Reserve accounting, special assessments, transfer fees, Texas Property Code compliance, and board-ready financials — delivered by an accounting team that specializes in Texas property associations. For self-managed HOAs and the property management companies running portfolios of them.
Reserve money commingled with operating funds. Interest income never allocated correctly. Nobody can produce a clean reserve activity report when the board asks.
Annual audit deadline approaching and the books aren't ready. The auditor's prep list keeps growing. The board is exposed to fiduciary questions you can't answer.
Texas Property Code §209.0064 dictates how owner payments must be applied. Misapply one and you've created a foreclosure-defensible delinquency that isn't really a delinquency.
HOA accounting comes from two very different starting points. We serve both — and we structure the engagement to fit how each one actually operates.
Smaller and mid-sized associations operating without a property management company. The board treasurer (often a well-meaning volunteer) has been doing the books — and either knows it's not sustainable, or has been told by the new board, the lender, or an attorney that it isn't.
PM firms managing portfolios of 5 to 50+ HOAs who either don't have an in-house accounting team or whose in-house team is overwhelmed. They need an accounting partner who can produce consistent, audit-ready financials for every association under management — at a per-association price that scales.
If you're a board treasurer who's been doing this in your kitchen on Sunday evenings, we'll get you out of the kitchen. If you're a property management firm doubling your portfolio every two years, we'll be the accounting team that scales with you.
Texas Property Code Chapter 209 — the body of law that governs how Texas HOAs operate — has direct implications for how the books need to be kept. Not "best practices." Legal implications. A board that can't produce records on demand, can't show how a payment was applied, or can't document a foreclosure-eligible delinquency is exposed to real liability.
Here are the provisions that most directly affect day-to-day accounting:
The association must respond to written requests within 10 business days (or assert an applicable exception). Your books need to be organized, accurate, and presentable to a non-accountant owner or their attorney on short notice. If they aren't, you've created an immediate compliance problem.
When an owner pays an amount less than the total amount owed, that payment must be applied in the order specified by statute — generally, current assessments before late fees, attorney's fees, or other charges. Misapplication can void a delinquency claim and expose the association to wrongful collection or wrongful foreclosure claims. Your bookkeeping system has to enforce the right order automatically.
Your records have to show every delinquency, every notice sent, and every cure period — in chronological order, with documentation. Disorganized books make it functionally impossible to pursue an enforcement action without leaving the association exposed.
When an owner sells, the association has to produce a resale certificate showing the current account status, any unpaid amounts, and the status of any open violations. Books that can't produce a clean, accurate resale certificate on demand slow down closings and create direct friction with title companies, realtors, and selling owners.
None of this is exotic. It's the regulatory environment every Texas HOA already lives in. What's exotic is finding a bookkeeper who understands it. Most accountants who take HOA work treat it like any other small-business client — and the board doesn't realize the gap until something goes wrong.
The reserve fund — money set aside for major future repairs and replacements — is the single most-mishandled piece of HOA accounting in Texas. Done right, the reserve fund is a separately-tracked pool of money with its own balance sheet line, its own interest income allocation, its own activity report, and clear documentation every time money flows in or out. Done wrong, it gets commingled with operating funds, interest income gets attributed incorrectly, and the board ends up with a balance sheet that doesn't tie to the reserve study.
When we take over an HOA's books, the reserve fund work is usually the first thing we untangle. We rebuild the historical activity, document where each dollar came from and where it went, separate the funds going forward, and produce a reserve fund activity report the board can actually read.
Every Anchor Point HOA engagement includes the same set of monthly deliverables. No nickel-and-diming on standard reports. No "that's not in scope" surprises when the board asks for something a board is supposed to have.
Separate fund balances for operating, reserve, and any other restricted funds. Cash, receivables, and prepaid amounts tied to supporting schedules.
Assessment income, late fees, vendor expenses, professional services, and reserve contributions — compared against the board-approved annual budget.
Every owner balance with aging buckets, applied payments, and the documentation needed to support any collection or foreclosure action under Texas Property Code.
Outstanding vendor bills, paid activity for the month, and contract spending against approved budget categories.
Operating cash flows, reserve activity, and a clear picture of where the association's money came from and went during the period.
Beginning balance, contributions, interest earned, projects funded, and ending balance — reconciled to the reserve study's funding plan.
A plain-English summary of the month: budget variances worth discussing, delinquency status, reserve health, and any compliance items the board needs to know about.
Every transaction documented. Every reconciliation completed. Every supporting schedule on file. When audit season arrives, we hand the auditor exactly what they need.
