The general ledger structure everything else keys off. Your budget, your monthly financial package, your annual financial report and your reserve schedule are all views of this one list. Get it right once and the other four stop fighting each other.Published 8/22/2026
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The general ledger structure everything else keys off. Your budget, your monthly financial package, your annual financial report and your reserve schedule are all views of this one list. Get it right once and the other four stop fighting each other.
Replace every [BRACKETED] placeholder. Delete the accounts you do not have. Do not renumber the blocks.
Basis of accounting: [accrual / modified accrual / cash]. Fill that in before anything else. This template is written on the accrual basis, and several accounts below exist only because of that choice. Section 3.3 names them and says what happens to each on a cash or modified accrual basis. An association budget or a balance sheet means a different thing under each basis, so a chart that does not state its basis gets filled in wrong.
How to use this
Work down the sheet in this order. Each step depends on the one above it.
| Step | Decision | Where |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | State your basis of accounting: accrual, modified accrual or cash | Section 3.3 |
| 2 | Pick your number width, 4 digit or 5 digit | Section 2 |
| 3 | Confirm you will run fund columns, operating and reserve | Section 3 |
| 4 | For an HOA, settle whether reserve accounts were established under § 720.303(6)(d), Fla. Stat. | Section 3.1 |
| 5 | Choose your reserve funding convention, A or B. They are mutually exclusive | Section 3.4 |
| 6 | Set up assets, liabilities, fund balances | Sections 4, 5, 6 |
| 7 | Set up revenue | Section 7 |
| 8 | Set up expenses | Section 8 |
| 9 | Set up reserve funding and reserve components | Section 9 |
| 10 | Prove your chart covers the statutory classifications, and foot the crosswalk | Section 10 |
| 11 | Add sub-accounts for buildings, villages, or limited common elements | Section 11 |
| 12 | Run the month-end control totals | Section 13 |
| 13 | Give it to your CPA before you post a single entry | Sections 14.1 and 16 |
If you are converting from an existing chart, do not delete old accounts mid-year. Map old to new, run both for one closing, then retire the old numbers at your fiscal year end. Section 14.2 has the conversion sheet.
How this was built
The account names and the numbering blocks below were taken from the general ledgers, budgets and financial statements that Florida associations actually publish. They are not invented, and they are not a generic small-business chart with the word "association" pasted on top.
The measurement pool was every document in the Common Elements corpus categorized as financials, budget or reserve study with more than 1,500 characters of readable extracted text: 353 organizations. Account number and account name pairs were pulled by pattern from the text of those documents and counted at the organization level, not the document level, because a single association that publishes twelve monthly statements a year would otherwise look like a convention.
Two limits you should know before you rely on a frequency in this template:
The pattern that finds an account number also finds a year and sometimes a dollar figure at the start of a line. A line reading "2024 Reserve component detail" counts once as if 2024 were an account number. Concept-level counts, where a number block is matched against what the account is actually called, are much more reliable than raw number counts, and those are the ones quoted below.
Names are counted as they appear. An association that calls it "lawn maintenance" is not counted under "landscape maintenance". Every frequency here is therefore a floor, not a ceiling.
Where the corpus and the Florida Statutes disagree, the statute wins and the disagreement is named in section 12. Every statutory claim in this template was read from the statute text itself, section by section, not carried over from practice.
1. What a chart of accounts has to do in a Florida association
Four jobs, and only the first is ordinary bookkeeping.
Record what happened. Every receipt and every expenditure, itemized, with the bank statements and ledgers behind them. This is not optional housekeeping. For a condominium, § 718.111(12)(a)11., Fla. Stat. requires accounting records that include accurate, itemized and detailed records of all receipts and expenditures including all bank statements and ledgers, all invoices, transaction receipts or deposit slips substantiating any receipt or expenditure, and a current account and a monthly, bimonthly or quarterly statement of the account for each unit showing the owner's name, the due date and amount of each assessment, the amount paid and the balance due. The same section makes it a civil penalty to knowingly fail to create or maintain those records with intent to cause harm. Cooperatives get the same list, plus an explicit standard, at § 719.104(2), Fla. Stat.: accounting records "according to good accounting practices."
Keep the reserve money visibly separate from the operating money. Reserve funds are legally constrained and operating funds are not. A chart with one undifferentiated fund cannot show the difference, and the difference is the point. See section 3.
Prove the statutory expense classifications are covered. A condominium budget must show amounts by accounts and expense classifications including, at a minimum, the applicable expenses listed in § 718.504(21), per § 718.112(2)(f)1., Fla. Stat. An HOA at the lowest reporting tier must disclose receipts and expenses by accounts and classifications including a named list, per § 720.303(7)(b)2., Fla. Stat. Section 10 is the crosswalk for both.
Carry the reserve components at component level. The statutory reserve formula is built on the estimated remaining useful life and the estimated replacement cost or deferred maintenance expense of each reserve item, for condominiums at § 718.112(2)(f)2.a. and, for HOAs whose reserve accounts were established under § 720.303(6)(d), at § 720.303(6)(e), Fla. Stat. A single line called "Reserves" cannot carry a per-component calculation, and a board that runs one has no way to answer the only question owners ask about reserves, which is whether the roof is funded.
2. Numbering
2.1 Choose a width
| Width | Observed | Use it when |
|---|---|---|
| 4 digit, 1000 to 9999 | 241 of 353 organizations | Default. Enough room for any single association |
| 5 digit, 10000 to 99999 | 71 of 353 | Multiple condominiums or villages under one association, or your software already uses 5 |
| 3 digit, 100 to 999 | 124 of 353 | Do not start here. Almost always a budget line number rather than a general ledger account, and it runs out of room the first time you split insurance |
Counts overlap, because a document can contain more than one pattern, and the 3 digit count in particular is inflated by budget row numbering. The signal that matters is the ratio: 4 digit is roughly three times as common as 5 digit among associations that use account numbers at all.
The scheme below is written at 4 digits. To convert to 5, append a zero to every number in this template: 1210 becomes 12100, 6310 becomes 63100. That preserves every block boundary and leaves you nine spare numbers between neighbors. This is exactly what the 5 digit charts in the corpus do, where assessment income sits at 40100, insurance at 63000 and utilities at 65000.
2.2 The blocks
| Block | Contents | What the corpus shows |
|---|---|---|
| 1000 to 1999 | Assets | Strong. Receivables lead with 1 in 11 organizations, prepaid expenses in 9, with no competing block |
| 2000 to 2999 | Liabilities | Moderate. Accounts payable leads with 2 in 6 organizations, with 3 the runner up in 4 |
| 3000 to 3999 | Fund balances and equity | Moderate. Leads with 3 in 6 organizations |
| 4000 to 4999 | Revenue | Strongest signal in the whole corpus. Assessment revenue leads with 4 in 19 organizations, more than four times the next block |
| 5000 to 8999 | Expenses | No convention. See below |
| 9000 to 9999 | Reserve fund activity and components, plus the restricted fund's transfer in at 9080 | Weak but best available. Reserve component accounts lead with 9 in 8 organizations, 8 in 6, and 3 in 5 |
Be honest about the expense blocks. There is no Florida convention for where expenses start. Measured across organizations, administrative expenses lead with 7 in 19, with 6 in 18, with 5 in 15 and with 4 in 11. Utilities lead with 7 in 25 and with 6 in 18. Building maintenance leads with 6 in 25 and with 7 in 19. Every leading digit from 1 to 9 appears for every expense category somewhere in the corpus. Anyone who tells you the industry standard is 6000 for utilities is describing their own software's default.
Because there is no convention to follow, this template picks one and holds it, so that the crosswalks in section 10 and the reserve pairing in section 9 work:
| Range | Group |
|---|---|
| 5000 to 5599 | Administrative, professional and payroll |
| 5600 to 5699 | Insurance |
| 6000 to 6299 | Utilities |
| 6300 to 6599 | Grounds and landscape |
| 6600 to 6899 | Buildings and common areas |
| 6900 to 6999 | Security and access control |
| 7000 to 7199 | Amenities and recreation |
| 7200 to 7299 | Contingency and non-recurring |
| 8000 to 8099 | Reserve and restricted fund funding, operating side |
Insurance sits inside the administrative block rather than in its own top-level group because that is where the corpus puts it: insurance appears inside a general and administrative heading in most budgets, and a separate combined taxes-and-insurance heading appears in about 1 percent. Boards look for it under administration. Leave it there.
2.3 Rules that keep the scheme usable
Leave gaps. Every number in this template ends in 0 or 5. When you add an account, take the number between two existing ones. Never renumber a live account mid-year.
One account, one meaning, forever. If a line stops being used, make it inactive. Do not recycle the number for something else. A recycled number destroys every prior-year comparison silently.
