Real estate developers face a range of challenges, from rising construction costs and fluctuating market conditions to complex lease accounting and revenue recognition. Operational inefficiencies, such as manual rent collection and cash flow tracking, can also hinder profitability.
Additionally, managing multi-entity operations across diverse properties adds complexity, requiring streamlined processes and accurate reporting. With so many factors at play, a reliable solution is essential for driving growth and ensuring financial stability.
In this blog, we’ll explore how Sage for Real Estate Developers addresses these challenges and highlight the key features that set it apart.
Why Sage for Real Estate Developers?
Sage offers a cloud-based financial management platform designed specifically for the needs of real estate developers. With over 50 years of experience in construction, it provides comprehensive tools for managing costs, budgeting, property management, and lease administration. Sage for Real Estate Developers advanced lease management, real-time financial insights, and multi-entity capabilities help maximize Net Operating Income (NOI), streamline operations, and simplify diverse property portfolios. Built for growth, Sage combines reliability and innovation to ensure financial stability, optimize processes, and protect investments.
Key Product Features:
Comprehensive Multi-Entity Consolidation
Managing multiple projects or properties involves complex financial data across various entities. Sage simplifies this process with powerful multi-entity consolidation capabilities.
Developers can manage individual projects as separate entities, ensuring each operates like an independent business while consolidating data at the top level. This offers real-time financial insights, streamlined reporting, and complete visibility across all properties. Sage accelerates financial close cycles, reduces manual work, and enhances operational efficiency, enabling developers to make strategic, data-driven decisions. Whether managing 20 or 200+ entities, Sage’s scalability handles diverse portfolios with ease, ensuring financial accuracy and risk reduction.
Advanced Reporting and Business Intelligence
Sage’s robust reporting and analytics tools provide developers with actionable insights into financial health and property performance.
By delivering real-time analytics across multiple entities, developers can access detailed views of portfolio-wide trends. This helps improve decision-making and optimize property operations. Sage’s reporting capabilities reduce manual processes, speed up close cycles, and give developers a clear view of net operating income (NOI) and other key performance indicators, empowering them to track performance and adjust strategies efficiently.
Streamlined Construction Operations
Managing construction operations requires coordinating various financial elements like loan tracking, bank draws, and project costs. Sage simplifies this process by enabling developers to easily track construction costs and financing details.
With built-in tools for managing bank draw forms, Sage for Real Estate Developers helps developers track reimbursable costs and efficiently submit payment requests to banks. The system automatically flags whether a transaction has been billed to the customer, streamlining reimbursement claims. These features reduce the complexity of managing large construction budgets and ensure proper fund allocation throughout the project lifecycle.
Enhanced Cost Control with Dimensional General Ledger
Sage’s dimensional general ledger provides developers with a powerful tool for tracking financial transactions across multiple dimensions—such as properties, projects, and cost centers. This flexibility enables precise tracking of both hard and soft costs, allowing developers to create customized cost centers that align with the unique aspects of each project. By enhancing budgeting and forecasting, Sage helps improve control over project finances, whether tracking construction expenses or overhead costs.
Revenue Recognition
Revenue recognition in real estate development can be complex, especially with capitalized projects. For developers selling upon completion, revenue is recognized based on the difference between development costs and sale price. For properties built to lease, revenue is only recognized once the project is complete and generating income. Sage for Real Estate Developers simplifies this process by clearly tracking when a project transitions from being capitalized to generating revenue, ensuring compliance and accurate recognition based on project status.
Efficient Lease and Tenant Management
Real estate developers know that lease administration is key to maintaining long-term revenue from properties. Sage offers robust tools for managing leases, including tenant tracking, lease renewals, and rent escalations. These features ensure that developers can optimize rental income, stay on top of lease terms, and manage tenant relationships more effectively, ultimately enhancing overall property revenue.
Compliance and Risk Mitigation
In the highly regulated real estate development industry, staying compliant is crucial. Sage integrates built-in compliance checks and risk management tools to ensure developers meet regulatory requirements. Detailed audit trails maintain transparency in financial reporting, while risk mitigation features flag potential issues before they escalate, safeguarding your investments.
Simplified Cash Flow Tracking
Cash flow management is a critical concern for real estate developers, especially when dealing with multiple financing sources and ongoing costs. Sage automates cash flow tracking, allowing developers to efficiently manage and monitor bank draws and other financial transactions. This automation streamlines financial operations, reduces errors, and ensures that developers maintain optimal cash flow throughout the life of a project.
Project Cost Control
Sage for Real Estate Developers offers powerful tools to track construction costs and manage budgets throughout the entire project lifecycle. With project-specific features like loan tracking and customizable reporting, developers can ensure that projects stay within financial targets and avoid cost overruns. The ability to manage costs effectively keeps projects on schedule and ensures that financial goals are met without sacrificing quality or efficiency.
Scalable Solutions for Growing Businesses
As real estate portfolios expand and market demands evolve, having a scalable financial management solution is essential. Sage’s flexible, cloud-based architecture enables developers to easily manage additional properties, entities, and projects, adapting to new market conditions and regulatory changes. The platform’s scalability ensures developers have the tools needed to grow without outgrowing their financial management system.
Why Partner with CBIZ?
Navigating the complexities of real estate development requires more than just advanced tools—it takes a partner with deep industry expertise. CBIZ combines decades of experience in the construction and development sectors with technical proficiency to deliver tailored solutions that drive efficiency, growth, and success.
As a trusted Sage Intacct partner, our dedicated team works closely with you to unlock the full potential of your financial management tools, providing hands-on support every step of the way. See how we’ve helped companies like yours in this case study, where we helped a construction firm transform their financial operations and position themselves for long-term success.
Ready to build a more streamlined, profitable future with Sage for Real Estate Developers? Email us today to learn how we can help.
