Yardi Breeze Bookkeeping
Bookkeeping for portfolios on Yardi Breeze: owner statements and rent roll kept current, the constraints of the product worked with rather than around, and the management company's books kept separately.
Breeze is a separate product from Voyager rather than a smaller licence of it, and that is the single most useful thing to understand about working in it. It is deliberately simpler, which makes it quick to run and quick to learn. It also means some of what a larger portfolio expects is not there, and the right response is to work with the constraint rather than to fight the software.
What the work looks like in Yardi Breeze
The reporting is fixed, so the structure has to carry the load
Breeze reports what Breeze reports. There is far less room to build a custom view than in Voyager, so anything you need that the product does not produce gets built outside it. That raises the value of getting the chart of accounts and the property setup right at the start, because the structure is doing the work that custom reporting would otherwise do.
Breeze and Breeze Premier are not the same product
Several things people assume are missing from Breeze sit in Premier instead, including maintenance and job cost work and the trust accounting features. Knowing which one you are on decides whether a given problem is a workflow problem or a licensing one, and it is worth establishing before anybody starts designing around a gap that a different tier already fills.
Owner statements and the draw
Same discipline as any portfolio system, and easier here because there is less to configure. Income per property, expenses against the property that incurred them, the management fee visible rather than netted, and the disbursement matching what left the bank on the date it left. An owner checking a statement against their own account should find it agrees without anybody having to explain it.
The portfolio is not the company
Breeze holds the properties. Your management company has its own books, and its revenue is fees rather than rent. Reading company performance off portfolio reports is the most common way a small manager ends up with a misleading picture, because most of the money in the portfolio was never theirs.
Growing out of it, which is worth seeing early
Breeze suits portfolios up to a point, and the signals that the point has arrived are consistent: reporting being rebuilt in spreadsheets every month, entity structures the product was not designed to hold, or recoveries that need a treatment it does not do. That is a real decision with a real cost, and it is better made on evidence than in the middle of a year-end.
Questions about Yardi Breeze
Is Breeze enough, or should we be on Voyager?
Usually enough, and the honest answer depends on what you are rebuilding by hand. If the monthly reporting comes out of Breeze and gets used, the product is doing its job. If somebody spends two days a month turning Breeze exports into the report anybody actually reads, that time is the real cost of staying and it is worth measuring before deciding. We will tell you which of the two we are seeing.
Can you work in Breeze and keep our general ledger somewhere else?
Yes, and that is the usual arrangement. Breeze carries the portfolio, the general ledger carries the management company, and the two reconcile to the same bank. Nothing has to move for that to work.
Canada and the US both?
Both. US tax filing of any kind stays with your own preparer, and the bookkeeping is the same work in either country.
More questions answered on the FAQ page.
Where this fits
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