Here at Buildium, we want to help guide you through the steps of a workflow, but we also want to make sure you have a proper understanding of how Buildium organizes your information as well.
In this article, you'll learn:
1. How the entities in Buildium interact with each other
Properties are the first entity you enter into Buildium. Almost every other entity ties back to properties. You don’t want to think of a property as just a representation of a physical building from the real world. You want to think of a “Property” as the real-world building, along with all the information you track for it such as leases, tenants contacts, work orders, bills, and reports. The property is the hub for all of this.
For Homeowner or Condo Association management, an Association Entity works the same way.
Each property in Buildium has unit entities within it. Units in Buildium are the spaces that are able to be leased within a property. Association Units work similarly, although instead of being ‘leasable’ space, the units are ‘purchasable’ space.
Every property in Buildium will have at least one unit entity in it, even properties that are designated as single family properties or condos.
Within each unit are agreements, and the people who have signed those agreements for the units. For rental units, we have leases to represent the agreement itself and tenants to represent the people who agree to that lease.
For Association units we have ownership accounts (representing the purchase and sell date) and association owners who have purchased the unit.
2. Best practices for setting up properties
Buildium attaches all financial transactions to a property, so we like to think of each property as having their own set of “books”. All income that you take in and all expenses you pay out are tied to this specific property.
If you have a rental owner you’re managing for who owns 3 properties and decides to sell one, you’re able to cleanly close things out on the sold property without affecting the other properties he owns.
Here are some examples of how you can ensure you’re entering your managed properties into Buildium correctly:
- A client owns a single family home where the entire living space is rented on one lease. This property should be entered as a single family.
- A client owns a single family home that is rented out by the bedroom. This property should be entered as a multi-family, with the number of units dependent on the number of rooms being rented separately.
- A client owns an apartment building with four apartment units under the same roof. If the client decides to sell this property, all four apartments will be included in the sale. This should be entered as a multi-family property of 4 units.
- A client owns a townhome with 2 units. There is a possibility that the client will sell one of those units to an unrelated owner in the future. Even though the units share the same roof physically, and currently share the same rental owner, they should be entered in as two, single unit properties so that a sale of one will not affect the other.
| Article #: | 214840137 |