How Tieout reconciles your trust account
A closer look at the three-way tie-out, the discrepancy inbox, the audit PDF, and exactly what the AI can and can't see.
The three-way tie-out, explained
Trust accounting rests on one rule: bank, ledger, and tenant sum should tie out — once you account for items still in transit. Tieout checks all three every month and tells you exactly where they diverge beyond that.
Bank ≠ Trust ledger
In a healthy account, your ledger balance equals the bank balance once you back out known timing differences — outstanding checks and deposits in transit that haven't cleared yet. Tieout separates those from the real gap automatically. What's left over after that adjustment usually means a deposit or withdrawal cleared the bank but was never entered in the ledger, or vice versa.
Trust ledger ≠ Tenant sum
The ledger balance is supposed to equal what you'd get by adding up every individual tenant and property balance. A gap here usually means a transaction posted to the wrong tenant, the wrong property, or the wrong account type entirely — like a security deposit landing in income instead of a liability. It can also mean one property's own trust cash no longer covers what it owes its own tenants, even though the pooled total still looks fine — see the per-property coverage check below.
Bank ≠ Tenant sum
Often both of the above at once, or a compounding error working through your books. Tieout ranks its best guess at the root cause first, but shows every candidate transaction so you can decide.
The discrepancy inbox
Every gap Tieout finds becomes one line in a ranked inbox: the dollar amount and a plain-English hypothesis. When the data is sufficient, Tieout names the likely culprit transaction; when it isn't, it narrows the gap to a property, date range, and amount so you know exactly where to look. Nothing is auto-approved.
$45.00
The bank shows $3,668.00 deposited for Magnolia Court on 06/15/2026, but the ledger's itemized tenant rent entries for that property and date only add up to $3,623.00 — a $45.00 gap.
| Date | Source | Description | Amount |
|---|---|---|---|
| 06/15/2026 | Bank statement | Magnolia Court deposit | $3,668.00 |
| 06/15/2026 | Trust ledger | Magnolia Court itemized tenant rent total | $3,623.00 |
Likely culprit — Unit 2402 (Danielle Rodriguez): the ledger shows a 06/15/2026 rent payment of $1,238.00, but the on-file monthly rent for that tenant is $1,283.00 — the same digits, transposed. The bank shows the amount that actually cleared.
Whatever you choose is logged — who acted, what they chose, and when — so the audit PDF shows real accountability, not just an algorithm's opinion. On Growth and Scale plans, a bookkeeper and an owner can both see the same queue.
Per-property trust liability coverage
A pooled trust account can tie out fine in aggregate while one property's own cash no longer covers what it owes its own tenants — the classic way a license-risk finding hides inside a healthy-looking combined balance. Tieout checks every property, every month, not just the portfolio total.
| Property | Ledger cash | Tenant trust liability | Owner funds available | Status |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Birchwood Townhomes | $55,524.30 | $58,500.00 | −$2,975.70 | Short |
| Cedar Lane Apartments | $63,750.83 | $57,305.00 | $6,445.83 | Covered |
| Magnolia Court | $58,441.21 | $52,303.00 | $6,138.21 | Covered |
From Tieout's runnable demo engine (demo/sample-report.html). Cedar Lane's combined trust account looks healthy overall — Birchwood Townhomes alone is $2,975.70 short of what it owes its own tenants, which the per-property check catches and the portfolio total hides. This is the same license-discipline finding most three-way tools never surface, because they stop at the portfolio total.
The audit PDF
Every reconciliation exports to a single PDF: the three headline numbers, the net delta, every flagged item and how it was resolved, and who resolved it. Hand it to an owner, keep it on file for a state audit, or drop it in your CPA's month-end packet.
Trust Reconciliation — June 2026
- Bank balance
- $178,544.34
- Trust ledger
- $177,716.34
- Tenant + property sum
- $168,108.00
- Bank − Ledger (raw)
- +$828.00
- Unexplained after adjustments
- $3.00
- Owner draw exceeds available trust funds — Birchwood Townhomes ($2,975.70)Reviewed — shortfall returned by owner, 07/10
- Rent deposit doesn't match the ledger — Magnolia Court, Unit 2402 ($45.00)Corrected by J. Alvarez, 07/09
- Bank charge never recorded in the ledger ($42.00)Corrected by J. Alvarez, 07/09
- Outstanding check — Cedar Lane Apartments, Karen Wilson ($825.00)Confirmed outstanding — not yet cleared
Reviewed and signed off by: ______________________ Date: __________ · Advisory reconciliation only — not a substitute for the preparer's own fiduciary review. A clean tie-out means these numbers balance; it isn't a certification that no error exists anywhere in the underlying books.
