Cash vs. Accrual Accounting: What It Means for Your Yardi Setup

Accounting method decisions aren’t just for your CPA to worry about—they affect how your property management platform operates day-to-day. One of the most fundamental of those decisions is whether to run your books on a cash basis or an accrual basis.

If you’re using Yardi Voyager, the distinction isn’t just theoretical. It directly impacts how you handle revenue recognition, expense tracking, reporting, recoveries, and even your ability to stay compliant with your internal and external reporting needs.

The Basics: What’s the Difference?

• Cash accounting recognizes income and expenses only when money changes hands. You record rent when it's received, and expenses when they’re paid.

• Accrual accounting records income and expenses when they’re earned or incurred—regardless of when cash moves. You book rent when it's billed, and expenses when you receive the invoice.

This difference might seem small, but it changes how you interpret your financials, how you run CAM reconciliations, and what your reports actually mean.

Why It Matters in Yardi

Yardi Voyager is built to support both methods—but not at the same time without some planning. CAM recoveries, owner distributions, investor reporting, and property-level budgeting all behave differently depending on how your accounting is structured. Many clients don’t realize they’re creating blind spots by sticking with one method when the situation calls for the other—or even a hybrid approach.

Some common pain points we see:

• Confusion about why CAM recoveries don’t match actual expenses

• Budget variances that don’t tell the full story

• Reporting that makes sense to the accountant, but not to operations—or vice versa

The Bottom Line

Understanding cash vs. accrual accounting isn’t just an accounting issue—it’s a system design issue. And in Yardi, how you set up your ledgers, payables, receivables, and reports will either support that understanding or stand in its way.

We work with clients every day to bridge the gap between their accounting method and their system setup in Yardi. If you’re not sure whether your platform is aligned with your reporting goals, or if you’ve been stuck trying to explain mismatched numbers to your stakeholders, we’re here to help.

Let’s talk about what’s behind your numbers—and how Yardi can be part of the solution.