Never post to a header. Group totals are subtotals, not accounts. If your software allows posting to a parent, lock it.
Numbers are not a substitute for names. Owners read names. Auditors read names. Write the name out in full even when it makes the column wide.
3. Fund structure, basis of accounting and reserve funding convention, before any account
Set all three of these up first, because together they change what every account below means. The fund says which pot of money an account belongs to. The basis says when an amount lands in it. The reserve funding convention says which accounts move money into the reserve fund. The two conventions are mutually exclusive, and running both counts the same money twice, which is why section 13 carries a control total that does nothing but check you did not.
Run two funds: an operating fund and a reserve fund. Where you hold money restricted to something else, a hurricane deductible fund or an insurance proceeds fund, run that as a third. Every account in sections 4 through 9 carries a fund, and every statement prints one column per fund plus a total.
3.1 Why this is not a stylistic preference
Only about 31 percent of the association balance sheets measured for this template show fund columns at all. The statute assumes you can produce them.
Condominiums. § 718.111(14), Fla. Stat. requires all funds collected by an association to be maintained separately in the association's name. Reserve funds may be commingled with operating funds for investment purposes only. Commingled operating and reserve funds must be accounted for separately, and the commingled account may not at any time be less than the amount identified as reserve funds. A manager or company licensed under § 468.432 may not commingle association funds with their own or with another association's.
Cooperatives. § 719.104(8), Fla. Stat. is drafted the same way: funds maintained separately in the association's name, reserve and operating funds not commingled unless combined for investment purposes, combined funds accounted for separately, combined balance never less than the identified reserve amount.
HOAs. The express commingling rule at § 720.303(8), Fla. Stat. is aimed at the developer, not at a turned-over association: association funds held by a developer must be maintained separately, and reserve and operating funds may not be commingled prior to turnover except for joint investment, which must still be accounted for separately. So an HOA past turnover does not have the condominium's flat commingling prohibition. It still needs the separation in substance, because § 720.303(6)(h), Fla. Stat. requires reserve funds and any interest accruing on them to remain in the reserve account and be used only for authorized reserve expenditures unless the members approve otherwise in advance. You cannot demonstrate that from a single blended fund.
One more Chapter 720 rule constrains a specific pot of money in any HOA, before or after turnover. § 720.303(8)(d), Fla. Stat.: if an association collects a deposit from a member for any reason, including to pay for expenses that may be incurred as a result of construction on a member's parcel, those funds must be maintained separately and may not be commingled with any other association funds. The member may request an accounting of the deposit once the project or other purpose is complete, and the association must provide it within 7 days of the request and remit any unused funds within 30 days of notice that the purpose is complete. That is a third fund in substance. See account 2120 in section 5.
Read those together and one conclusion is unavoidable for all three association types. Separate bank accounts are good practice; separate accounting is the requirement. A commingled investment account is expressly permitted. A commingled ledger is not.
The HOA fork: are your reserves statutory reserves at all?
Answer this before you build section 9, because for an HOA it decides whether most of the reserve law in this template binds you.
Chapter 720 does not require reserves. § 720.303(6)(b), Fla. Stat. says the budget may include reserve accounts for capital expenditures and deferred maintenance, and that the determine, maintain and waive regime of subsection (6) attaches only to reserve accounts "established pursuant to paragraph (d)." Paragraph (d) means the affirmative approval of a majority of the total voting interests of the association, by vote at a duly called membership meeting or by written consent, in an approval action that states reserves will be provided for in the budget and designates the components. Once that happens, the board must include those reserve accounts in the next fiscal year's budget and each year after, and the association must thereafter determine, maintain and waive reserves in compliance with subsection (6). Paragraphs (e), (g) and (h) then bite.
An HOA that simply budgets money toward a future roof without that member vote has a voluntary deferred expenditure account, not a statutory reserve. The statute says so in its own words. The conspicuous-type disclosure it mandates at § 720.303(6)(c)2., Fla. Stat. reads that because the owners have not elected to provide for reserve accounts under § 720.303(6), those funds "are not subject to the restrictions on use of such funds set forth in that statute, nor are reserves calculated in accordance with that statute." Funding of such accounts is limited to the extent the governing documents limit increases in assessments, including reserves, per § 720.303(6)(b).
So write the answer down: reserve accounts established under § 720.303(6)(d)? [yes / no / not applicable, condominium or cooperative]
Yes. Everything in sections 9, 10.2 and 12 that cites Chapter 720 applies to you. Run the reserve fund as a restricted fund and treat the component schedule as a compliance document.
No. Keep the accounts anyway, because a board still has to know what the roof will cost, and label them for what they are: voluntary deferred expenditure accounts. Do not describe them to owners as statutory reserves, do not tell a board that § 720.303(6)(h) protects them, and carry the § 720.303(6)(c)1. or § 720.303(6)(c)2. conspicuous-type statement in each annual financial report, whichever of the two fits your facts. Running them in a separate fund is still the right call. It is your board's discipline rather than the statute's, and it is worth saying which.
Condominiums and cooperatives have no equivalent fork. Under § 718.112(2)(f)2.a., Fla. Stat. a condominium budget must include reserve accounts, waivable only by a majority vote of the total voting interests under § 718.112(2)(f)2.b., and for a budget adopted on or after December 31, 2024 not waivable at all as to the paragraph (g) components of an association that must obtain a structural integrity reserve study. A condominium's reserve accounts are always statutory reserves.
3.2 What each fund holds
| | Operating fund | Reserve fund |
|---|---|---|
| Cash and investments | 1010 to 1050 | 1110 to 1140 |
| Receivables | 1210, 1220, 1230 to 1290 | 1215 and 1295, under convention A only |
| Prepaid, deposits and fixed assets | 1310, 1320, 1410 to 1490, 1610 to 1690 | None |
| Interfund asset | 1510, due from reserve fund | 1520, due from operating fund |
| Payables and debt | 2010, 2020 to 2230 and 2400, less any line you assign to the restricted fund | 2015, 2240, 2250 |
| Interfund liability | 2300, due to reserve fund | 2310, due to operating fund |
| Fund balance | 3010, 3020, 3200 | 3100, 3110 |
| Revenue | 4010 and 4100 through 4990, except 4020 and 4410 | 4410 under both conventions, 4020 under convention A only, and 9010, 9030 and 9040 as section 3.4 assigns them |
| Other financing inflow, not revenue | Draws on 2210 to 2230 | 9050, matched by the liability at 2240 or 2250 |
| Expense | 5000 through 7299 | 9060, and 9110 through 9899 |
| Interfund transfer | 8010 under convention B only, 8020 under both | 9020, under convention B only |
The third fund, where you run one. The table above has two columns because every association has those two. A restricted fund, if you run one, holds 1150 restricted cash, 1220 and 1270 where the purpose of the special assessment or claim is restricted, 2110 and 2120, the fund balance at 3300, 4100 where the special assessment is for a restricted purpose, and the transfer in at 9080 that pairs with the operating fund's 8020. It obeys the same rule as the other two: assets less liabilities equal fund balance, tested on its own.
This table is the definition control total 7 in section 13 executes against: a fund's assets less its liabilities equal its fund balance, one fund at a time. If an account is live in your ledger and does not appear in one of these cells, control total 7 cannot tie, so place it before you post to it.
Borrowing is not reserve revenue. A line of credit or loan drawn for reserve work puts cash in the reserve fund and a liability beside it. Record the draw at 9050 with the payable at 2240 or 2250, both in the reserve fund, and keep 9050 out of every total labeled reserve fund revenue. Section 9.1 has the entry. Booking the proceeds as revenue raises the reserve fund balance by the borrowed amount, which tells a board its roof is funded when what it has is a debt. Repayment is a reduction of 2240 or 2250; the interest is a reserve fund expense at 9060.
Interest earned on reserve balances is reserve fund revenue under both conventions, because § 718.112(2)(f)3. and § 720.303(6)(h), Fla. Stat. both say the interest accruing on reserve funds stays in the reserve account. For an HOA, § 720.303(6)(h) binds only where the reserve accounts were established under § 720.303(6)(d); see the fork in section 3.1. Where they were not, leaving the interest in the fund is your board's policy rather than the statute's command, and it is still the right call.
The two conventions named in that table are the subject of section 3.4, and choosing between them is the single decision most likely to be got wrong, because getting it half right counts the same money twice.
3.3 Basis of accounting
Write this down before you open a single account, and print it on every financial statement. The same account number means a different thing under each basis, and the accounts most likely to be filled in wrong are the ones that only exist under one of them.
This chart is written on the accrual basis. Assessment revenue is recorded when it is assessed and earned, expenses when the obligation is incurred, whatever month the cash moves.
