Topic: Vendor Billing...the markup for owners...The extra paperwork...

I'm curious how other management companies handle their vendor billing. For example, one vendor costs us the management company $12.50/hour and then we charge the owner a 20% markup. Our bookkeeper is overwhelmed with all the extra paper work & time this costs her. What do others do and or does anyone have any ideas to help us work smarter instead of harder? Thanks!

Doesn't your system allow for aggregating the total costs per month. It seems that rather than marking up each bill it makes sense to look at totals that you get off a report.

It is my understanding in regards to Security Deposits and marking up vendor rent ready work that in the State of California it is against the law to mark up vendor work. I contacted our attorney and he agreed. Basically it means that an angel of a resident who returns his unit in perfect shape subsidizes a resident who is a pig. Management needs to fix up the pig unit and has to put in labor to schedule and pay bills of the vendors. Without a markup management has to input management labor cost into the rental rate. Basically the pig transfers his costs to the angel. Any comments on this would be appreciated.

I know every state is different. In Washington state vendor invoices can't be marked up at move out either, but the OP is in Indiana. I know some states allow it.

We charge an average of 30% as a Wholesale/Retail spread. Smaller items can be more because of the time/labor and materials, but larger jobs like a $50,.000 roof we just completed as just 10%. We also disclose to our owners that we make a profit. The vendor invoice shows the retail price and we pay the vendor the wholesale.

We manage multi-family and single family homes, with a bit of commercial. 30-years in business.