Property Tax

Counties mail property tax bills twice a year. Some tenants pay the county directly, some reimburse us, and on vacant land we pay it ourselves. The job is making sure every bill is accounted for, nobody pays twice, and nothing goes delinquent.

Monday tracks whether a bill arrived and where it stands. AppFolio records what was paid and by whom.

Draft for review

Who Pays

Recorded in the Who Pays column on the board.

Case	Pays the county	Our obligation
Owner-paid or vacant	We do	Pay as a normal payable
Bill back or CAM	We do	Pay, then recover from the tenant
Tenant pays direct	The tenant	Send the bill, confirm payment, zero the bill in AppFolio

Send the bill to every tenant regardless of the case. Tenants often pay even when the obligation is ours, and a responsible tenant is waiting on our email before acting.

Intake

1. Receive the bill
   Hard copies, email, or pulled from the county website.

2. Process it
   Run the PDF through the Document Preprocessor’s Property Tax page.

3. Verify the details
   Confirm the board item, amounts and due dates.

4. Save
   The PDF goes to the server and the Monday item, amounts and due dates are filled, and every installment is set to Statement Received.

Document Preprocessing The dashboard that reads the bill and writes it to Monday and the server.

Selecting the Board

Pick the tax year board at the top of the sidebar. Sync from Monday refreshes the cached properties and parcel numbers. Run it after any change to the board.

Each tax year has its own board. To add one, expand Add board, paste the board id or URL, and click Add. Columns are found by name, so a board duplicated from last year needs no further setup.

Processing a Bill

The preprocessor reads the parcel number, tax year, bill type, and every installment amount and due date, then matches the bill to its board item.

• Board Item shows how the match was made. matched (apn) is an exact parcel number match. Anything else needs review, and the dropdown lists every property scored against the bill
• Entity and Property set the filename and server folder. Use the pencil to override
• 3rd and 4th Installment open automatically when the bill has them, which is Nevada and Massachusetts
• Extracted APN shows what the match ran on

Amounts and due dates must reach the board before anything downstream works. The payment sync compares what AppFolio paid against what the board says is owed. Statement Received comes first, paid comes second.

Stacks of bills

Load a scanned stack into the PDF Splitter and choose Property Tax under Process Stack As. Each bill separates and lands on the Property Tax page.

Where bills are saved

Saved bills land in a folder per entity:

Z:\Shared\BBT Asset Management Inc\Accounting\Property Tax Bills\{entity}\

Naming convention: yyyymmdd_PropertyTax_entity_property_apn.pdf

Bills Requiring Review

Situation	Action
Supplemental bill	A second bill on the same parcel. Process separately
Multiple parcels on one property	Several bills against one item. Process each
Parcel number unreadable	Select the item from the dropdown
Property sold	Marked SOLD on the board, never chased

Sending to the Tenant

1. Send on receipt
   Blast from the property tax mailbox through SuperMail with the PDF attached. Do not hold bills for a batch.

2. BCC accounting
   The same send BCCs the EMA accounting email, which auto-forwards into AppFolio Smart Bill Entry. This is how the bill reaches AppFolio, so the BCC is required.

3. Chase weekly
   Until the tenant responds or the county shows the bill paid.

Dedicated mailbox

Property tax correspondence uses its own address so replies are not lost in the general accounting mailbox. One person owns it for the season.

Recording in AppFolio

The BCC enters every bill, including bills we never pay, giving one searchable record regardless of who paid. REA posts them from Smart Bill Entry against Real Property Taxes, the default GL account for all property tax entities. Supplemental bills use the same account.

For a bill the tenant pays directly:

1. Zero the amount once the tenant confirms payment or the county site shows it paid.

2. Note who paid on the bill: Tenant paid, Charles Dunn paid, or similar. This is the only record of who settled it.

A zeroed bill stays searchable, never appears as an outstanding payable, and does not touch the P&L.

Finding a bill later

Accounting > Payables, filtered by the property tax GL account and the property. Paid, unpaid and zeroed bills all appear, and the date range can go back years.

Paying

Bills we owe run through the normal AP approval and payment cycle.

AP Processing Workflow Approval and payment cycle for all payables.

Once paid, the daily payment sync marks the board. It matches on the property, the GL account, and the exact installment amount.

AppFolio record	Monday status
Paid from Real Property Taxes	Paid by Landlord
Paid from CAM Real Property Taxes	Paid by LL Billback Tenant
Tenant reimbursement receipted	Tenant Reimbursed

The sync only moves a status forward, reports rather than writes a payment that does not match the board amount, and never touches a property whose tenant pays the county directly.

Confirming Payment

This cannot be automated and is where money is lost if it slips.

County sites lag

A county can take up to ten days to show a payment. A bill reading unpaid on the due date may already have been paid by the tenant. Paying it anyway means paying twice.

1. Get it in writing
   A tenant saying they paid is not proof. Ask for a receipt or screenshot.

2. Check the county weekly
   Work the board from the top. Every unconfirmed item gets checked.

3. Keep checking for ten days after the due date
   In case a late-posting payment lands.

4. Mark the board
   Record confirmed payment with the proof attached.

Exceptions

Short and partial payments. A tenant who pays the wrong amount, or misses a late charge, leaves a balance the county will chase. Scan the remaining notice, send it to the tenant as a bill back, and recover the difference. Penalties caused by the tenant paying late are theirs.

Prorated tenants. A tenant who moves in or out mid-year owes part of the bill. Invoiced separately, split manually.

Corrected bills. Process as a new bill, resend, and correct the amounts on the board.

Weekly Cadence

When	What
On receipt	Process the bill, send to the tenant, BCC accounting
Weekly	Check unconfirmed items against the county site, chase non-responders
Weekly	Approve and pay what is ours
Ten days after each due date	Confirm late payments, bill back any shortfall