If your association keeps its books on another basis, these are the accounts to revisit. Everything else in sections 4 through 9 works unchanged.
| Account | What it is on the accrual basis | On a pure cash basis | On a modified accrual basis |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1210, 1215, 1220 | Assessments and special assessments receivable, operating and reserve | Drop. Nothing is recorded until the money arrives | Keep. Assessments receivable is the reason most associations sit here rather than on pure cash |
| 1230 to 1280 | Late fee, fine, legal cost, insurance claim and interassociation receivables | Drop | Judgment call, usually kept for anything billed to an owner ledger and dropped for the rest |
| 1290, 1295 | Allowance for doubtful accounts, operating and reserve, contra assets | Drop. With no receivable there is nothing to reserve against | Keep, sized against whichever receivables you kept |
| 1410 to 1490 | Prepaid insurance and prepaid contracts | Drop. The premium is expense in the month it is paid | Commonly dropped, sometimes kept for insurance alone because the premium is large and annual |
| 2015 | Accounts payable, reserve projects | Drop. A reserve invoice is recorded when paid | Keep wherever you keep 2010 |
| 2020, 2030 | Accrued expenses and accrued payroll | Drop | Usually dropped |
| 2100 | Prepaid owner assessments. Money received, not yet earned, so a liability rather than revenue | Drop. Cash received is revenue when received | Usually kept, because owners do prepay and a board should not read next year's money as this year's income |
| 2110 | Deferred special assessment revenue | Drop | A real judgment call, and one to put to your CPA rather than settle in the chart |
Two consequences worth naming.
Your reporting tier is not your basis. § 718.111(13), § 720.303(7) and § 719.104(4), Fla. Stat. set the year-end report by revenue, and the lowest tier is a report of cash receipts and expenditures. See section 10.3. An association under $150,000 in revenue can keep accrual books all year and still deliver that report. Producing it from accrual books is a conversion your CPA performs at year end, not a reason to keep the books on the cash basis.
Mixed basis is the failure mode, not cash basis. Cash basis, consistently applied and disclosed, is defensible for a small association. Accruing assessment revenue while expensing the insurance premium in the month it is paid is not a basis, it is an accident, and it makes every variance report argue with itself. Pick one, write it on the checklist at section 14.1, disclose it on the statements, and apply it to every account in this chart.
3.4 Reserve funding convention, choose one and only one
An association funds reserves in one of two ways. They are mutually exclusive. Each has its own set of accounts, and the accounts belonging to the other convention stay dark: created if your software insists, locked against posting, and absent from every statement.
Convention A, direct funding. The reserve share of the assessment is reserve fund revenue the moment it is assessed. It is never operating revenue, so there is nothing to transfer out of the operating fund and no transfer is recorded.
Convention B, operating recognition then transfer. The whole assessment is operating revenue. The board's reserve funding is then recorded as a transfer from the operating fund to the reserve fund, equal on both sides.
| | Convention A, direct funding | Convention B, operating recognition then transfer |
|---|---|---|
| Reserve share of the assessment | Reserve fund revenue at 4020, or at 9010 if you prefer to keep it in the reserve block. Pick one of those two numbers | Operating revenue at 4010, undivided |
| Assessments receivable, on accrual or modified accrual books | Split: 1210 operating, 1215 reserve, with the allowance split 1290 operating, 1295 reserve | 1210 and 1290 only. 1215 and 1295 stay dark |
| Operating transfer out, 8010 | Not used | Used, equal to the budgeted reserve contribution |
| Reserve transfer in, 9020 | Not used | Used, equal to 8010 to the cent |
| Reserve interest | Reserve fund revenue at 4410, or at 9030. Pick one | Reserve fund revenue at 4410, or at 9030. Pick one |
| Special assessment for reserve purposes, 9040 | Reserve fund revenue | Reserve fund revenue |
| Reserve borrowing, 9050 | Financing inflow, never revenue. The payable sits at 2240 or 2250 | Financing inflow, never revenue. The payable sits at 2240 or 2250 |
| Accounts that stay dark | 8010, 9020, and whichever of 4020 and 9010 you did not pick | 4020, 9010, 1215 and 1295 |
What goes wrong when you run both. Booking the reserve share to 4020 as reserve revenue and recording 8010 as an operating transfer out with 9020 as the matching transfer in credits the reserve fund twice for one dollar. Reserve fund revenue doubles, reserve fund balance runs ahead of the component balances, and control total 8 in section 13 fails every month with no coding error anywhere in the ledger to explain it. Control total 9 is the one that tells you why: it looks for activity in the accounts your chosen convention should have left dark. This is a structural error rather than a posting error, which is why it survives a close that is only hunting for miscoded entries.
The bank sweep is not the transfer. Under convention A the reserve share often lands in the operating bank account and is swept to the reserve bank account days later. In between, the operating fund is holding the reserve fund's cash, which is an operating fund liability at 2300, due to reserve fund, with the matching reserve fund asset at 1520, due from operating fund. Record it there and clear both when the sweep completes. Do not record it at 8010. 8010 exists only under convention B, and using it to describe a cash movement reintroduces the double count.
Both conventions work on any basis of accounting, and the tests below hold on all three. The basis decides when an amount lands, not which fund it lands in. On accrual or modified accrual books convention A recognizes the reserve share when assessed and carries the unpaid part at 1215; on cash books it recognizes the same amount when the cash arrives and 1215 does not exist. Either way reserve fund revenue for the period equals 4020 or 9010, plus 4410 or 9030, plus 9040, and 8010 and 9020 are zero. Reserve borrowing at 9050 sits outside that total under both conventions, because it is a financing inflow carrying a matching liability rather than revenue. Convention B recognizes the whole assessment at 4010 on whichever timing your basis dictates, and the funding is 8010 equal to 9020 in the period the board records it, with 4020, 9010, 1215 and 1295 all zero. Neither identity depends on the basis. Section 3.3 has the accounts the basis choice does move.
Which to choose. Convention A states the fund restriction where it arises: reserve money is restricted on arrival, not on transfer, which is why section 12 row 3 treats reserve assessments presented as operating revenue as an error. Choose A unless your software cannot assign a revenue account to a fund other than operating. Where it cannot, choose B, and say on the face of the statements that 8010 and 9020 are the funding mechanism, so a reader does not go looking for a reserve assessment line that does not exist.
Write the answer down: reserve funding convention: [A, direct funding / B, operating recognition then transfer], and carry it onto the checklist at section 14.1.
4. Assets, 1000 to 1999
Name the bank and the last four digits of the account number on every cash line. A board cannot reconcile what it cannot identify, and an auditor will ask.
4.1 Operating cash, 1000 to 1099
| Account | Name | Fund | Notes |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1010 | Operating checking, [bank name] [last 4] | Operating | Primary disbursement account |
| 1020 | Operating money market, [bank name] [last 4] | Operating | |
| 1030 | Payroll checking, [bank name] [last 4] | Operating | Only if you have employees |
| 1040 | Petty cash | Operating | Fixed imprest amount, [$ amount] |
| 1050 | Undeposited funds | Operating | Should clear within days, never carry a month end balance |
4.2 Reserve cash and investments, 1100 to 1199
| Account | Name | Fund | Notes |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1110 | Reserve checking, [bank name] [last 4] | Reserve | |
| 1120 | Reserve money market, [bank name] [last 4] | Reserve | |
| 1130 | Reserve certificate of deposit, [bank] matures [date] | Reserve | One account per certificate, with the maturity in the name |
| 1140 | Reserve investment, [instrument] | Reserve | |
| 1150 | Restricted cash, [purpose] | Restricted | Insurance proceeds, deductible fund, litigation settlement |
Where you hold a single commingled investment account under § 718.111(14) or § 719.104(8), Fla. Stat., carry the operating share and the reserve share as two ledger accounts pointing at one bank account, and note the bank account number on both. The combined balance must never fall below the reserve share.
4.3 Receivables, 1200 to 1299
| Account | Name | Fund | Notes |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1210 | Assessments receivable, operating | Operating | |
| 1215 | Assessments receivable, reserve | Reserve | Convention A only. Split the receivable the same way you split the billing. Under convention B the whole assessment is billed to the operating fund and sits in 1210, so 1215 stays dark. Section 3.4 |
| 1220 | Special assessments receivable | Operating or Restricted | Follow the purpose of the special assessment |
| 1230 | Late fees and interest receivable | Operating | |
| 1240 | Fines receivable | Operating | Recognize only when collectible, ask your CPA |
| 1250 | Legal fees and costs receivable | Operating | Charged to owner accounts, recoverable |
| 1260 | Other receivables | Operating | |
| 1270 | Insurance claims receivable | Operating or Restricted | |
| 1280 | Due from [related or shared facility association] | Operating | Shared entry, shared lake, master association |
| 1290 | Allowance for doubtful accounts, operating | Operating | Contra asset, carries a credit balance |
| 1295 | Allowance for doubtful accounts, reserve | Reserve | Convention A only, and only where you carry 1215. Contra asset. § 720.303(6)(g)2., Fla. Stat. contemplates reserve receivables net of the allowance in a pooled funding analysis |
Account 1290, and its reserve twin at 1295, are the ones most often missing. Roughly a third of the balance sheets measured carry an allowance. If your books are on the accrual basis and you have delinquencies, the absence of an allowance overstates your assets and overstates your fund balance by the same amount.
