Finance & FP&A

How to track ar aging and run collections as Property Management Founders

Finance & FP&AFor Property Management Founders3 apps12 steps~24 min to set up

Delinquent rent is the most time-consuming line item in a property management firm under 500 doors. Every month-end you're exporting a rent roll from AppFolio or Buildium, pasting it into Excel, manually flagging who's 30/60/90 days past due, then drafting individual follow-up emails or texts. That process takes two to four hours per cycle. When a tenant disputes a charge, you're cross-referencing the ledger in your PMS against bank deposits in a separate Plaid or QuickBooks view. Owner clients call asking why two units are 60+ days past due and you're scrambling to produce something that isn't a raw screenshot. None of this is hard — it's just tedious, repetitive, and easy to let slip when you're also fielding maintenance calls.

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Finance & FP&AFor Property Management Founders3 apps12 steps~24 min to set up

Outcome

What you'll set up

A live AR aging dashboard that pulls your rent roll and bank deposit data daily, buckets tenants by 0/30/60/90+ days past due, and surfaces the exact units that need action — no manual exports required.

An automated collections workflow that drafts and sends tiered follow-up emails to delinquent tenants on a schedule you define, and logs every contact attempt back to a tracking sheet.

A weekly owner-facing delinquency summary that formats your AR aging into a clean report — by property and owner — so you stop rebuilding it from scratch every time a client asks.

The Starch recipe

Apps, data, and prompts

The combination of Starch apps, the data sources they pull from, and the prompts you use to drive them.

Apps used

Runway Analysis Transaction Insights

Data sources & config

AppFolio, Buildium, or Propertyware rent roll data is pulled through browser automation — no API needed. Plaid bank feeds are synced on a schedule so deposit matching runs against live transaction data. Gmail is synced on a schedule to log outbound collection notices and track tenant replies. All three connection types feed the same AR aging surface.

Prompts to copy

Pull my rent roll from AppFolio through browser automation every morning. Flag any tenant who is 1–29, 30–59, 60–89, or 90+ days past due on their ledger balance. Show me a table with unit number, tenant name, days past due, amount owed, and last payment date.

Every Friday at 8am, send me a summary email listing all units 30+ days past due across all my properties, with the total dollar amount outstanding grouped by property. Format it so I can forward it directly to each owner.

When a tenant hits 5 days past due, draft a first-notice email from my Gmail using their name, unit number, amount owed, and a link to the tenant portal. When they hit 15 days, draft a second notice. When they hit 30 days, draft a formal late-fee notice and flag the thread for my review before sending.

Connect my Plaid bank accounts and show me all deposits categorized as rent payments in the last 30 days. Highlight any unit where I received a partial payment and show the gap between what was owed and what was deposited.

Build me a dashboard that shows month-over-month collection rates by property — collected rent divided by scheduled rent — for the last 6 months.

Run these in Starch → or paste them into your favorite agent

Walkthrough

Step-by-step

1 Connect your property management software (AppFolio, Buildium, Propertyware, or Rent Manager) through Starch's browser automation. Starch logs into your PMS the same way you do and pulls the current rent roll and tenant ledger balances each morning.

2 Connect your Plaid trust account and operating account. Starch syncs your bank transactions on a schedule so it can match deposits to expected rent payments and identify partial pays, NSFs, or missing payments without you touching a spreadsheet.

3 Tell Starch: 'Build me an AR aging table that buckets each tenant by days past due — current, 1–29, 30–59, 60–89, 90+ — and shows unit number, tenant name, lease expiration, balance owed, and last payment date.' Starch builds the dashboard from your PMS and Plaid data combined.

4 Set up a daily refresh so the aging table updates every morning before you start your day. When you open Starch, you see a live snapshot — not last week's export.

5 Tell Starch: 'When a tenant hits 5 days past due, draft a first-notice email from my Gmail. When they hit 15 days, draft a second notice. When they hit 30 days, draft a formal notice and hold it for my approval.' Starch queues the drafts in your Gmail through its scheduled sync and flags the 30-day notices for your review before sending.

6 Use the Email Triage app to manage inbound tenant replies. Starch triages your inbox, surfaces replies to collection notices, and drafts responses — so a tenant writing back 'I'll pay Friday' gets logged and followed up on without you tracking it manually.

7 Tell Starch: 'Every Friday morning, generate a delinquency report by property showing total units, units past due, percent collected, and total dollars outstanding. Format it as a clean table I can paste into an owner email.' Starch pulls this from the same AR aging data and delivers it to your inbox.

8 Set up a Plaid-backed deposit reconciliation view. Tell Starch: 'Show me every unit where the deposit in my bank account this month is less than the scheduled rent. Flag the gap amount and whether the tenant is on a payment plan.' This catches partial pays that your PMS might show as 'paid' if you applied a credit manually.

9 Use the Transaction Insights app to monitor your operating account for anomalies. If a vendor charged you twice for a maintenance repair or a recurring expense spiked, Starch flags it automatically — keeping your trust accounting clean alongside collections.

10 When an owner calls asking about delinquency at their specific property, pull the answer in real time. Tell Starch: 'Show me all past-due tenants for 123 Elm Street, their balance history, and every contact attempt logged in the last 60 days.' No scrambling, no re-exporting.

11 At month-end, tell Starch: 'Generate my monthly collections summary — scheduled rent, collected rent, outstanding balance, and collection rate — broken down by property and rolled up to portfolio level.' This becomes the AR section of your owner statement without any manual assembly.

