Short answer: for a single apartment building with 8–10 units, a well-kept Excel spreadsheet is often enough. Once you pass 30–40 units, once most service charges start arriving by bank transfer, once a shared utility meter has to be split, or once you manage more than one building or residential compound, dedicated property management software wins on time and errors. General bookkeeping programs are built for company accounting, so they struggle to handle the logic of units, owners, tenants and land shares.
This article covers the step before choosing a product: deciding how you will manage the compound. If the method is settled and you're choosing between software options, our article on 10 criteria for choosing property management software will be a better fit.
Which methods are being compared?
Most residential compounds and apartment buildings in Türkiye use one of the following four methods, or a mix of them:
- Excel or a ledger book: a maintenance fee list, an income and expense sheet and a receipt book. The manager enters every record by hand.
- General bookkeeping software: current account, cash, bank and invoicing programs built for small businesses. Each unit is opened as a "current account".
- WhatsApp group and banking app: Announcements live in the group, the money sits in the community's bank account, and who has paid is usually kept in a simple spreadsheet or in the manager's memory.
- Purpose-built community management software: Software developed specifically for this job, holding units, owners and tenants, maintenance-fee billing, meters, resolutions and resident access in one data structure.
Four methods side by side: comparison table
| Criterion | Excel / ledger | General bookkeeping program | WhatsApp + your banking app | Expert property management software |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Maintenance fee billing | By formula, copied manually every month | Posted to current accounts manually or via bulk vouchers; no land-share allocation | None; the amount is announced by message | Rule-based, recurring and bulk billing; equal, land-share or custom key |
| Collection matching | Checked one by one from the statement | Statements can be imported; matching is largely manual | Check the bank notification, keep it in mind | Bank transactions arrive automatically, matches are suggested for each unit |
| Resident transparency | The table is shared at the end of the period | No resident access | Mass lists in the group; personal data risk | Each resident sees only their own debt, receipts and announcements |
| Condominium Law compliance (decision book, operating budget) | Separate documents, entirely dependent on the manager | Out of scope | Out of scope | The approved budget becomes the basis for billing; decisions are recorded |
| Multi-compound and permissions | Each compound is a separate file; no permission separation | Company-based; no compound, building or unit permissions | Each compound is a separate group | Permissions and audit trail at compound, building and unit level |
| Mobile | At view-only level | Mostly for the manager only | Strong communication, no records | Manager, resident and field apps |
| Reporting | You build the report yourself | Strong trial balance and current accounts; weak unit-level debt aging | None | Trial balance, current account statements, debt aging; PDF and Excel |
| Cost and time | No license; high time burden on the manager | Licensed; takes time to adapt to your compound | Free; highest tracking burden | Licensed; lowest monthly workload after setup |
The table covers general categories; products within the same category can also differ. What matters is finding which row takes up the most time in your compound.
When is Excel good enough?
Picture a single apartment building with 8 units. Each unit pays ₺1,500 a month in maintenance fees — ₺12,000 in total. The expenses are predictable: shared electricity, cleaning, elevator servicing. One spreadsheet page with eight rows and twelve monthly columns covers the whole year. For a building like this, moving to software may demand more organization than it returns. Worth remembering too: under Article 34 of the Condominium Law No. 634, buildings with eight or more independent units must appoint a manager; whatever the method, the manager's accountability stays the same.
Situations where Excel is usually enough:
- Single building, up to around 10 units
- Equal, fixed maintenance fees all year round
- There is no shared meter to allocate, or the bill is a single line item
- Most payments arrive in person or through a handful of bank transfers
- The same manager has been in charge for years, with all files in one person's hands
The signs that Excel is starting to fall short are just as clear: correcting the same month's spreadsheet twice, asking in the group chat whose bank transfer a payment belongs to, not knowing which version of the file is the right one when the manager changes, and never being able to calculate late-payment compensation at all. Under Article 20 of the KMK (Condominium Law), a unit owner who delays payment pays late-payment compensation calculated at 5% per month for the days of delay; tracking this by hand, day by day, for every unit quickly turns into errors in a spreadsheet.
Why doesn't a general bookkeeping program fit the job?
Bookkeeping software is strong on current accounts, cash, bank and invoicing. Property management asks different questions: Which unit does the debt belong to? When an apartment is sold or a tenant changes, who keeps the old debt? Are janitor costs split equally, or are insurance premiums allocated by land-share ratio? Under Turkish Condominium Law (KMK) Art. 20, unless otherwise agreed, janitor, boiler-room, gardener and security costs are shared equally, while insurance premiums and the maintenance and repair of common areas are allocated by land-share ratio. You can model these distinctions with current-account logic, but it means cutting manual journal entries every month.