Whatever the balance in 1210 is, it plus 1215 must equal the assessments portion of your accounts receivable aged trial balance, every month, to the cent, with the other receivables at 1220 to 1280 each tying to their own listing. Under convention B the whole assessment sits in 1210 and 1215 is zero, so the comparison is against 1210 alone. That reconciliation is the closest thing an association has to a fraud control.
4.4 Prepaid expenses, 1400 to 1499
| Account | Name | Fund | Notes |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1410 | Prepaid insurance, property and wind | Operating | Usually the largest prepaid |
| 1420 | Prepaid insurance, flood | Operating | |
| 1430 | Prepaid insurance, general liability | Operating | |
| 1440 | Prepaid insurance, directors and officers, and crime | Operating | |
| 1450 | Prepaid insurance, umbrella and other | Operating | |
| 1460 | Prepaid contracts and service agreements | Operating | |
| 1470 | Prepaid licenses, permits and dues | Operating | |
| 1490 | Prepaid expenses, other | Operating | |
Prepaid insurance appears on 38 percent of association balance sheets and by name in 16 organizations' charts. Split it by policy the same way you split the expense at 5610 to 5695, so the amortization of each prepaid ties to one expense account.
4.5 Deposits, interfund and fixed assets, 1300 and 1500 to 1699
| Account | Name | Fund | Notes |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1310 | Utility deposits, [utility] | Operating | One line per utility where material |
| 1320 | Deposits, other | Operating | |
| 1510 | Due from reserve fund | Operating | Pairs with 2310. Equal amounts, always |
| 1520 | Due from operating fund | Reserve | Pairs with 2300. Equal amounts, always |
| 1610 | Land | Operating | Only where the association holds title |
| 1620 | Buildings and improvements | Operating | |
| 1630 | Furniture, fixtures and equipment | Operating | |
| 1640 | Vehicles and maintenance equipment | Operating | |
| 1690 | Accumulated depreciation | Operating | Contra asset |
Interfund accounts come in cross-fund pairs, and each pair must be equal in amount every month. The pairing is not the obvious one. 1510 and 2300 both sit in the operating fund, one an asset and one a liability, and they have nothing to do with each other; the same is true of 1520 and 2310 in the reserve fund. A single interfund balance is always one receivable in one fund and the matching payable in the other:
| Pair | Operating fund side | Reserve fund side | Test |
|---|---|---|---|
| Operating is owed by reserve | 1510, due from reserve fund, asset | 2310, due to operating fund, liability | 1510 equals 2310 |
| Reserve is owed by operating | 2300, due to reserve fund, liability | 1520, due from operating fund, asset | 1520 equals 2300 |
Both balances are positive numbers on their own ledgers, so they do not sum to zero and testing for a zero sum will pass while the books are wrong. What they do is eliminate on combination: on the combined balance sheet 1510 is written off against 2310 and 1520 against 2300, and each elimination is only valid because the two sides are equal. If a pair is out of balance, money has moved between funds recorded on one side only, which is the most common way a reserve shortfall hides. About a quarter of the balance sheets measured carry interfund accounts, so this is a live risk, not a theoretical one.
Two practical rules follow. Never post to only one member of a pair, and never net 1510 against 2300 to show a single operating-fund interfund figure; a net of zero can hide two errors of the same size. Under convention A in section 3.4 these accounts also carry the bank sweep of the reserve share, so expect them to be live mid-month and cleared by month end.
Capitalizing common elements is a real accounting question with more than one defensible answer for a community association, and it interacts with your income tax filing. Ask your CPA before you populate 1610 to 1690 rather than after.
5. Liabilities, 2000 to 2999
| Account | Name | Fund | Notes |
|---|---|---|---|
| 2010 | Accounts payable, trade, operating | Operating | 68 percent of balance sheets. Must tie to the operating portion of the open payables listing |
| 2015 | Accounts payable, reserve projects | Reserve | Accrual and modified accrual only. An unpaid reserve project invoice is a reserve fund liability, not an operating one. Posting it to 2010 moves a reserve obligation into the operating fund and breaks control total 7 |
| 2020 | Accrued expenses | Operating | |
| 2030 | Accrued payroll | Operating | |
| 2040 | Payroll taxes payable | Operating | |
| 2050 | Sales and use tax payable | Operating | |
| 2060 | Income and tangible personal property taxes payable | Operating | |
| 2100 | Prepaid owner assessments | Operating | 48 percent of balance sheets. Money received, not yet earned. A liability, not revenue |
| 2110 | Deferred special assessment revenue | Operating or Restricted | |
| 2120 | Owner deposits held, [purpose] | Restricted | Amenity, gate remote, move-in, construction deposits. For an HOA these must be held separately, § 720.303(8)(d), Fla. Stat. See below |
| 2200 | Insurance premium finance payable | Operating | Pairs with 1410 to 1450. Both amortize on the same schedule |
| 2210 | Line of credit | Operating | |
| 2220 | Note payable, current portion | Operating | |
| 2230 | Note payable, long term | Operating | |
| 2240 | Reserve line of credit or note payable, current portion | Reserve | The liability side of a draw recorded at 9050. § 718.112(2)(f)2.c.(I), Fla. Stat. permits paragraph (g) reserves to be funded by a line of credit or loan on a majority vote of the total voting interests |
| 2250 | Reserve line of credit or note payable, long term | Reserve | Same draw, the portion due beyond twelve months |
| 2300 | Due to reserve fund | Operating | Pairs with 1520, not with 1510. See section 4.5 |
| 2310 | Due to operating fund | Reserve | Pairs with 1510, not with 1520. See section 4.5 |
| 2400 | Suspense, unidentified receipts and disbursements | Operating | |
Account 2120 is not ordinary operating money, and for an HOA that is a statutory requirement, not a preference. § 720.303(8)(d), Fla. Stat.: if an association collects a deposit from a member for any reason, including to pay for expenses that may be incurred as a result of construction on a member's parcel, those funds must be maintained separately and may not be commingled with any other association funds. Once the construction project or other purpose is complete, the member may request an accounting of the deposit and the association must provide it within 7 days after receiving the request, and must remit any unused funds within 30 days after receiving notice that the purpose is complete. Three things follow for the chart:
Carry 2120 in the restricted fund, not the operating fund, and hold the cash in a separate bank account named on account 1150.
Run one sub-account per member and per purpose. An accounting owed in 7 days cannot be assembled from a single pooled balance.
Never let the deposit balance fund operating costs, even briefly. The money is the member's until it is applied or remitted.
Chapters 718 and 719 have no identically worded deposit provision, but a deposit held for a named owner is that owner's money in either case, and the general commingling rules at § 718.111(14) and § 719.104(8), Fla. Stat. cut the same way. Treat 2120 as restricted whatever your association type.
Account 2400 must be zero at every month end. About 10 percent of the balance sheets measured carry a suspense balance. A balance there means a payment arrived that nobody has matched to an owner, or a disbursement left that nobody has coded. Both are exceptions that need a name before the statements go to the board, not a parking space that carries forward.
Three liabilities live in the reserve fund, and putting them in the operating fund is the quiet way to break the fund statements. 2015 carries reserve project invoices received and not yet paid, on accrual or modified accrual books. 2240 and 2250 carry a line of credit or loan drawn for reserve work, matching the draw recorded at 9050. All three belong to the fund whose assets they were used to acquire or whose work they paid for. Code any of them to 2010, 2210, 2220 or 2230 instead and the operating fund carries a liability it does not owe while the reserve fund reports a balance it does not have, which is the one direction of error that flatters the reserve report.
Insurance premium financing deserves its own line, at 2200, and the corpus supports it: premium finance payables appear on 14 percent of balance sheets, alongside prepaid insurance on 38 percent. Financing the premium is not a reason to hide the obligation inside accounts payable.
