Ascent Multifamily Accounting is now offering a Budget Boot Camp for multifamily property owners and managers. Ascent is one of the country’s top outsourced accounting firms for the multifamily industry and this year was recognized as one of Inc magazine’s 500 fastest growing private companies in America.
To create each property’s 2021 budget, Ascent’s founder and partner Scott Seegmiller works with senior accountants to analyze the previous years’ budgets for each property, including general ledger coding guidelines to revise history as needed from the previous year. He then leads both the accounting and property teams to create working budgets for the new year.
“An accurate annual budget is one of the most important documents you can have to accurately monitor the performance of multifamily assets,” said Mike Ballard, partner at Ascent. “Our Boot Camp includes the preparation of individual property budgets and a multi-day Budget Boot Camp for the team. We ensure that each property’s budget is understood and they are ready to start the new year on the right foot with a plan to ensure maximum profitability.”
Bella Vista Management in Dallas participated in Ascent’s Budget Boot Camp this year. “They downloaded historical information for each property into a budgeting spreadsheet and then worked with our property managers to help them understand each component of the budget,” said Madeleine Ficaccio, the firm’s owner.
“Ascent provided recommendations on changes to our chart of accounts and worked with the managers on better understanding occupancy, loss to lease and vacancy loss,” said Ficaccio. “At the end of the three-day budgeting session, they uploaded our final budgets into the property management software.”
Ascent’s budgeting consulting services identify five key indicators including:
Performance targets
A baseline for property management reviews
Income and expense projections based on market drivers and assumptions
Capital improvements planning and projections
Problems that need to be resolved
“I strongly feel that understanding the budget gives the property managers more ‘ownership’ of the budget numbers for the new year,” said Lisa Fisher, owner of Rise Residential in Dallas. Fisher and her company participated in the Budget Boot Camp this year.
“It went extremely well,” said Fisher. “We found the information exchange between the staff members to be extraordinarily beneficial. I believe that, after participating in the workshop under Scott’s tutelage, our managers now feel more confident in their ability to make sound property and financial predictions and decisions.”
Ascent’s proven success with property budgeting has meant the difference of hundreds of thousands of dollars for its clients. In addition to experienced property budget consulting, Ascent also offers training on tools and techniques with all of the major multifamily accounting software platforms including RealPage, Yardi, Resman, Entrata and Appfolio.
“We take all the guesswork out of this critical business process, allowing owners and managers to start the year with a solid plan for profitability,” said Ballard. “It saves them months of struggle working to prepare it on their own, and it’s completely finished and ready to go in just a few days.”
ABOUT ASCENT MULTIFAMILY
Ascent Multifamily is a consulting and outsourcing firm focused solely on the multifamily industry and currently manages the accounting for more than 38,000 properties throughout the country.
This year, Inc. magazine selected Ascent Multifamily in the prestigious Inc 5000 ranking of America’s fastest growing private companies. Ascent debuted as No. 374 with an impressive three-year revenue growth of 1,218 percent.
To download a free copy of Ascent’s white paper, Is Outsourced Accounting For You?, click here. For more information on the firm, visit www.multifamilyaccounting.com.
