Property Group budgets let you budget across all the properties in a group from a single place — pooling areas, splitting common-area costs, and reconciling expenses and income across the entire group. Use them for estates, retail complexes, mixed-use developments, or any portfolio where shared costs need to be apportioned across multiple property records.
Before You Start: How a Property Group Budget Works
A Property Group budget lives on the group's General Property — the property record created when you set up the group to act as the container for group-level data. The budget itself behaves like any other Budget by Area, but with two key differences:
You can include areas from any property in the group, not just one.
Expense invoices, tenancy income, and reconciliation calculations look across all properties in the group, not a single property.
This means a single budget can cover, for example, common-area cleaning costs across an entire retail complex, with each tenant's contribution calculated based on their area in their own property record.
Note: If you don't already have a Property Group set up with a General Property, see Property Groups for setup instructions. A General Property is required to create a Property Group budget.
How to Create a Property Group Budget
You create a Property Group budget the same way you'd create a standalone Budget by Area, but from the General Property.
Navigate to the General Property for your group.
Click the Outgoings tab.
Click New Budget By Area.
Enter the budget details: Title, Start Date, End Date, optional Notes, Tax Basis, and Income Codes for Tenancy Income, Owner Contributions, and Balancing Charges.
Click Next to continue to area selection.
Selecting Areas From Across the Group
On the area selection step, you see areas from every property in the group, grouped by property. This lets you pick which areas across the group should contribute to or benefit from the budget.
Review the areas, which are grouped under their property name.
Use the Hide Excluded and Hide Non-Lettables toggles to filter the list.
Include or exclude individual areas as needed.
Click Next to continue.
Note: If an area already belongs to a standalone budget on its own property that overlaps with your Property Group budget dates, that area is flagged as already in use. You'll need to resolve the conflict before that area can be included. See When Areas Are Already Used Elsewhere below.
When Areas Are Already Used Elsewhere
Re-Leased prevents the same area from being budgeted twice for overlapping date ranges. This avoids double-accounting of expenses or income.
Two budget conflicts can occur:
A property in the group already has a standalone budget covering some or all of the Property Group budget dates. Areas from that property are flagged on the area selection step.
You try to create a standalone budget on a property whose areas are already part of an active Property Group budget. The system blocks the new budget if the dates overlap.
Budgets can coexist as long as their dates don't overlap. For example, you can keep a property's historical standalone budgets and start using a Property Group budget for the new financial year — provided the periods don't intersect.
Important: If your property currently uses standalone budgets and you want to move to Property Group budgets, plan the transition around your budget period boundaries. Close out the existing budgets before the Property Group budget start date.
Creating Schedules in a Property Group Budget
Schedules group expense codes together so they can be apportioned across selected areas. Property Group budget schedules work the same as standalone schedules, with areas grouped by property when you select them.
Click New Schedule.
Enter a Title and choose the Allocation Basis — floor area percentage or tenancy percentages.
Add areas from any property in the group. Each area shows its parent property next to its name.
Set the allocation percentages — totals must reach 100%, with any remainder marked as Non-Recoverable.
Save the schedule.
Assigning Expense Accounts
Open the schedule and click Manage Accounts.
Add the expense accounts that should be apportioned through this schedule.
Enter the budgeted amount for each account.
Adjust the per-area allocation if needed.
An expense account won't appear in the picker if it's already included in another overlapping budget — across the group, not just one property.
Approving a Property Group Budget
The budget approval flow works the same as for standalone budgets, with one addition: each area shows which property it belongs to, so you can verify the cross-property apportionment before approving.
From the budget, click Approve Budget.
Review the approval summary across all three tabs: single-line schedules, multi-line schedules, and multi-line expense codes.
Confirm each area is mapped to the correct property.
Click Approve to move the budget from Draft to Approved status.
Reconciling Across Multiple Properties
Reconciliation is where Property Group budgets do the heaviest lifting. The recon wizard automatically pulls expense invoices, tenancy income, and balancing data from every property in the group.
Allocating Expenses to Schedules
The Expense to Schedule tab gathers expense invoices from every property in the Property Group, not just the General Property.
Open the budget and go to the Expense to Schedule tab.
Review the outstanding expense line items. Each line shows the property it came from.
Allocate each line item to the relevant schedule.
The counter at the top reflects unallocated items across all properties in the group.
Allocating Income to Areas
The Income to Area tab pulls tenant invoices from every property in the group. Each tenancy is linked to its actual property — not to the General Property.
Open the Income to Area tab.
Review the tenancies. Each row shows which property the tenant belongs to.
Allocate invoices to the relevant areas.
The per-tenant counter shows allocation progress across all properties.
Running the Reconciliation Wizard
The recon wizard steps you through actual expenditure, actual income, and balancing charges across the full group.
Actual Expenditure step — pulls expense totals across all properties. Click any amount to see line-level detail, including which property each expense came from.
Actual Income step — calculates invoiced income per tenant from their own property's invoices. The property the tenant belongs to is shown alongside each tenancy.
Balancing Charges step — each tenant line has its own ledger dropdown. Because tenants may belong to different properties, each one needs to be mapped to the correct Property Ledger or Tracking Code individually. There is no group-wide default ledger option.
Important: Before locking or reconciling a Property Group budget, the system checks for outstanding allocations across all properties in the group. If any property has unallocated expenses or income, the Lock and Reconcile buttons are disabled.
Generating Tenant and Owner Certificates
Tenant and owner certificates show the real property the tenant or owner is connected to — not the General Property. This means a certificate for a tenant in one property within the group correctly references that property, not the group container.
From the budget, go to the Reports tab.
Select Owner Certificate or Tenant Certificate.
Configure the layout and choose recipients.
Download or email the certificates. Each one references the correct property for its tenant or owner.
Property Group Budget Reports
Every budget report has been updated to handle Property Group budgets correctly.
Budget Details Tab and Summary Report
The budget detail page shows each area alongside its parent property. The Outgoings/Service Charge Summary Report shows the Property Group name and lists every property included in the group.
Budget vs Actuals Report
The Budget vs Actuals report looks across every property in the group. The Expenses Unallocated to Schedule section pulls in expenses from every property, and the CSV export includes a Property column so each line is attributable to its source property.
Income Report
The income report pulls invoices from all properties in the group, with property breakdowns shown in the report rows and the CSV export.
Expense Report
The expense report adds a Property Group header and a Properties Included list. Each expense line item shows the property it came from, both in the on-screen report and in the CSV export.
Finding Your Property Group Budgets
Use the Budgets Hub to see every budget across your portfolio, including Property Group budgets, in one list.
From the top navigation, select Property Management.
Click Budgets.
Use the Property Group filter to narrow to a specific group.
Click any budget name to open it directly.
For more on the Budgets Hub, see Budgets Hub.
Things to Watch For
One budget per area per period. The same area can't be budgeted twice for overlapping dates, whether on a standalone budget or a Property Group budget.
The General Property is the budget owner. Property Group budgets always live on the General Property, even though they reference areas, tenancies, and expenses from other properties.
Permissions follow properties. If you don't have access to a property in the group, you won't see its areas, expenses, or income within the Property Group budget.
Closing standalone budgets before transitioning. If you're moving to Property Group budgets, close existing standalone budgets at or before the new budget's start date to avoid date-range conflicts.
Budget by Area is referred to as Budgeted Outgoings in Asia-Pacific, Service Charge in Europe, and Operating Expenses in North America. For more information on regional terminology, see our Glossary of Regional Terminology.