Cloud accounting software for property management companies

High-Performance Software at an Affordable Price for Hibernia REIT

When Irish Real Estate Investment Trust, Hibernia REIT plc (listed on both the London and Euronext Dublin stock exchanges) was established in late 2013, the commercial office specialist chose AccountsIQ to handle complex property accounting and financial management across all its subsidiaries.  Financial Controller Nick Treanor relies on the Cloud accounting platform for simplifying complex consolidation procedures; integrating information from Hibernia’s property management system Landmark; and providing insightful management reports using dashboards.

Nick says, “AccountsIQ allows us to allocate transactions to each of the properties within our portfolio (which at 31 March 2018 totalled 32).  We can look at the P&L for any property due to the way the accounting codes framework was designed for us during implementation.  Combined with the software’s capability of simplifying our consolidation process, the system is surprisingly sophisticated for a SaaS product.  Taking into account all of this functionality, AccountsIQ is extremely competitive from a pricing perspective.”

Reporting and Compliance

As a Real Estate Investment Trust (REIT), Hibernia is required to produce a range of external reports for its investors and AccountsIQ assists greatly in meeting these reporting requirements.  The business is benchmarked against the IPD Ireland real estate index against which the portfolio’s annual returns are benchmarked, and the use of “Extended Business Analysis” reporting is of great assistance when reporting on a quarterly basis.  Hibernia REIT is also regulated by Central Bank which requires specific monthly reports, which AccountsIQ also provides assistance with.

Enhanced Financial Control

Supporting best practice in financial control, AccountsIQ produces extended business analysis reports which are unique to Hibernia’s management’s needs.  Internal reports are generated and visualised in custom-designed dashboards which provide actionable information relating to the performance of particular aspects of the portfolio. One dashboard shows Capital Expenditure, allowing Hibernia to get a sense of how much is spent against each project and how much is remaining.  A second dashboard presents the credit control position and summarises the payment activity of tenants – key metrics for financial management.  AccountsIQ’s dashboard replaces the former debtors report but provides much more in terms of insight and payment trends.

Nick explains, “AccountsIQ’s customer success team has helped us define dashboard reports which provide financial analysis in a very consumable way, allowing us to quickly identify areas in which we need to take action.”

A Scalable Solution for Consolidation

As a plc, Hibernia REIT breaks out its P&L and Total Assets by business segment as required by IFRS.  AccountsIQ allows the finance team to allocate properties to ‘segments’ within the coding framework.  For Hibernia REIT, these segments include office assets; residential assets; and industrial assets.  A property code is created and allocated to a segment in order that P&Ls, for example, can be produced by segment.

Nick adds, “The structure of the coding framework in AccountsIQ is extremely flexible and saves us so much time when preparing our external financial reports. We have added seven or eight entities since implementing AccountsIQ and we simply replicate the original model for each new subsidiary.  It is a very uncomplicated approach and a time-saving solution for group companies.”

Synching with Other Systems for Further Efficiency

AccountsIQ is integrated with two other business systems in use at Hibernia REIT – electronic document management system Kefron and a property management database called Landmark.

Nick explains, “From an efficiency and a control perspective, these integrations save us so much time and reduce the risk of human error.  AccountsIQ’s ability to integrate with other Cloud or non-Cloud business systems has been very useful to us.”  AccountsIQ also synchs batch payments with Hibernia REIT’s online banking, further reducing duplication of work.

Summing up, Hibernia REIT’s Financial Controller Nick Treanor concludes,

Overall, the processing time which AccountsIQ saves us in data entry from other business systems, reconciliation, and automated invoice processing constitutes about a day a week.  This allows us to spend more time on the more “value-add” aspects of the Finance function, analysing and presenting information on which the senior management team can make more informed decisions.”

