Working with a property management company in Grand Rapids that uses Yardi Voyager for all their accounting. They said they can export utility billing data directly from Yardi instead of me going through the LOA process with each utility. The export includes invoice amounts, account numbers, billing dates, and payment dates. Is this sufficient for an audit or do I still need the actual utility invoices?
Getting billing data from a client's property management software
The Yardi export is a great starting point for identifying accounts to focus on but it's not sufficient for a real audit. Property management software captures the total amounts for payment processing but usually doesn't break out the individual line items — demand charges, energy charges, riders, taxes, etc. You need the actual utility invoices with full line item detail to identify billing errors. Use the Yardi data to prioritize which accounts look like they have the biggest spend and potential issues, then get LOAs and actual bills for those accounts.
Makes sense. Used the Yardi export to identify the 6 highest-spend accounts out of 22 properties. Now getting LOAs for just those 6 instead of all 22. Much more efficient than trying to audit everything at once. Thanks David.