6. Fund balances, 3000 to 3999
| Account | Name | Fund | Notes |
|---|---|---|---|
| 3010 | Operating fund balance, beginning of year | Operating | |
| 3020 | Operating fund, current year excess or deficit | Operating | |
| 3100 | Reserve fund balance, beginning of year | Reserve | |
| 3110 | Reserve fund, current year excess or deficit | Reserve | |
| 3200 | Working capital or capital contribution fund | Operating | Contributions collected at closing under the declaration |
| 3300 | Restricted fund balance, [purpose] | Restricted | |
Do not use "retained earnings." It appears on 41 percent of the association balance sheets measured, and in every case it is a for-profit accounting package's default label that nobody renamed. An association is not a for-profit corporation and has no retained earnings; it has fund balances. The correct labels, operating fund balance and reserve fund balance, appear on only about 10 percent and 7 percent of balance sheets respectively. This is the single most common presentation error in the corpus and the cheapest one to fix: rename the account.
The reserve fund balance at 3100 and 3110 must equal the sum of your reserve component balances from section 9, with both sides kept on the same basis of accounting. Control total 8 in section 13 runs that comparison and the note under it sets out the one adjustment convention A needs on accrual books. If your software cannot carry component balances inside the fund balance, carry them as a supporting schedule and reconcile monthly.
7. Revenue, 4000 to 4999
| Account | Name | Fund | Observed |
|---|---|---|---|
| 4010 | Assessments, operating | Operating | Assessment revenue is the most consistently numbered account in the corpus, leading with 4 in 19 organizations |
| 4020 | Assessments, reserve | Reserve | Convention A only, and dark under convention B. See section 3.4. 22 percent of statements show a reserve assessment line |
| 4030 | Assessments, [class or village name] | Operating | Where classes are assessed differently. The corpus shows charts splitting single family, townhome and condominium assessment income onto separate accounts |
| 4100 | Special assessment, [purpose and year] | Follow the purpose | 37 percent show special assessment income. One account per special assessment, never a rolling line |
| 4200 | Late fees | Operating | 48 percent |
| 4210 | Interest on delinquent accounts | Operating | |
| 4220 | Fines | Operating | 24 percent |
| 4230 | Legal fees and costs recovered from owners | Operating | Offset against 5110, never netted inside it |
| 4240 | NSF and returned item fees | Operating | |
| 4300 | Application, screening and transfer fees | Operating | 25 percent |
| 4310 | Estoppel and questionnaire fees | Operating | |
| 4320 | Gate remote, key, fob and decal income | Operating | |
| 4330 | Clubhouse and amenity rental income | Operating | 9 percent |
| 4340 | Pool pass and guest fee income | Operating | |
| 4350 | Laundry and vending income | Operating | 9 percent, condominium typical |
| 4360 | Storage, RV, boat and parking rental income | Operating | |
| 4400 | Interest income, operating | Operating | 38 percent show interest income, often without splitting it |
| 4410 | Interest income, reserve | Reserve | Reserve revenue under both conventions. Use this or 9030, never both. Required to stay in the reserve, § 718.112(2)(f)3., Fla. Stat., and § 720.303(6)(h) for HOA reserves established under § 720.303(6)(d). See section 3.1 |
| 4500 | Insurance proceeds | Operating or Restricted | |
| 4510 | Vendor rebates, refunds and settlements | Operating | |
| 4900 | Miscellaneous income | Operating | If this exceeds 2 percent of revenue, something in it needs its own account |
| 4990 | Bad debt recovered | Operating | Pairs with 5400 |
Two accounts in this list carry the fund discipline for the whole chart, and they behave differently from each other.
4410, reserve interest, is reserve fund revenue under both conventions in section 3.4. Post it to 4410 or to 9030, whichever block you prefer, and use only one of them.
4020, reserve assessments, exists only under convention A. Under convention A it is reserve fund revenue on assessment and 8010 is never used. Under convention B the reserve share is not separated in the revenue block at all: the whole assessment sits at 4010 and the funding is the 8010 to 9020 transfer pair, so 4020 stays dark. If your software will not let a revenue account belong to the reserve fund, that is the reason to choose convention B, and choosing it means deleting or locking 4020, not running it alongside the transfer.
8. Expenses, 5000 to 7299
Frequencies in the right hand column are the share of association budgets and financial statements in the corpus that show the line. They tell you which accounts you probably need, not which ones you must have.
8.1 Administrative, professional and payroll, 5000 to 5599
| Account | Name | Observed |
|---|---|---|
| 5010 | Management fees | 30 percent |
| 5015 | Onsite staff reimbursement and shared personnel | |
| 5020 | Payroll, gross wages | 18 percent |
| 5025 | Payroll taxes | |
| 5030 | Workers compensation | |
| 5035 | Employee benefits and health insurance | |
| 5040 | Payroll service fees | |
| 5100 | Legal fees, general | 66 percent of budgets |
| 5110 | Legal fees, collections | |
| 5120 | Accounting, audit, review or compilation | 46 percent of budgets |
| 5130 | Tax return preparation | |
| 5140 | Reserve study | |
| 5150 | Engineering, milestone inspection and structural integrity reserve study | |
| 5200 | Office supplies and office expense | 35 percent |
| 5210 | Postage, printing and copies | 41 percent |
| 5220 | Newsletter and community communications | |
| 5230 | Website, owner portal and software subscriptions | 52 percent |
| 5240 | Telephone and internet, association | 28 percent |
| 5250 | Bank charges and merchant fees | 28 percent |
| 5300 | Licenses, permits, corporate annual report and division fees | 53 percent |
| 5310 | Income and tangible personal property taxes | 26 percent |
| 5320 | Real property taxes on association property | |
| 5400 | Bad debt expense | 25 percent |
| 5410 | Collection costs not recovered | |
| 5500 | Director education, seminars and travel | 8 percent |
| 5510 | Board and membership meeting expense | |
| 5520 | Election and voting expense | |
| 5590 | Miscellaneous administrative | |
Three accounts in this block serve two statutory classifications each and have to be split by sub-account before the condominium crosswalk in section 10.1 will foot: 5300 into division fees and everything else, 5310 into tangible personal property tax and income tax, and 5320 into taxes on owned property and taxes on leased areas. Section 10.1 defines the splits. Set them up here rather than discovering them at budget time.
Split legal fees at 5100 and 5110. General legal is a governance cost the whole membership carries; collections legal is a cost charged back to specific owners and recovered at 4230. Blending them makes it impossible to tell a board whether its collections policy pays for itself.
Keep 5140 and 5150 separate from the reserve fund. A reserve study and a milestone inspection are operating expenses of the current year. The work they recommend is a reserve expenditure. Boards get this backwards regularly and charge the study to reserves, which reduces the reserve balance to pay for a document.
8.2 Insurance, 5600 to 5699
| Account | Name |
|---|---|
| 5610 | Insurance, property and wind |
| 5620 | Insurance, flood |
| 5630 | Insurance, general liability |
| 5640 | Insurance, directors and officers |
| 5650 | Insurance, fidelity bond and crime |
| 5660 | Insurance, umbrella and excess |
| 5670 | Insurance, workers compensation |
| 5680 | Insurance, equipment, inland marine, automobile and cyber |
| 5690 | Insurance deductibles and claim expense |
| 5695 | Insurance appraisal, consulting and broker fees |
Insurance is one of the two largest lines in a Florida association budget, appearing in 73 percent of budgets, and it is almost always shown as one blended figure. Split it.
The reason is practical rather than theoretical. When the renewal comes back 40 percent higher, a board with one insurance line can only tell owners that insurance went up. A board with ten lines can say that wind went up 60 percent, that flood was flat, and that the directors and officers policy is unchanged. One of those conversations survives an annual meeting.
The corpus supports this split at the detailed end: charts in the pool carry separate accounts for fidelity bond, general liability, directors and officers, umbrella, automobile, workers compensation, inland marine and cyber.
8.3 Utilities, 6000 to 6299
| Account | Name | Observed |
|---|---|---|
| 6010 | Electricity, common area | 56 percent of budgets |
| 6020 | Electricity, street and site lighting | |
| 6030 | Water and sewer, common area | 55 percent of budgets |
| 6040 | Water, irrigation meter | |
| 6050 | Reclaimed or reuse water | |
| 6060 | Trash, recycling and bulk pickup | 31 percent |
| 6070 | Bulk cable, internet and telecommunications | 23 percent |
| 6080 | Natural gas or propane | 5 percent |
| 6090 | Stormwater and special district utility fees | |
Split the irrigation meter at 6040 from common area water at 6030 wherever you have a separate meter. Irrigation is a controllable cost tied to a contractor's schedule and a rain sensor. Common area water is not. Blended, neither is manageable.
