Accrued expenses, utilities, and occupancy
Reviewing accrued expenses and the client's GL adjustment entries, utilities, property tax, percentage rent, and the quarterly sponsor and director fees.
The client-driven accrual schedules, plus the occupancy accounts and the quarterly fee that most often needs a conversation.
Source: Rackson_RRS_RCY_Review_Process.docx sections 19, 20, 41, and 27.7.
Accrued expenses (GL 24000)
Primarily client-driven. The recurring item each period is the management fee / common equity management fee; other one-off items are added to the schedule as the client identifies them.
Caitlin's GL adjustment entries
Near period-end, Caitlin sends a set of "GL adjustment" entries — items that need to be reclassed or reversed.
Most of these are designed to reverse automatically the following period; a smaller number are intended to remain on the books. Confirm which category an item falls into before assuming it will clear itself.
Keep the schedule current with a running description of each item, so recurring items (like the management fee) don't need to be re-explained each period, and so a new preparer can see at a glance why each balance exists.
Step-by-step checklist
For the period.
Confirm which are set to auto-reverse next period and which are intended to remain.
For any new item added this period.
These adjustments frequently land late in the close, after the in-house maintenance allocation and closed-store reclass have already run. See In-house maintenance and Closed store reclass — both may need re-running.
Utilities
Approvals and underlying detail are entirely client-driven. PBI maintains a schedule based on what the client reports and reconciles that schedule to the GL, rather than sourcing utility data independently in the normal course.
Utilities are one of the hardest categories to independently verify on this engagement, even relative to other PBI clients of similar size:
- Billing periods frequently don't align to a calendar month.
- Several providers will not grant PBI direct online access to accounts, even where online access exists for other utility types.
Where PBI does have access, statements are pulled directly. Where it does not, the client (Mike, and increasingly Erica on the client side) sends statement screenshots, which PBI uses to identify and code the correct period and amount.
Practical approach: rely on client-provided detail for the underlying numbers, and focus PBI's own review effort on flagging anything that looks unusual on the P&L rather than trying to independently rebuild the utility schedule from source documents each period.
Step-by-step checklist
From Mike or Erica.
Otherwise rely on statement screenshots provided by the client.
For follow-up, rather than attempting a full independent rebuild.
The RCY approach is the same: client-approved figures maintained on a schedule and tied to the GL, with Mike sending his own tracker and supporting detail coming from statement screenshots.
On the close checklist, the Utilities Accrual is a WD –2 task and the Utility Accrual JE lands on WD1.
Property tax (GL 24200)
Reviewed the same way as the other landlord/lease-driven accruals: confirm the schedule against what's actually hit the GL, and chase down anything that can't be traced back to a support item.
On the close checklist, CAM / Real Estate is a WD –1 task.
Percentage rent (GL 24500)
Two schedules, one per concept — RRS and RCY each have their own "2026 % Rent Schedule" file, consistent with the two concepts otherwise running parallel workbooks.
Whose schedule governs: Caitlin maintains this on the client side and sends it over with adjustments already identified. PBI's role is to book what she sends and reconcile it to the GL, not to build the percentage-rent calculation independently.
There have been instances where PBI's own tracking was off from Caitlin's and required a follow-up with Mike to sort out and correct. Don't assume the schedule is self-evidently right just because it ties to itself period over period.
Sponsor fee and director's fee
How it appears in Intacct
The journal entry is named "Adjust CCV Mgmt Fee Accrual to Actual" — "CCV" is the shorthand used for this management/sponsorship fee arrangement in the JE description. Use that term when searching journal history for this entry.
Billing cadence
Both the sponsor fee and the director's fees are billed out quarterly, on the same cycle.
This is the item most likely to need a conversation
Normally the amount is consistent quarter to quarter and can be accrued without much discussion. When the amount changes and PBI doesn't have a clear reason why, that's the trigger to raise it with the client — rather than just advancing the new number forward as if it were confirmed to be the new run rate.
Confirmed activity this year. A separate JE — "Credit back adjustment to Q1 & Q2 sponsor fees" — shows this fee was actually reversed/credited back for two quarters during this fiscal year. Confirm the current-year run rate against the client directly rather than assuming Q1/Q2 activity is representative of the full year.
- Support should be requested and attached for any change before it's booked. If support can't be located, follow up directly rather than guessing at the reason for the change.
- Reversals: any prior-period invoices that end up reversed get added back into this schedule rather than handled as a one-off adjustment elsewhere.
Open item. At the time of the review, the team was roughly a period behind on getting one of these adjustments fully discussed and resolved with the client. Confirm current status. Tracked on Open items.
Related
- RRS utilities and interest workpapers — the 24000 Blue Note sponsor fee and 24100 accrued utilities preparer steps
- RRS inventory and prepaids workpapers — the 14100/24200 property tax schedule
- RCY GL adjustments workpapers — the GL Adjustment Workbook and its Recon gate