Are you looking to make your property budgeting more effective and enjoyable? Want your people to take more ownership and use the budgets throughout the year?

We have been presenting our 2021 Budgeting Boot Camp to many of our clients, and they are loving the process. An accurate annual budget is one of the most important documents you can have to accurately monitor the performance of your properties.

If you want to make sure your budgets are done right and on time and your mangers take ownership of their budgets, we can help.

Madeleine Ficaccio, owner of Bella Vista Management in Dallas, had to say about our Budgeting Boot Camp:

"We retained Ascent to help us complete our 2020 budgeting. Their budgeting workshop was focused, timely and professional. Ascent 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.

“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. At the end of the three-day budgeting session, they uploaded our final budgets into the property management software. The Ascent process was excellent and working with their people was very enjoyable.”

Ascent’s budgeting consulting services include the preparation of individual property budgets and a multi-day Budgeting Bootcamp for everyone on your team via Zoom videoconferencing. We ensure that each property’s budget is understood and that you are ready to start the new year on the right foot with a plan to ensure maximum profitability.

To create each property’s 2021 budget, our senior accountants analyze previous years’ budgets, including general ledger coding guidelines to revise history as needed from the previous year. This helps us create the most accurate budgets possible. With 30+ years of accounting and property management experience, our team is unmatched in maximizing the performance of your assets.

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

During your three-day Budgeting Boot Camp, we will provide your team the opportunity to work through the theory and the functionality of each section of the budget document as a group, then work individually with each property as needed.

“I strongly feel that understanding the budget gives the property managers more ‘ownership.’  We participated in Ascent’s Budget Bootcamp this year with our regionals and property managers.  

They learned quite a bit about what goes into the budget and how to maximize the value of the property.  The participants in this budget were excited to better understand the process and now have a much better understanding and ownership of it.”  

Lisa Fisher, Owner, Rise Residential

Ascent’s proven success with property budgeting has meant the difference of hundreds of thousands of dollars for our clients. Our hands-on training with property managers, regional managers and owners makes the difference no other partner can provide. In addition to experienced property budget consulting, we also offer training on tools and techniques with all of the major multifamily accounting software platforms including RealPage, Yardi, Resman, Entrata and Appfolio.

STEP ONE

To lay the groundwork for your Budget Boot Camp, your team at Ascent will:

1. Create a template for each property
2. Populate Unit Mix, Current Rents, Loss to Lease
3. Extract 2020 Historical through Sep 30
4. Extract 2019 Historical for the whole year
5. Extract current and Historical Lease Expirations

STEP TWO

Next, we will schedule and host a Zoom Boot Camp, where we will share the first draft of the budget and have group discussions with managers on:

1. Setting market rents
2. Loss to Lease
3. Concessions
4. Renewals
5. Other Income
6. Maintenance costs vs. CapEx
7. Net Operating Income and its effect on property values

STEP THREE

Next, we give each manager the ability to work on their budget.  We document the assumptions.  We monitor their work the whole time.  Owners and regionals can interact with them on Zoom Chat, or have an offline call to give them guidance.  We talk about expenses, turnover, maintenance, and CapEx.

STEP FOUR-YOU DID IT!

Our final step is to review the budget for each property compared to other properties, and find the anomalies.

When your two or three-day budget boot camp is complete, you will have a budget that is completed and ready to upload into Yardi.  You put all your decision makers in a room for a few days, and save yourself MONTHS of struggle with your 2021 budgets.

FEES

Our fees for our Budgeting Boot Camp range from $3,300 to $12,000 depending on the number of properties.

You can also view some of our  Budgeting Tools on our website!

Call or email me to find out if a Budgeting Boot Camp is right for your properties.