8.4 Grounds and landscape, 6300 to 6599
| Account | Name | Observed |
|---|---|---|
| 6310 | Landscape maintenance contract | 65 percent of budgets |
| 6320 | Landscape, additional and discretionary work | |
| 6330 | Mulch and seasonal annuals | 17 percent |
| 6340 | Tree trimming, arborist and removal | 28 percent |
| 6350 | Irrigation repair and maintenance | 50 percent |
| 6360 | Irrigation well, pump and controller | |
| 6370 | Fertilization, turf treatment and weed control | |
| 6380 | Lake, pond, canal and waterway maintenance | 54 percent |
| 6385 | Fountain and aerator maintenance | |
| 6390 | Storm cleanup and debris removal | |
| 6400 | Pest control, exterminating and termite bond | 29 percent |
| 6410 | Common area and street lighting maintenance | |
| 6420 | Signage and monument maintenance | |
| 6430 | Entry features and holiday decorations | |
| 6440 | Dog waste stations and site amenities | |
Account 6380 is the Florida account. Lake, pond and waterway maintenance appears in 54 percent of the budgets measured, ahead of irrigation at 50 percent and well ahead of pool service at 39 percent. Any national chart of accounts you download will not have it, and in Florida it is a top ten expense. The same reasoning puts storm cleanup at 6390 in the recurring section rather than treating it as an extraordinary item, and leaves snow removal out of the template entirely.
8.5 Buildings and common areas, 6600 to 6899
| Account | Name | Observed |
|---|---|---|
| 6610 | General repairs and maintenance | 81 percent of budgets, the most common line in the corpus |
| 6620 | Building and exterior repairs | 21 percent |
| 6630 | Roof repairs, non-reserve | 39 percent |
| 6640 | Painting and touch-up, non-reserve | 30 percent |
| 6650 | Pressure washing | 10 percent |
| 6660 | Plumbing repairs | |
| 6670 | Electrical repairs | |
| 6680 | HVAC service and repair, common area | 10 percent |
| 6690 | Elevator service contract and inspection | 7 percent |
| 6700 | Fire alarm, sprinkler, extinguisher and backflow | 10 percent |
| 6710 | Janitorial services | 28 percent |
| 6720 | Janitorial and cleaning supplies | |
| 6730 | Pavement, asphalt, sealcoat and striping, non-reserve | 16 percent |
| 6740 | Sidewalk and concrete repair | |
| 6750 | Fencing, walls and gates, structural | |
| 6760 | Drainage and stormwater structure maintenance | |
| 6770 | Maintenance supplies, tools and small equipment | |
| 6780 | Common area furniture and fixtures | |
The words "non-reserve" on 6630, 6640 and 6730 are load bearing. Roof replacement, building painting and pavement resurfacing are mandatory condominium reserve components regardless of cost under § 718.112(2)(f)2.a., Fla. Stat., and they belong in the 9000 block. What sits at 6630, 6640 and 6730 is the patch, the touch-up and the pothole: current-year repair that is not the reserve event. Keeping them in different blocks is what stops a board from quietly funding a roof out of the operating budget, or from charging a repair to reserves and calling the reserve funded.
8.6 Security and access control, 6900 to 6999
| Account | Name | Observed |
|---|---|---|
| 6910 | Security patrol or guard service | 30 percent |
| 6920 | Gate operator maintenance and repair | 31 percent |
| 6930 | Access control system, credentials and remotes | |
| 6940 | Cameras and video monitoring | |
| 6950 | Alarm monitoring | |
| 6960 | Towing and parking enforcement | |
| 6970 | Off-duty law enforcement | |
Security gets its own block because the statutes name it as a required classification twice: "security provisions" at § 718.504(21)(c)1.h. and "costs for security" at § 720.303(7)(b)2., Fla. Stat. Folding it into maintenance, which smaller communities routinely do, breaks the crosswalk in section 10.
8.7 Amenities and recreation, 7000 to 7199
| Account | Name | Observed |
|---|---|---|
| 7010 | Pool service and chemicals | 39 percent |
| 7020 | Pool repairs and equipment | |
| 7030 | Pool permits, licenses and water testing | |
| 7040 | Pool furniture | |
| 7050 | Clubhouse and cabana maintenance | 38 percent |
| 7060 | Clubhouse supplies | |
| 7070 | Fitness equipment service | |
| 7080 | Tennis, pickleball and sport court maintenance | |
| 7090 | Playground and tot lot maintenance | |
| 7100 | Dock, marina and beach access maintenance | |
| 7110 | Social and recreation committee, community events | |
| 7120 | Recreational facility lease or use fee | Only where the association pays to use an amenity it does not own |
§ 720.303(7)(b)2., Fla. Stat. names "costs for recreation facilities" as its own classification and § 718.504(21)(c)1.d. names rent for recreational and other commonly used facilities. If your association pays rent or a use fee for an amenity it does not own, that is 7120, a separate account, not part of maintenance. It is the only account the condominium crosswalk in section 10.1 puts in classification d, so leaving it out of the chart leaves that classification with nothing to report. For HOAs, § 720.303(6)(a), Fla. Stat. goes further and requires the budget to set out separately all fees or charges paid for recreational amenities, whether owned by the association, the developer or another person.
Contingency is a budget line. It should rarely carry actual activity: when the unexpected happens, code it to the account that describes it and let the variance report show the overage. A contingency account with monthly postings is a coding shortcut that hides what the money bought.
8.9 Reserve funding, operating side, 8000 to 8099
| Account | Name | Fund | When used |
|---|---|---|---|
| 8010 | Transfer to reserve fund | Operating | Convention B only. Dark under convention A |
| 8020 | Transfer to restricted fund, [purpose] | Operating | Whenever the operating fund funds a restricted fund, under either convention. Equal to 9080 to the cent |
These are transfers, not expenses. On a combined statement 8010 eliminates against 9020 and 8020 eliminates against the restricted fund's transfer in at 9080, which is exactly right: funding a fund moves money between funds, it does not consume it. Keep both out of any total labeled total expenses, and out of the expense footing in sections 10.1 and 10.2, or you will report the same money as both an expense and a reserve contribution.
8010 is convention B's mechanism and nothing else. Section 3.4 sets out the choice. Under convention A the reserve share of the assessment is already reserve fund revenue at 4020 or 9010, so there is nothing to transfer, 8010 carries no activity, and the physical bank sweep runs through the interfund accounts in section 4.5 instead. Recording 8010 while also recording 4020 as reserve revenue counts the same dollar twice, breaks control total 8, and is caught by control total 9.
A reserve contribution line appears in 71 percent of the budgets measured, so almost every association has something to put here, at 8010 under convention B or at 4020 or 9010 under convention A. One of them, never two.
9. Reserve fund accounts, 9000 to 9999
This is the section the corpus is worst at and the statute cares most about.
Of the Florida association budgets measured, 71 percent show a reserve contribution line, but only 8 percent show an estimated replacement cost and only 5 percent show useful or remaining life. The statutory formula is defined entirely in terms of those two inputs. So roughly nine in ten published budgets present a reserve number with no visible derivation. A chart of accounts that carries components fixes that at the source.
9.1 Reserve fund revenue, financing and transfers, 9000 to 9099
| Account | Name | Fund | When used |
|---|---|---|---|
| 9010 | Reserve assessments received | Reserve | Convention A only, and only if you did not use 4020. Dark under convention B |
| 9020 | Transfer in from operating fund | Reserve | Convention B only, equal to 8010. Dark under convention A |
| 9030 | Reserve interest and investment income | Reserve | Either convention, and only if you did not use 4410 |
| 9040 | Special assessment for reserve purposes, [purpose and year] | Reserve | Either convention. Revenue |
| 9050 | Loan or line of credit proceeds, reserve purposes | Reserve | Either convention. Not revenue. A financing inflow presented alongside the payable it creates at 2240 or 2250. Non-posting where your software allows it, a clearing account with a zero month-end balance where it does not |
| 9060 | Interest expense, reserve borrowing | Reserve | The carrying cost of 2240 and 2250. A reserve fund expense, not a component expenditure |
| 9080 | Transfer in from operating fund, restricted [purpose] | Restricted | The only account in the 9000 block that is not reserve fund activity. It exists so the operating fund's 8020 has a counterpart to eliminate against, exactly as 9020 does for 8010. Equal to 8020 to the cent |
Reserve fund revenue for the period is 9040 plus exactly one account from each applicable row below. Section 3.4 decides which.
| Source of reserve fund revenue | Convention A | Convention B |
|---|---|---|
| Reserve share of assessments | 4020 or 9010, one of them | Not recognized as reserve revenue. The 9020 transfer in is the funding |
| Reserve interest | 4410 or 9030, one of them | 4410 or 9030, one of them |
| Operating transfer in | Not used | 9020, equal to 8010 |
The template offers both numbering homes because charts in the corpus do it both ways. What no chart can do is carry both accounts named in a single row, or carry 4020 and 9020 in the same period. Either doubles reserve fund revenue against the same cash.