Reproduced from Tieout's runnable demo engine (demo/sample-report.html). Synthetic company, synthetic figures, not a real customer.
Supported exports
Tieout reads files you export yourself from your own account — never a direct connection, never your login.
| Platform | Export | Format | What Tieout reads |
|---|---|---|---|
| AppFolio | General ledger export | CSV or PDF | Trust and operating account transactions by category |
| AppFolio | Trust ledger / tenant balance report | CSV or PDF | Per-tenant and per-property balances |
| Buildium | Trust ledger export | CSV or PDF | Trust account transactions and running balance |
| Buildium | Owner / tenant balance report | CSV or PDF | Per-tenant and per-property balances |
| Your bank | Statement | CSV or PDF | Cleared transactions and ending balance for the trust account |
v1 supports AppFolio and Buildium exports only — both are files you download yourself from your own account. Tieout never connects to AppFolio or Buildium directly, and we never ask for your login to either platform. Rent Manager, Propertyware, and TenantCloud exports are on the roadmap, not in v1.
Worth knowing, so you don't have to take our word for it: Buildium's own AI reconciliation feature, "Reconcile with Lumina," shipped in June 2026. It's included free in the $400/mo Premium plan, and available as a paid add-on on Essential and Growth as of June 1, 2026 — so it's not exclusive to Premium, but it is another line item stacked on top of your existing plan. (Source ↗)
AppFolio shipped something similar: "Realm-X Accounting Performer" went GA June 16, 2026, on AppFolio's Plus tier and above — it imports and codes invoices and flags mismatches inside AppFolio's own books. If you're on AppFolio Core, you don't get it. If you're on Plus or above, you get automation that lives inside AppFolio's books — not a cross-platform view if you also use Buildium, not an independent second set of eyes, and no per-property trust-liability coverage check. (Source ↗)
Our read: both platforms are adding AI that works inside their own books. Tieout is the independent check on the books — it works across both platforms, it's advisory with an audit-PDF artifact you can hand to an owner or an auditor, and it runs the three-way tenant-liability check and the per-property coverage check that neither native tool runs. For most Essential, Growth, Core, or Plus customers, it also costs less than adding Lumina or upgrading a tier for Realm-X.
The review queue is the product
AI reads your exports and proposes matches. A human decides what happens next — that's not a caveat, it's the design.
Every match starts as "needs review"
Nothing is auto-approved and nothing is silently accepted, no matter how confident the parser is.
You approve, edit, or dismiss
Mark an item corrected once you've fixed it in AppFolio or Buildium, dismiss it as a false positive, or leave a note explaining the context for next month.
Every action is logged
Who acted, what they chose, and when — feeding directly into the audit PDF, so the record shows a person's judgment, not just a model's guess.
Where your files go, in plain English
Files are encrypted in transit and at rest. AI parsing runs on an enterprise API that does not train on your data — no exception for "inside your account," a plain disclosure with no loophole.
Retention
Free Tie-Out Check: files are processed to generate your result, then deleted — no account created. Paid plans: source files and reports are retained for 13 months (so you have history when an auditor asks), deletable in-app anytime. Cancel, and everything is deleted within 30 days — we'll offer you an export first.
What we never ask for
No bank credentials, no OAuth, no AppFolio or Buildium login or API key — ever, in v1. Full detail, including subprocessors and your rights, is in the Privacy Policy.
What we can't catch
Tieout only sees what's in the files you give it. That's a deliberate design choice — no bank credentials, no API, no standing access — and it's also a real limit. Here's where it shows up.
A clean tie-out is not a certification. It means the numbers you gave us balance — not that there's no error anywhere in the underlying books. Two mistakes that happen to cancel out (a missed deposit and a missed withdrawal of the same amount, say) can still show "Balanced." Tieout reduces risk. It doesn't certify accuracy, and it doesn't replace your own review.
A transaction missing from every file you upload. If it was never recorded anywhere — bank, ledger, or tenant balance — it's invisible to any reconciliation tool, including this one.
Manual journal entries or back-dated corrections made after your export window closes. Re-upload once your files reflect them, or wait for next month's tie-out.
Non-standard chart-of-accounts setups. If your account naming doesn't match typical AppFolio/Buildium conventions, Tieout flags lower confidence rather than guessing, and may ask you to map a few accounts once.
Multi-currency accounts. v1 is USD only.
Anything outside AppFolio and Buildium's export formats. Rent Manager, Propertyware, and TenantCloud support are on the roadmap, not in v1.
A transaction deliberately hidden from every file. No software — ours included — catches what was never recorded anywhere in the first place.
See your own numbers first
Run the free Tie-Out Check on your own files before you pick a plan.