12 Fork the workflow to add an eviction-tracking layer as your firm grows. Tell Starch: 'Flag any tenant who is 60+ days past due and has not responded to two notices. Add them to an eviction-consideration list with all contact history and a suggested next step.' Starch surfaces the list; you make the call.

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Worked example

April 2026 collections cycle — 180-unit residential portfolio

Sample numbers from a real run

Scheduled rent (April)	198,000
Collected by April 5	171,600
Outstanding — 1 to 29 days	18,700
Outstanding — 30 to 59 days	5,400
Outstanding — 60+ days	2,300
Partial payments (gap vs. scheduled)	3,100

On April 6, Starch pulls the morning rent roll from AppFolio via browser automation and matches it against Plaid deposit data from your trust account synced overnight. Of 180 units, 157 are current. Starch flags 11 units in the 1–29 day bucket — $18,700 outstanding — and automatically queues first-notice drafts in Gmail for each tenant, personalized with their unit number, balance, and a link to pay through the tenant portal. Three tenants in the 30–59 day bucket ($5,400 combined) get second-notice drafts held for your approval. Two units — 4B at Maple Commons and 12A at Riverside Walk — are 62 and 74 days past due respectively, with $2,300 combined. Starch surfaces both on an eviction-consideration list with every prior contact attempt logged. The Plaid reconciliation also catches one partial payment: Unit 7C at Harbor View paid $850 against a $1,100 lease — Starch flags the $250 gap so you don't accidentally mark the account current. By Friday, Starch sends each of your six owners a formatted delinquency summary for their properties. Your collection rate for the cycle is 93.7% by April 10, up from the 91% you were tracking manually last quarter because you were catching delinquencies three days later.

Measurement

How you'll know it's working

Portfolio collection rate — collected rent divided by scheduled rent, by property and rolled up

Days to first contact after missed payment — average time between due date and first outbound notice

30-day and 60-day delinquency rate — percent of units past each threshold at month-end

Partial payment gap — total dollar shortfall between what was deposited and what was owed

Average days to resolution — how long from first notice to full payment or formal action

Comparison

What this replaces

The other ways teams handle this today, and how the Starch version compares.

AppFolio or Buildium native delinquency reports

These give you a static export but don't auto-draft follow-up emails, don't reconcile against your actual bank deposits, and don't route owner-facing summaries without you rebuilding them each cycle.

Excel or Google Sheets rent roll

Works fine at 50 doors; at 150–500 doors the manual copy-paste from your PMS is where the errors and delays accumulate, and there's no automated contact-attempt logging.

QuickBooks + manual AR aging

QuickBooks can produce an AR aging report but it requires your books to be current, doesn't connect to your PMS ledger directly, and produces no collections workflow on the other side of the report.

Yardi Voyager or RealPage

Purpose-built for property management at scale but priced and structured for portfolios 2–10x larger than yours; implementation takes months and the workflow customization is limited without a dedicated admin.

Dedicated collections tools (Rent Manager's built-in workflow or RentTrack)

Some PMS platforms have basic late-fee automations, but they live inside the PMS and can't pull bank deposit data, generate owner reports, or route to your email the way a cross-system surface can.

On Starch RECOMMENDED

One platform — runway analysis, transaction insights, founder inbox all running on connected data. Setup in plain English; numbers stay current via scheduled syncs and live agent queries.

Try it on Starch →

FAQ

Frequently asked questions

My PMS is AppFolio. Does Starch have a direct API connection to it?

AppFolio doesn't expose a public API to third-party tools, so Starch automates it through your browser — the same way you use it. Starch logs in, navigates to your rent roll and tenant ledgers, and pulls the data on a schedule. No API needed.

Can Starch actually send collection emails to tenants, or does it just draft them?

Both. You can configure Starch to send first and second notices automatically through your Gmail once a tenant hits a threshold you define, and to hold 30-day formal notices for your approval before sending. Gmail is synced on a schedule so outbound messages appear in your Sent folder normally.

Will Starch store my tenant ledger data long-term so I can run historical AR analysis?

Starch is built for live data surfaces, not long-horizon data warehousing. The Plaid bank data syncs on a schedule and persists in Starch's database. Your PMS rent roll data is pulled fresh through browser automation each cycle. If you need multi-year archived AR history, your PMS's own export tools are the right place to keep that — Starch handles the current-state view and active workflow.

Is Starch SOC 2 Type II certified? I handle tenant bank information through Plaid.

Starch is not currently SOC 2 Type II certified. If your firm has compliance requirements that mandate SOC 2 Type II for any connected tool, that's worth factoring in. Plaid itself is SOC 2 certified on their side of the connection.

I manage properties for owners who want to see delinquency data themselves. Can they log in?

You can configure Starch to generate and email owner-facing delinquency summaries on a schedule — most property management founders find that easier than giving owners direct portal access. A dedicated owner-login surface is not a current Starch feature.

What if a tenant disputes a charge and I need to show them the ledger history?

Tell Starch: 'Pull the full ledger history for Unit 7C at Harbor View — every charge, payment, credit, and balance from the last 12 months — and format it as a PDF I can send to the tenant.' Starch pulls this through your PMS via browser automation and compiles it. You review before it goes anywhere.

Can I track which leasing agent is responsible for following up on each delinquent unit?

Yes. Tell Starch: 'Add a column to the AR aging table that shows the assigned leasing agent for each unit, pulled from AppFolio. When a unit hits 15 days past due, Slack the assigned agent with the tenant name, unit, and balance.' Starch connects to Slack through its integration catalog and routes the alert without you forwarding anything manually.