9050 is deliberately outside that total, on every basis of accounting. Borrowed money is not income on accrual books, and on cash books it is a receipt but still not revenue: the association has to pay it back. The double entry is a debit to reserve cash and a credit to 2240 or 2250. 9050 is the presentation line rather than a third leg: it carries the draw on the reserve fund's statement of cash flows or its schedule of changes in fund balance so a reader can see where the cash came from, and it should be set non-posting if your software allows it. Where your software will only report a line it can post to, run 9050 as a clearing account: credit it on the draw and reclassify the credit to 2240 or 2250 in the same entry, so the period activity is visible and the month-end balance is zero. Every repayment reduces 2240 or 2250; only the interest, at 9060, touches the reserve fund's results. A chart that treats the draw as revenue instead reports a reserve fund balance inflated by the full borrowed amount, and control total 8 will not catch it wherever the borrowed money was also spread across the component balances, because both sides of that comparison rise together. The payable at 2240 or 2250 is the only line that tells the truth.
Two statutory points constrain the borrowing itself. § 718.112(2)(f)2.c.(I), Fla. Stat. permits reserves for the paragraph (g) items to be funded by regular assessments, special assessments, lines of credit or loans, and requires a majority vote of the total voting interests of the association to approve a special assessment, a line of credit or a loan under that sub-subparagraph. § 718.112(2)(f)2.c.(II) then requires a line of credit or loan obtained by a unit-owner-controlled association to fund capital expenses required by a milestone inspection under § 553.899 or by a structural integrity reserve study to be sufficient to cover the cumulative amount of any previously waived or unfunded portion of the required reserve funding as well as the most recent study's recommendation, and requires the borrowing and its details to be included in the annual financial statement delivered under § 718.111(13). A decade of waived reserves becomes a borrowing requirement, and a disclosure.
9.2 Reserve components, 9100 to 9899
One account per component. Each component carries a funding target, a balance, and its own expenditures.
Mandatory for condominiums regardless of cost, per § 718.112(2)(f)2.a., Fla. Stat.:
| Account | Component | Statutory basis |
|---|---|---|
| 9110 | Roof replacement | Named in § 718.112(2)(f)2.a., mandatory regardless of cost |
| 9120 | Building painting | Named in § 718.112(2)(f)2.a., mandatory regardless of cost |
| 9130 | Pavement resurfacing | Named in § 718.112(2)(f)2.a., mandatory regardless of cost |
Structural integrity reserve study components, the items § 718.112(2)(g)1., Fla. Stat. requires a residential condominium to study every 10 years for each building three habitable stories or higher:
| Account | Component | Statutory basis |
|---|---|---|
| 9110 | Roof | § 718.112(2)(g)1.a. |
| 9140 | Structure, including load-bearing walls and other primary structural members and systems | § 718.112(2)(g)1.b., as those terms are defined in § 627.706 |
| 9150 | Fireproofing and fire protection systems | § 718.112(2)(g)1.c. |
| 9160 | Plumbing | § 718.112(2)(g)1.d. |
| 9170 | Electrical systems | § 718.112(2)(g)1.e. |
| 9180 | Waterproofing and exterior painting | § 718.112(2)(g)1.f. |
| 9190 | Windows and exterior doors | § 718.112(2)(g)1.g. |
§ 718.112(2)(g)1.h. adds any other item with a deferred maintenance expense or replacement cost exceeding $25,000, or the inflation-adjusted amount determined by the division, whichever is greater, where failure to replace or maintain it negatively affects the items above.
Do not hardcode $25,000 into your chart. § 718.112(2)(f)6., Fla. Stat. requires the division to adjust the figure annually for inflation. Look up the current posted amount each budget year. Note also that the threshold in the current statute is $25,000, not the $10,000 figure still repeated in a great deal of industry material.
Other components, named from the corpus. These are the reserve component account names Florida associations actually use, matched to the block:
| Account | Component |
|---|---|
| 9200 | Pool resurfacing |
| 9210 | Pool deck and pavers |
| 9220 | Pool equipment, pumps and heaters |
| 9230 | Pool fence and enclosure |
| 9240 | Pool furniture |
| 9250 | Clubhouse interior, flooring and furnishings |
| 9260 | Clubhouse roof and building envelope |
| 9270 | Fitness and recreation equipment |
| 9280 | Tennis and sport court resurfacing |
| 9300 | Roads, alleys and sealcoating |
| 9310 | Sidewalks and concrete |
| 9320 | Parking areas and striping |
| 9330 | Fencing, walls and monuments |
| 9340 | Gate and access control equipment |
| 9350 | Irrigation system replacement |
| 9360 | Site lighting and electrical |
| 9370 | Signage |
| 9380 | Mailboxes and kiosks |
| 9400 | Lake bank, seawall and shoreline |
| 9410 | Fountain and aeration equipment |
| 9420 | Drainage and stormwater structures |
| 9430 | Docks, boardwalks and boat facilities |
| 9440 | Elevators |
| 9450 | HVAC, common area |
| 9460 | Vehicles and maintenance equipment |
| 9470 | Playground and tot lot equipment |
| 9480 | Generator and life safety equipment |
| 9500 | [Other component] |
Every one of the general component names above is drawn from reserve schedules in the corpus. Charts in the pool carry accounts named for painting, roof, irrigation, fountain, pool resurfacing, pool deck, pool fence, pool furniture, pool equipment, tennis courts, sealcoating alleys, paving alleys and property site elements.
9.3 What each component account must carry
A component number alone is not enough. Each component needs five values, and your chart has to have somewhere to keep them, whether inside the ledger or on a reconciled schedule:
| Field | Why |
|---|---|
| Estimated remaining useful life | Half the statutory formula, § 718.112(2)(f)2.a. and § 720.303(6)(e), Fla. Stat. |
| Estimated replacement cost or deferred maintenance expense | The other half of the same formula |
| Balance at the start of the budget period | Required by the HOA formula at § 720.303(6)(g)1.b. |
| Current year funding | What the budget contributes |
| Current year expenditures | What was spent against it |
For an HOA, the formula in the rest of this subsection is the statute's formula only where the reserve accounts were established under § 720.303(6)(d), Fla. Stat. Where they were not, the association is running voluntary deferred expenditure accounts, § 720.303(6)(c)2. says in terms that they are not calculated in accordance with the statute, and the board is free to fund them on any rational basis its governing documents allow. Carrying the same five fields anyway is still the right practice, because it is the only way to answer what the roof costs. Just do not present the result as a statutory calculation. See the fork in section 3.1.
The HOA straight-line formula at § 720.303(6)(g)1., Fla. Stat. is the sum of two calculations: the amount necessary to bring a negative component balance to zero, plus the estimated replacement cost or deferred maintenance expense less the estimated component balance at the beginning of the budget period, with that remainder, if greater than zero, divided by the estimated remaining useful life. The formula may be adjusted each year for changes in estimates and for deferred maintenance performed during the year, and may include factors such as inflation and earnings on invested funds. Your chart cannot produce that number if it does not carry the component balance.
9.4 Reserve expenditures, and the rules that constrain them
Post reserve expenditures against the component account they belong to, never to an operating expense account, and never to a general "reserve expenditure" catch-all.
Three constraints your chart has to respect:
Reserve funds and their interest stay in the reserve. Both chapters say it, but the vote standard and the pre-turnover rule differ, so state them separately rather than blending them.
Condominiums. § 718.112(2)(f)3., Fla. Stat.: reserve funds and any interest accruing on them remain in the reserve accounts and may be used only for authorized reserve expenditures unless their use for other purposes is approved in advance by a majority vote of all the total voting interests of the association. Before turnover of control to unit owners other than the developer under § 718.301, the developer-controlled association may not vote to use reserves for purposes other than those for which they were intended. That is a flat bar, with no member vote available to lift it.
HOAs, and only where reserve accounts were established under § 720.303(6)(d). § 720.303(6)(h), Fla. Stat.: reserve funds and any interest accruing on them remain in the reserve account or accounts and are used only for authorized reserve expenditures unless their use for other purposes is approved in advance by a majority vote at a meeting at which a quorum is present. Before turnover of control by a developer to parcel owners, the developer-controlled association may not vote to use reserves for purposes other than those for which they were intended without the approval of a majority of all nondeveloper voting interests voting in person or by limited proxy at a duly called meeting of the association. That is a higher bar than the ordinary post-turnover vote, not the flat prohibition Chapter 718 imposes. Getting these two backwards is a common error in association material, and it matters: a pre-turnover condominium board cannot cure the problem with any vote, while a pre-turnover HOA board can, with the nondeveloper majority the statute names.
HOAs whose deferred expenditure accounts were never established under paragraph (d). § 720.303(6)(h) does not restrict them, and § 720.303(6)(c)2., Fla. Stat. says so on the face of the disclosure it requires. Your governing documents and your board's own resolution are the constraint. Section 3.1 has the fork.
