How to automate expense management in Propertyware

Key takeaways

• Propertyware is RealPage's property management software for single-family portfolios, with portfolio-level accounting.
• Payables are entered as bills in the Money Out area, and a work order can be attached to a bill.
• API access is a paid Enterprise/API add-on that your team turns on for your Propertyware account.
• Vergo proposes GL account and property for each card charge and posts bills through the Open API.

Where should you go next?

• Vergo's Propertyware integration
• What expense management software integrates with Propertyware?
• Get started with Vergo

How do you automate expense management in Propertyware, step by step?

1. Enable API access. Propertyware sells Enterprise/API access as an add-on, and your team enables it once. Vergo then reads your GL accounts and properties.
2. Connect current cards. Connecting your existing cards involves no card applications, no re-issuing and no banking change.
3. Receipts from the field by text. Maintenance techs and leasing staff reply with a photo. Employees handle everything by text message — no app to download, no portal login — and Vergo chases missing receipts itself instead of waiting for a report.
4. Confirm account and property. Vergo proposes which GL account and which property each charge belongs to, from how your team coded similar spend.
5. Hand Propertyware a finished bill. Confirmed spend is posted as a coded bill through Propertyware's Open API, so nobody re-keys it.

What does Propertyware need on each card charge?

• GL account: repairs, supplies, turnover costs and so on.
• Property: so the cost reaches the right owner statement.
• Vendor: the payee on the bill.
• Backup: a receipt or work order for owners who ask.

Where does Propertyware stop and automation start?

Propertyware's accounting handles what happens after a bill exists: paying multiple vendors at once, matching the bank statement, and rolling costs up to owner and portfolio reports. Getting card spend into a bill is still manual. A technician buys parts at a big-box store for three houses in one trip, and someone in the office has to work out which house each item was for. Vergo reads the receipt itself, line by line, and predicts the coding from what was actually bought — account and property — not just the store name.

A practical example

A single-family manager with 600 doors gives eight maintenance techs cards. One tech buys a water heater element for one rental and paint for a turnover at another on the same receipt. Vergo asks for the receipt by text, then suggests repairs on the first property and turnover costs on the second, and cites earlier purchases coded the same way. The accounting lead confirms, and both lines are prepared as coded bills for Propertyware.

How Vergo handles this

Vergo proposes the coding by inference from your own accounting structure and history — no rule library to build, no keyword lists to maintain, and new vendors are coded on first sight. For a property manager, the most valuable part of that is the property itself, because a cost on the wrong house means the wrong owner is charged. Approval workflows are optional and fit how you already control spend: route by GL account, by amount, or by project — or skip approval flows entirely and let policy flags catch only what breaks a rule. Card spend, employee reimbursements and AP invoices run through one coding model — same coding, same review, one reconciliation — and payment stays on the rails you already use.