The second gap is the resident side. Bookkeeping software has no screen where a resident can view their own statement; every "how much do I owe?" question comes back to the manager as a phone call. That said, for a property-management company's own commercial accounting, bookkeeping software and an accountant are the right tools. Many professional firms use both: the compound's books in specialist software, the company's own books on the accounting side.
Isn't a WhatsApp group and a banking app enough?
Because it is quick and free, almost every apartment building has a WhatsApp group, and it works well for announcements. The trouble starts when the group is used as a record-keeping system. An approval, a receipt photo or a decision that gets lost in the message stream cannot be presented as evidence at a board meeting. Sharing a list of debtors in the group creates a separate risk under Personal Data Protection Law No. 6698 (KVKK).
Your banking app shows transactions too, but it doesn't interpret them. Working out which unit a transfer labeled only "maintenance fee" belongs to, splitting a payment covering two months, or tracking a short payment still falls to the manager. Imagine a compound with 120 units receiving 70–80 transfers a month; finding each one on the statement and logging it adds up to a serious workload.
What makes expert property management software different, and what does it cost?
The real difference in expert software is its data structure: every record is tied to a specific unit and a specific person. Monthly maintenance fees are generated automatically each month according to a rule defined once, bank transactions are suggested for matching to units, and residents can see their own balance and receipts on their phone. Reports aren't prepared separately either; the trial balance and aged debt report are generated from the records you enter. There is one limit worth knowing about the decision log: under Article 32 of the Condominium Law (KMK), board resolutions must be written into a notarized book and signed. The decision record in the software does not replace that book; it makes decisions searchable and visible to residents.
Let's also count the cost honestly: the license fee, the initial setup effort (entering units, owners, tenants and opening balances), and the time it takes for the manager and residents to get used to the new tool. That's why it's important to clarify upfront who will handle the data migration. We cover the migration steps in detail in our article migrating from Excel to property management software.
Which method suits you?
The table below gives a rough roadmap. The limits are not exact; transfer volume and meter sharing can matter more than the number of units.
| Structure | Recommended method |
|---|---|
| 8–10 units, single building, equal fees | A tidy Excel spreadsheet, a bank account opened in the compound's name, a notarised decision book |
| 10–40 apartments | Excel is borderline; if most payments arrive by bank transfer or you have shared meters, you need specialist software |
| Compounds with more than 40 apartments | Expert property management software |
| Multi-compound property-management company | Purpose-built software for residential compounds, plus a bookkeeping program for the company's own commercial accounting and your accountant |
To clarify the decision, answer these five questions in order:
- How many units are there, and will that grow within two years? If a new block or a second compound is on the cards, today's file won't be enough tomorrow.
- How much of your fee income arrives by bank transfer/EFT? If it's more than half, matching will be your biggest workload.
- Are there shared meters or heating cost allocation? If so, reading and allocation mean a separate calculation every month.
- Managing several managers, buildings or residential compounds? If the question is who sees what, you need role-based permissions.
- Should residents be able to see their own balances? If you field dozens of "how much do I owe?" questions every month, the answer is yes.
Where does Çözüm Hanem stand in this comparison?
Çözüm Hanem is one of the expert property management software solutions in the last column of the table. Maintenance fees are billed on a rule-based, recurring basis, with the approved operating budget as the basis for billing. Bank transactions are pulled automatically and suggested for matching to units based on the description, amount, IBAN and sender information; when the manager approves, the debt is closed and a receipt is created. Board resolutions can be recorded in the Resolution Book module and shown to residents. The Resident app is free for residents; in multi-compound setups, each compound manager sees only their own compounds.
Compounds with up to 500 units can open an account instantly with Get Started, no quote needed; existing Excel data is migrated with a template and support from our team. If you're an 8-unit apartment building and your spreadsheet does the job, there's no rush. Just revisit it when the signs above start to appear.
Result
- For a single building of 8–10 units with equal fees, a well-kept Excel sheet is usually enough.
- A general bookkeeping program is strong for company accounting, but it requires you to set up the unit, owner and land-share logic by hand.
- A WhatsApp group is fine for announcements; used as a record system, it creates document and personal-data problems.
- A high volume of bank transfers, shared metering and multiple compounds are the three strongest signs that it's time to move to specialist software.
- Once you've chosen your method, use the 10-point checklist to compare products.