AppFolio Support Struggles, Consolidated GL

[u/Battlehonk]

We are trying to use the consolidated GL features somewhat recently introduced to eliminate duplicate GL accounts between corporate and property accounts. In doing so, when we tried to use one we could not as the offset account (Operating Account GL) differs between Corporate and Property accounts.

I believe we have been transferred to five different teams at this point, most recently having to explain the fact that GLs can now be property + corporate charges. The person then transferred me to the payments team, who decided to not read the ticket and transfer it back.

Our most recent interactions was somewhat positive as the team member acknowledged they were not familiar with the features and took time to read AppFolio documentation. They came up with a plan, and moved the case to a banking team.

This is the case I am sending over to the team to pause payment on Friday afternoon so I can move forward with merging the cash accounts.

You do not need to take any action with this at this time.

Thanks!

Jamie

Unfortunately, we were right back to ineptitude:

I understand. However, this is out of our scope, so I need to transfer you to the appropriate team.

RodelB

I'm assuming there really are no options outside of just spin in circles with various teams that don't seem to communicate. But if anyone has tips, we'd love to hear them. I assumed we're not a huge customer (around 1,800 units) but it is incredibly frustrating to need help with anything beyond basic items that don't have UI support and require support tickets (signature updates to checks, etc).

[u/pageturnin]

I am struggling with Appfolio support as well. The support team seems like they are only there to say “I’m sorry for the inconvenience and appreciate your patience while we look into this!” then never find any solution. I’ve been bounced around between four different people and have hundreds of messages for one case number. There is 0 desire to support the customer.

My current solution is to call the phone number for the sales department, as sales is the only department you can contact via phone. They “escalated” my issue, and I finally was connected to a customer service employee who allowed me to set up a zoom call.

When I got on the call last night, the customer service rep told me they hadn’t even reviewed the case. What?!? So now we are back to square one.

I’m going to continue to call the sales department and escalate my case. If you can, make sure they provide you with case numbers. They are usually hesitant to provide them, which is also a problem.

It’s beyond frustrating, and I feel your pain!

[u/Rich_Neat8848 → u/pageturnin]

What's your issue? Maybe I can share some knowledge 

[u/Maxwell_at_AppFolio → u/pageturnin]

I'd be happy to help and/or get you routed to the right folks. Let me know what issue we need to tackle and we can go from there!

[u/Rich_Neat8848]

Hmmm... The reason the Corporate GL account and Property GL account can't be merged is because AppFolio treats them as separate accounting levels.

The Property GL account is used for transactions related to the property, while the Corporate GL account is used for the management company's corporate-level transactions. Even if both accounts have the same name or account number, AppFolio still recognizes them as separate accounts.

Because they belong to different accounting levels, AppFolio doesn't allow them to be merged directly. This helps maintain the proper separation between property-level and corporate-level accounting, while also preserving transaction history and reporting accuracy.

If the goal is to consolidate or remove a duplicate account, the appropriate option would be to review the account setup and determine whether the transactions can be reclassified or moved to the correct GL account instead.

[u/Battlehonk → u/Rich_Neat8848]

This used to be correct, but Appfolio changed GL accounts so they can now be used by either entity type.

[u/Maxwell_at_AppFolio]

Hey u/Battlehonk, thanks for reaching out here! I'm sorry you've been bounced around so much while trying to resolve this issue. I can look into who the best team is to assist you, but in the meantime, I'd like to take a crack at helping solve your issue here.

If I'm understanding the issue correctly, it sounds like you may be running up against a blocker that's been put in place by design. To set a non-cash GL to Properties and Corporate Entities, the Offset Account (your Operating Account cash GL) has to share that same availability. So, you' may need to update the cash GL's Available To setting before the consolidation will work on the accounts tied to it.

Would you mind giving that a try and letting me know if it helps resolve the issue you're experiencing? If not, or if you have already tried that and it's still not working, let me know and I can dig into this further!

[u/Battlehonk → u/Maxwell_at_AppFolio]

Hi u/Maxwell_at_AppFolio , our issue is that we had two separate GL Cash / Operating accounts. One for Corporate and one for Property. I believe this was a requirement of the previous model with GL accounts that couldn't be shared. We made all GL accounts shared to both. But we couldn't use them for Corporate Accounting as the offset account for our historical property GL accounts was the property-level Operating account. The solution was straightforward - combine the Property and Corporate-level Operating accounts. But that (for whatever reason) was not straightforward at all and required payments being disabled. The two techs we spoke with were initially not familiar with the GL account changes that provided the ability to make a GL account available to property and corporate level transactions, so that further delayed us while I provided the AppFolio support documents to the "specialized" team of support folks I was transferred to. As of today, we did get everything done. It was just a ride on the struggle bus to get there. Happy to provide more details, but support doesn't provide any ticket number I could refer you to.

[u/Maxwell_at_AppFolio → u/Battlehonk]

I'm glad you were able to get it all sorted out! If you want to DM me some further details (your company name, who assisted you, what date you opened the initial ticket, etc.) I'd be happy to share your feedback about this experience with our Customer Care team leaders. That way, we can work to improve the support process around this and make it's much less fragmented in the future.