Each vendor invoice drafted as a Buildium bill, with the property, unit and GL account on every line.

Today someone starts a new bill, picks the vendor, enters the date the invoice came in and a due date after it, and types the vendor's invoice number as the reference. Each line then needs three answers: whether a rental property, an association or the management company itself pays, which unit if any, and which GL account. A repair bill gets tied to its work order, and some lines carry a markup for the owner. Very little of that is printed on the invoice.

For the test, AI reads copies of bills your team has already entered, with the invoices behind them, and writes each one up as a Buildium bill draft, header and lines, with a short reason beside every choice. It enters nothing in Buildium and pays no one. Your reviewer sets each draft beside the saved bill and marks where the two part ways.

Every line names who pays. Buildium's public API reference, which documents how a bill is stored, gives each bill line an accounting entity of one of three kinds: a rental property, an association, or the company itself, with a unit where one applies. So the management company's own copier lease and a rental's furnace repair can sit on separate lines of one vendor's bill, each charged to different books. The same reference rules some accounts out of a bill line altogether: Accounts Payable, Accounts Receivable, Undeposited Funds and any account tied to a bank account. The draft states the entity type and unit on every line, and keeps company costs apart from property costs the way your team does.

Header fields with hard edges. The bill date is the day the invoice was received, often its invoice date, and the API reference requires the due date to fall after it. The vendor's invoice number goes in the reference number, which the API reference caps at 40 characters, while a work order's own invoice number field takes 50, so a long number that fits on the work order can be cut short on the bill. A memo can run to 245 characters. Users of Buildium's check printing service say the reference number and invoice details print on the check stub, which is how a vendor matches the payment to its invoice. The draft gives the full number it read, the number as your team would enter it, and any earlier bill from that vendor carrying the same one.

Markups ride on the line. Any bill line can carry a markup, either a percentage, which Buildium caps at 100, or a flat amount, and bills can be listed by whether their markups have been collected yet. Many managers use it to add their maintenance fee to the cost an owner pays. A markup on the wrong line, or one missing from a repair bill the management agreement says to mark up, turns into a wrong figure on that owner's next statement. The draft learns your habits from the sample, which vendors, accounts and properties get a markup and at what rate, and lists every line where it had to guess.

Work orders and approval status. A bill can point to one work order, and the work order keeps its own vendor, invoice number and a free-text note on who the work is chargeable to. Buildium's blog describes setting who approves bills and in what order, with a person reviewing before anything is paid, and every bill carries an approval status: not needed, approval required, pending, approved or rejected. Where your approval order depends on the property or the amount, a wrong line can send a bill to the wrong person. Using the rules you send, the draft names the status each bill should start in and the work order it belongs to.

After the bill: payment, credits and the vendor record. One check can pay several bills, and the API reference names two edits Buildium refuses: a bill with a pending EFT can't be changed, and once part of a bill is paid, its lines can't bring the total below the amount paid. Vendor credits and vendor refunds are separate records under the vendor. Each vendor also holds a default expense GL account, an insurance provider, policy number and expiration date, and tax details with an include-in-1099 setting. The draft reports what your vendor export says for each payee and marks any invoice that reads like a credit. Your reviewer, usually the bookkeeper or AP lead who enters your Buildium bills, will watch the entity on each line, markups and reference numbers hardest, because those carry straight into owner statements, approvals and 1099s.

Once your reviewer signs off against the success criteria, invoices that arrive from then on are drafted the same way for about 30 days.

A person on your team accepts, fixes or rejects each draft before a bill is saved in Buildium, and your approval order still applies after that. Approved drafts are keyed by your staff or brought in with tools your company already uses. Bill pay, check printing and EFTs stay with your team the whole month.