Effective communications strategies and best practices

Effective Communication -- Defining an Accurate Budget

Effective Communications with Property Management Financial Statements

The 2016 property management operating budget serves as the foundation of expansion plans and the planning of new business services offered to tenants in the coming year. Property management budgets need to take into account budgeting and cost estimates in compliance with industry standards including GAAP to ensure their accuracy and reliability (Liapis, Christodoulopoulou, 2011). Of specific interest is how leases are represented in our pro forma financials by building for the coming year. Lease accounting is particularly complex, requiring an inordinate amount of detail on how they are amortized over time (Pounder, 2009).

To minimize the number of revisions to our company-wide budget, I would appreciate it if you would follow these guidelines in preparing each of your budgets. First, our budgets are created in Microsoft Excel using the property management template that has been in used throughout all divisions for all properties. The reason we're standardizing on this template is that corporate finance has automated the uploading process to create a consolidated series of financial statements. This is also essential to ensure compliance with GAAP standards (Liapis, Christodoulopoulou, 2011). The template file is called PropertyBudget2016Planning.xlsx and is in the shared folders. If you cannot reach the shared folders please let me know and I will send you the template.

Second, the costs included in the template include direct, indirect, leasing and amortized costs across each specific property in our region. Please use the template to organize your properties' individual costs into quarterly estimates. As the template has four calendar quarters shown for 2016 which a column dedicated for each, please pro-rate your costs by each line item in the budget. The comments section at the far right of each line item is used for providing your series of assumptions for the quarterly growth of each expense. Please provide the growth rate of each line item in this comments section along with explanations of item. The following is an example from the template:

Revenue or Expense Category

Q1, 2016

Q2, 2016

Q3, 2016

Q4, 2016

Totals

Assumptions and Growth Rates

Leasing revenue -- Boynton Street

$200,000

$200,000

$200,000

$200,000

$800,000

All eases approved; no increase in rents

Second, you do not need to explain operating and administrative costs. If there is a planned increased in a given cost category, please provide insights into why you project there will be an increase. On all fixed costs (administrative, cleaning and contract services) please also provide the expiration date of contracts in 2016 in the comments section of the budget as well. You can find these dates in the budgets for 2014 and this year.

Third, leasing revenue is the most important part of your budget. Be sure to define what potential upsides there are for each type of unit in your specific property. For example, if there are larger office suites unoccupied today please provide a forecast when you believe they will be leased. By upside, I am referring to the incremental gain in leasing the unit at a higher average lease price. An example of how to do this is shown below: