Yardi Voyager Bookkeeping
Bookkeeping and month-end close for portfolios running Yardi Voyager: entity-level books that roll up, posting periods that actually close, and reporting a manager can use alongside books a company can file from.
Voyager is a genuine general ledger rather than a portfolio tool with accounting bolted on, which is why the work in it looks different from the work in a smaller system. It will hold many entities, close periods properly and report across the whole portfolio. That power is also where the problems come from: everything is configured, and a configuration set up for one purpose keeps doing its job long after the purpose changed.
What the work looks like in Yardi Voyager
One chart, many entities, and the trap in that
Voyager shares a chart of accounts across entities, with the detail carried at entity level. An account added to solve a problem on one property is an account that now exists on all of them. Over a few years that produces a chart nobody designed, with near-duplicate accounts that different people post to depending on when they learned the system. Cleaning it is a structural job rather than a recoding job, and it is worth doing before it reaches a year-end.
A closed period in Voyager is not a closed month
Voyager closes posting periods, which stops entries landing in a month somebody has already reported. That is a control and it is not the same event as your month-end close: the close is reconciling, reviewing and signing off, and the period lock is what stops the answer moving afterwards. Locking without closing means a month is frozen before it was finished, and closing without locking means the numbers keep drifting after they were reported.
Recoveries and escalations on commercial
Where the portfolio is commercial, recoverable expenses are accrued through the year against an estimate and reconciled to actuals afterwards, and the difference gets billed or credited. The reconciliation is set by each lease rather than by a portfolio rule, so the pool, the gross-up and the exclusions have to come from the document rather than from how last year was done.
Management reporting and statutory reporting are different outputs
What an asset manager or an investor wants monthly and what the books get filed from are rarely the same basis. Voyager reports the first extremely well. The adjustments that get you to the second, whether that is a different revenue recognition, a different depreciation treatment or an accrual that only matters annually, usually live outside the system. Keeping that bridge written down rather than in somebody's head is most of what makes a year-end quick.
Intercompany, which nobody notices until it is large
In a multi-entity portfolio, one entity pays for something on behalf of another constantly. Each of those is a balance between two sets of books that has to agree in both directions and clear. Left alone it accumulates quietly for years and then becomes a problem at exactly the moment somebody is doing diligence on the structure.
Questions about Yardi Voyager
Do you do the Voyager configuration work as well?
We work in it rather than implement it. Reviewing a chart of accounts, saying what is producing a reporting problem and doing the recoding is bookkeeping and we do it. A Voyager implementation, a module rollout or a migration onto the platform is an implementation project and belongs with a partner who does that work, and we will say so rather than take it on.
What does an outside accountant need from a Voyager file at year end?
That is the normal shape of it and it is the bridge described above. What an accountant needs is a trial balance they can rely on, the support behind the unusual entries, and a clear statement of what is in Voyager on a management basis versus what has been adjusted. Handing that over as a package rather than as a login and a good luck is the part that shortens a year-end.
Is Voyager work available to US portfolios?
Yes, in Canada and the United States both. US federal, state and local tax filing and US information returns stay with your own preparer. The bookkeeping, the close and the reporting are what we do in either country.
More questions answered on the FAQ page.
Where this fits
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