Texas doesn't impose a universal audit requirement on all HOAs. But many associations are contractually required to engage a CPA for an annual audit, review, or compilation — and most boards don't realize it until they read their own governing documents carefully.
Anchor Point doesn't perform audits — we're not a CPA firm in the audit-and-assurance sense, and we don't pretend to be. What we do is keep your books in a state where an audit is straightforward, inexpensive, and finishable in weeks rather than months. We'll also coordinate with your auditor, prepare the requested schedules and reconciliations, and sit with them through fieldwork.
Most audit overruns happen because the books weren't ready when fieldwork started. Our HOA engagements include audit prep as a standard deliverable — your auditor's prep list gets handled before they walk in the door. Audits that were dragging on for 4-6 months at $15K typically finish in 6-8 weeks at $8-10K when the books are in the shape we put them in.
30-minute discovery call. Bring us your last three months of board financials (or whatever you have) and we'll tell you straight: what's working, what isn't, and whether we're the right team to take it over.
Book a Discovery Call →Property management firms managing 5 to 50+ Texas HOAs all run into the same problem: the accounting workload grows linearly with the portfolio, but the accounting staff doesn't. Hiring an in-house accountant per 5-10 HOAs is expensive and creates turnover risk. Hiring one over-stretched senior accountant to handle the whole portfolio creates quality and timeliness problems. Most PM firms end up doing the books worse than they want to because they can't afford to do them as well as they should.
We're the alternative.
If you're a property management firm and you can't currently scale your accounting at the same rate as your portfolio growth, that's the exact problem we're built to solve. A 30-minute call will tell us whether the math works for both of us.
It depends on the size of the association and what its governing documents require. Texas law does not universally require HOAs to engage a CPA, but many HOA bylaws and CC&Rs require an annual audit, review, or compilation of the financial statements — which only a CPA can perform. Additionally, larger associations (typically those with over $200,000 in annual assessments) often require audited financials by lender, regulatory, or fiduciary standards. Day-to-day bookkeeping, reserve accounting, and board reporting do not require a CPA, but having those functions supervised by a CPA significantly improves financial integrity and audit-readiness.
Texas Property Code Chapter 209 governs how Texas HOAs operate, including specific requirements around financial transparency. Section 209.005 gives owners the right to inspect association records, including financial records. Section 209.0064 governs how an association must apply payments. Section 209.0091 requires written notice before non-judicial foreclosure. Proper bookkeeping is what makes compliance with these provisions possible — your books need to clearly show every assessment, every payment received, every late fee applied, and every legal action taken, in a format an owner or attorney can review on short notice.
Texas HOAs typically maintain a reserve fund — a separate pool of money set aside for major repairs and replacements like roofs, roads, pools, and amenities. A reserve study, performed every 3-5 years by a qualified professional, determines how much should be funded each year. From an accounting perspective, reserve funds must be tracked separately from operating funds, interest income must be allocated correctly, and the use of reserve funds (rather than operating funds) for specific projects must be documented to maintain compliance and avoid commingling concerns.
Some do, some don't. Larger property management firms often have in-house accounting departments, but many — especially mid-sized firms managing 5 to 50 associations — outsource the accounting function to specialized firms like Anchor Point. This lets the property management company focus on community management while ensuring each HOA gets clean, audit-ready financials from an accounting team that specializes in HOA work.
At minimum, an HOA board should receive a monthly balance sheet showing operating fund, reserve fund, and any other restricted fund balances; an income statement (budget vs. actual) showing assessment income, vendor expenses, and reserve contributions; an aged accounts receivable report showing which owners are delinquent and by how much; a cash flow statement; and a reserve fund activity report. Boards that get less than this are flying blind on their fiduciary obligations.
For a single Texas HOA, comprehensive outsourced accounting typically ranges from $400 to $2,500 per month depending on size, number of units, complexity, and whether reserve accounting and audit prep are included. Property management companies engaging us across a portfolio of HOAs typically negotiate a per-association rate that decreases with volume. Anchor Point's HOA engagements start at $3,000 monthly when including full accounting, board reporting, and compliance work — but per-association rates within a property management portfolio scale below that as portfolio size grows.
Yes. About half of our HOA onboardings come from associations or property management firms switching from another accounting provider. We handle the transition — including catch-up work if the books are behind, repair work if they have issues, and the systems handoff from the prior provider — as part of our standard onboarding process. Most transitions take 60-90 days.
Whether you're a board treasurer drowning in spreadsheets or a property management firm trying to scale your accounting, 30 minutes on the phone will tell us whether Anchor Point is the right fit. No pitch. No pressure. Just a real conversation about what your HOAs need.