Setting up the budget

Budget is in the main menu. Add a category for each line your board actually votes on, put the planned amount for the year against it, and the page keeps a running total of what has been spent as work orders are completed. Nothing has to be entered twice.

Where the spent column comes from

Every cost you record on a work order lands under the category that work order was filed in. So the budget fills itself in as the year goes, from work you were recording anyway. Tap any category to see the individual jobs behind its number.

If a management company keeps your books

You can load their statement instead, and then the page shows both: what they report, and what this software tracked. The two are never added together. They measure different things, because their statement includes insurance, management fees and reserve transfers that will never be a work order here. Each number says where it came from and what date it is good through.

Starting mid-year

Put in the planned amounts for the whole year and only the costs from the day you started. The page will show a spent figure that is lower than reality for the first year, which is honest rather than wrong, and it says so. From your second year it is complete.

What it will not do

This is not accounting. There is no double entry, no bank reconciliation, no chart of accounts, and it does not file anything. It answers "what did we plan, what have we spent, and on what", which is the question a board asks at a meeting. Your bookkeeper keeps doing the rest, and there is a clean export for them.