AccountsIQ helped multi-entity property management company, E&J Estates, migrate from Sage in just two months

In Autumn 2020, E&J Estates’ Financial Controller, Joanne Brown, started looking at accounting software that would enable them to consolidate their 20 entities easily and improve their intercompany management. E&J Estates’ existing system, Sage Financials, would soon be discontinued so they needed to be sure the onboarding process would be quick and painless. Although most of E&J Estates’ accounting needs are relatively straightforward, the complexity arises from their multi-entity accounting and consolidation requirements, which were time consuming. 

Everything a mid-market, multi-entity business needs at a reasonable cost

Joanne admits that finding the right accounting software for a mid-market, multi-entity property business, like E&J Estates, wasn’t easy. She knew they didn’t need an ERP, such as Oracle or NetSuite.

“They’re too complex for our needs,” she says. “I’d have to set up functionality we’d never use, and it would be cumbersome to make necessary tweaks to the system in the future. What we like about AccountsIQ is that you only need to set up the modules you wish to use and when we need to make changes, such as setting up a new accounting code, it’s really easy.”

Joanne also reviewed simple accounting solutions, such as Sage 200, Xero and Access Financials but found they didn’t have enough functionality.

“We’d have had to do all our consolidation manually,” she says. “I liked the look of the AccountsIQ system instantly. It’s logical, practical and user-friendly and it gives us everything we need at a reasonable price.”

A proper accounting system” that’s quick, efficient and paperless 

Joanne’s team has found everything, from multiple invoices to auto journal reversals, quick and easy to process with AccountsIQ. “That’s important,” she says. “As a finance team, we don’t want to spend time processing data. Now, we can spend time reviewing, reporting and analysing our data to benefit the business.

“AccountsIQ is rules-based,” continues Joanne. “It’s what I call a ‘proper accounting system’. We have four system users, so it’s important to have robust controls in place.”

E&J Estates has also had positive feedback from their auditors. “We’ve given them read-only access,” explains Joanne.

“In previous years, we produced accounts for our auditors around four months after year-end. This year, with AccountsIQ, we did it in just six weeks and next year our target is to get it done in a month.”

Data which can be trusted

For E&J Estates, one of the main benefits of AccountsIQ is that their inter-company accounting is so much easier.

“You can look at the consolidated accounts and see that it all zeros out,” says Joanne. “You know you haven’t missed anything and everyone in the company recognises that we have data we can trust. With AccountsIQ, you can only ever enter the transactions that should be in there. That means there are no mismatches or incorrect journals. It’s a big plus to us to have that level of data integrity; we can have complete confidence in the numbers we’re pulling from the system.”

The reporting functions also give complete, real-time clarity on the company’s financial position and helps E&J Estates to make more informed decisions about managing their business. AccountsIQ was even able to customise some of the reporting functions to meet E&J Estates’ specific needs.

"AccountsIQ helped us develop a report for the percentage reporting we have to do as a property company to handle irrecoverable VAT,” explains Joanne. “They also helped with Group VAT reporting and Making Tax Digital (MTD). It all works really well and it’s definitely a relief to be able to have complete confidence in our VAT returns.”

Migration from Sage to AccountsIQ in just 2 months

Because Joanne and her team could focus on just setting up the elements of the AccountsIQ system they really needed, they managed to get everything live in just two months. That included testing, training and uploading data, such as trial balances and current year transactions.

"We didn’t have to waste time setting up elements we didn’t need, such as stock control,” says Joanne. “We don’t have massive transaction volumes, but it was important for us to have all transactions for the accounting year in one system; that was a big win for us.”

Smooth and painless implementation process

E&J Estates found the implementation process straightforward and seamless. “Our AccountsIQ Implementation Consultant, Desi, was fantastic,” says Joanne.

"She’s knowledgeable, supportive and patient and that gave us confidence. We got to trial and test the system and we had full training. Even after we’d gone live, whenever we had questions, we got a quick response. The great thing about AccountsIQ is you can phone and speak to a real person. It’s never just an email saying ‘go and look at these documents’. They have a personal touch, and you feel they’re genuinely there for you and on your side.”

Find out how our property management accounting software can help you save time, reduce complexity and get better reporting. See pricing plans. Request a demo.