chart of accounts, journal entries, bank reconciliation, 1099 filing — without a management company. What it also gives you is a cash-versus-accrual setting that a volunteer treasurer can choose, and choosing wrong quietly removes assessments receivable, prepaid dues and accounts payable from your balance sheet entirely. PayHOA sells its own bookkeeping service too; we are the independent alternative, working for your board at published rates.

A Real Ledger, With One Setting That Changes Everything

PayHOA describes simple, robust GL accounting with a customizable chart of accounts, journal entries and 1099 filing, and it lets the association choose between cash-based and accrual-based accounting to suit its preferences. That choice is the single most consequential decision in the whole setup.

On a cash basis, assessments receivable, prepaid assessments and accounts payable do not appear on the balance sheet at all. The board sees a bank balance and calls it financial position. Delinquencies become invisible. Owners who paid the year up front look like current-period income. Only the accrual basis conforms with generally accepted accounting principles, and some states legislate the point outright — California, for example, requires association records be kept on an accrual or modified accrual basis. Your state’s rules govern, and they vary.

PayHOA is candid about this in its own educational material, listing cash-basis reporting without understanding the downside among the critical mistakes volunteers make, alongside ignoring the association’s chart of accounts, commingling reserve and operating funds, skipped bank reconciliations, and one-person workflows with no separation of duties. That list is an accurate description of the engagements we get called into.

Reserves, Funds and What PayHOA Does Not Document

A separate bank account is not fund accounting. Under the accounting guidance for common interest realty associations, amounts assessed for future major repairs and replacements must be reported separately from amounts assessed for normal operations, and transfers between funds belong in the statement of changes in fund balances — not in revenue or expense. Fund accounting means a self-balancing set of accounts with its own fund balance. Most association books we inherit have two bank accounts and one fund.

PayHOA documents a general ledger, multiple bank accounts and a customizable chart of accounts. It does not publicly document a fund dimension, by-fund balance sheets or a statement of changes in fund balances, and its reserve material is largely general guidance rather than product capability. We do not claim the product lacks something it may do privately — we simply do not rely on what is not documented. In practice that means fund segregation on PayHOA depends on GL-account discipline and correct journal entries, which is exactly the work we perform.

The reserve expenditure entry is the one almost everybody gets wrong. Move the cash from reserve savings to the operating checking account, then charge the check against the equity account for the reserve fund — not against the reserve savings bank account, because the money already left there. Charging it twice relieves reserves twice and leaves the fund balance untouched. Reserve contributions also have to come off the income statement so they do not inflate net income and make an underfunded association look profitable.

One practical note: PayHOA has no QuickBooks integration and says so directly when asked — associations move from QuickBooks to PayHOA rather than running both. Its published integrations are payment, banking, messaging and mail services. If someone told you your PayHOA data exports into QuickBooks automatically, that is not correct.

Core PayHOA Bookkeeping Functions We Manage

1. Assessments, Delinquencies and Owner Ledgers

Recurring monthly, quarterly or annual dues, one-off charges, automatic and recurring late fees, simple or compounding interest, and aging and delinquent-account reporting the board can act on.

2. Operating and Reserve Fund Segregation

Reserve contributions kept off the income statement, reserve draws charged against the reserve fund equity account rather than the savings account, and inter-fund transfers reported as transfers. Segregation enforced by discipline and documented entries.

3. Bank Reconciliation, Every Account, Every Month

Operating, reserve and any special assessment accounts reconciled monthly, including lockbox receipts and owner portal payments — with attention to whether your deposits arrive gross or net of processing fees, since PayHOA lets the community choose whether to pass the fee through.

4. Board Financial Packet

Balance sheet, budget versus actual, profit and loss, general ledger, bank reconciliation, aging of accounts, delinquent accounts and expenses by vendor — assembled on a schedule so the board reviews numbers before the meeting rather than during it.

5. Year End, 1099s and CPA Handoff

Vendor 1099 filing, tax-ready books, and a clean package for your association’s CPA whether the year ends in a compilation, review or audit.

The PayHOA Rescue: Rebuilding Books a Volunteer Inherited

The typical call comes from a board member who took over as treasurer and found no reconciliations, a chart of accounts full of miscellaneous buckets, reserve transfers booked as expenses, and a set of financials nobody can explain to the membership.

We reconcile every bank account back to a known-good starting point, rebuild the chart of accounts on an association structure, reclassify reserve contributions and draws so the fund balance is right, restore assessments receivable and prepaid assessments to the balance sheet if the association should be on accrual, and produce a corrected board packet for each affected month.

Then we set up the recurring monthly routine, so the next treasurer inherits something maintainable. Several months or years behind? Start with catch-up bookkeeping.

Why Outsource Your PayHOA Bookkeeping to Maxim Liberty?

Self-managed associations get the worst of both worlds: real fiduciary duty and no accounting staff. We give a board professional books without the cost of a management company, and we have kept US books since 2005 with BBB A+ accreditation behind us. PayHOA offers its own bookkeeping service; hiring an independent firm means your bookkeeper answers to the board alone, your records are portable if you ever change software, and you pay published rates.

Plans start at $75/month; dedicated bookkeepers are $15/hour for businesses and $10/hour for CPA firms who white-label our team. Your first deposit is covered by a 100% money-back guarantee, so the board can test the work with little to no risk. See pricing or our HOA accounting services.