For condominiums, the December 31, 2024 line. § 718.112(2)(f)3., Fla. Stat.: for a budget adopted on or after December 31, 2024, members of a unit-owner-controlled association that must obtain a structural integrity reserve study may not vote to use reserve funds, or interest accruing on them, for any purpose other than the replacement or deferred maintenance costs of the components listed in paragraph (g). For those components the vote is no longer available.
Pooling has a boundary. § 718.112(2)(f)4., Fla. Stat.: an association's reserve accounts may be pooled for two or more required components, but reserve funding for the components listed in paragraph (g) may only be pooled with other paragraph (g) components. You may not pool the roof with the clubhouse furniture. Usefully, the same subparagraph says a vote of the members is not required for the board to change between pooled and straight-line reserve accounting, which is the opposite of what many boards assume. For HOAs, § 720.303(6)(g)2., Fla. Stat. permits a pooled analysis and expressly bars any balloon payment in the funding formula.
If you pool, your chart still carries the components. Pooling changes how the contribution is calculated, not whether you know what you own.
10. Proving your chart covers the statutory classifications
This is the section to hand to whoever asks whether your budget complies.
10.1 Condominium crosswalk
§ 718.112(2)(f)1., Fla. Stat. requires the proposed annual budget to be detailed and to show the amounts budgeted by accounts and expense classifications, including, at a minimum, any applicable expenses listed in § 718.504(21). That section lists twelve. Almost no published budget uses those exact words, and it does not have to: what it has to do is cover them. Fill in the right hand column with your own totals.
Every expense account in section 8 appears in exactly one row. A crosswalk that leaves an account out understates a classification and a crosswalk that claims an account twice overstates two of them, and both failures are invisible unless the rows foot. Three accounts have to be split by sub-account first, because one account number serves two of the statute's classifications:
| Parent | Sub-account | Contents | Crosswalk row |
|---|---|---|---|
| 5300 | 5300.1 | Fees payable to the division | l |
| 5300 | 5300.2 | Licenses, permits and corporate annual report, everything else in 5300 | a |
| 5310 | 5310.1 | Tangible personal property taxes on association-owned property | e |
| 5310 | 5310.2 | Federal and state income taxes | i |
| 5320 | 5320.1 | Real property taxes on property the association owns | e |
| 5320 | 5320.2 | Real property taxes on leased areas | f |
A sub-account splits its parent's total, it does not repeat it: 5300.1 plus 5300.2 equals 5300. Where a split has no activity, for example an association with no leased areas, the sub-account is simply absent and its row is zero.
| § 718.504(21)(c)1. | Classification | Your accounts | Total |
|---|---|---|---|
| a. | Administration of the association | 5020 to 5040, 5100 to 5150, 5200 to 5250, 5300.2, 5400 to 5590 | [$] |
| b. | Management fees | 5010, 5015 | [$] |
| c. | Maintenance | 6310 to 6440, 6610 to 6780, 7010 to 7110 | [$] |
| d. | Rent for recreational and other commonly used facilities | 7120 | [$] |
| e. | Taxes upon association property | 5310.1, 5320.1 | [$] |
| f. | Taxes upon leased areas | 5320.2 | [$] |
| g. | Insurance | 5610 to 5695 | [$] |
| h. | Security provisions | 6910 to 6970 | [$] |
| i. | Other expenses | 5310.2, 6010 to 6090, 7210 to 7240 | [$] |
| j. | Operating capital | 3200, and the operating surplus target | [$] |
| k. | Reserves for all applicable items referenced in § 718.112(2)(g) | Current year funding of the paragraph (g) components only: 9110, and 9140 to 9190, from the reserve fund budget | [$] |
| l. | Fees payable to the division | 5300.1 | [$] |
| Beyond the list | Reserve funding for components outside § 718.112(2)(g). Disclosed because § 718.112(2)(f)1. sets the statutory list as a minimum, not a ceiling | Current year funding of 9120, 9130, and 9200 through 9899, from the reserve fund budget | [$] |
Footing check. Add rows a, b, c, d, e, f, g, h, i and l. The sum must equal total budgeted operating expenses, accounts 5000 through 7299, exactly. Row j, row k and the beyond-the-list row are excluded from that sum and none of the three is an operating expense account: row j is a balance sheet target, and the other two are reserve fund funding, taken from the current year funding field that section 9.3 requires each component to carry. If the ten rows do not foot, an account is either missing from every row or claimed by two.
Row k is narrower than your reserve budget, and that is the statute's doing. § 718.504(21)(c)1.k. reads "reserves for all applicable items referenced in s. 718.112(2)(g)", so the classification covers the structural integrity reserve study items and nothing else: roof at 9110 and 9140 through 9190. Building painting at 9120 and pavement resurfacing at 9130 are mandatory reserve components under § 718.112(2)(f)2.a. but are not paragraph (g) items, and neither is anything in 9200 through 9899. Their funding is real and still has to be disclosed; it simply is not classification k. That is what the beyond-the-list row is for. § 718.112(2)(f)1. requires the budget to show the § 718.504(21) expenses at a minimum, so adding a row is compliant and folding those components into k is not.
Reserve funding control, run as check 16 in section 13. Row k plus the beyond-the-list row must equal your total budgeted reserve contribution for the year, and that contribution appears once in the ledger: at 8010 under convention B, or at 4020 or 9010 under convention A. Reserve interest at 4410 or 9030, a reserve special assessment at 9040 and a reserve draw at 9050 raise component balances too, but none of them is a budgeted contribution and none of them belongs in this reconciliation.
So row k and account 8010 are not two views of one amount, which is the easy thing to assume and the thing that makes this crosswalk fail. Row k is the paragraph (g) share; 8010 is the whole contribution. It is the two reserve rows together that equal 8010. 8010 and 8020 are interfund transfers rather than expenses, so they stay out of the 5000 to 7299 footing. Under convention A the same total is funded by 4020 or 9010 and there is no operating fund line at all. Either way the reserve contribution is stated once.
Two things worth knowing about this list. It sits in the prospectus section of Chapter 718, which is why boards rarely encounter it; § 718.112(2)(f)1. is what pulls it into the annual budget. And the same subparagraph provides that after turnover of control to the unit owners, any of the § 718.504(21) expenses that are not applicable do not need to be listed. So an association with no leased areas is not obliged to carry an empty line for taxes upon leased areas. It is obliged to have made the judgment.
Two further condominium requirements from the same subparagraph that shape the chart:
Where the association maintains limited common elements with the cost shared only by those entitled to use them under § 718.113(1), the budget or an attached schedule must show the amount budgeted for that maintenance. See section 11.
A multicondominium association must adopt a separate budget of common expenses for each condominium it operates, and a separate budget of common expenses for the association. That is a segment dimension in your chart, not four spreadsheets.
10.2 HOA crosswalk
§ 720.303(7)(b)2., Fla. Stat. requires a report of cash receipts and disbursements to disclose the amount of receipts by accounts and receipt classifications, and the amount of expenses by accounts and expense classifications, including but not limited to a named list. That list is the closest thing Chapter 720 has to a statutory chart of accounts, and it is worth covering whatever reporting tier you land in.
The words including but not limited to are what make this list workable. It is a floor, not a ceiling, so an expense that fits none of the named classifications is still disclosed, in its own row, rather than forced into the nearest one. That is why the table below carries a residual row, and why no account in section 8 is left out of it.
Unlike the condominium list, this one has a single taxes classification and no division-fee classification, so 5300, 5310 and 5320 each go to one row whole. No sub-accounts are needed here.
| § 720.303(7)(b)2. classification | Your accounts | Total |
|---|---|---|
| Costs for security | 6910 to 6970 | [$] |
| Professional and management fees and expenses | 5010, 5015, 5100 to 5150 | [$] |
| Taxes | 5310, 5320 | [$] |
| Costs for recreation facilities | 7010 to 7120 | [$] |
| Expenses for refuse collection and utility services | 6010 to 6090 | [$] |
| Expenses for lawn care | 6310 to 6370 | [$] |
| Costs for building maintenance and repair | 6610 to 6780 | [$] |
| Insurance costs | 5610 to 5695 | [$] |
| Administration and salary expenses | 5020 to 5040, 5200 to 5250, 5300, 5400 to 5590 | [$] |
| Grounds and site expenses other than lawn care, and non-recurring expenses. Disclosed under "including but not limited to" | 6380 to 6440, 7210 to 7240 | [$] |
| Reserves, if maintained by the association | Current year funding of every component, 9110 through 9899, from the reserve fund budget | [$] |
Footing check. Add every row except the reserves row. The sum must equal total expenses for the period, accounts 5000 through 7299, exactly. The reserves row is reserve fund funding, not an operating expense, and 8010 and 8020 are interfund transfers that stay out of the footing for the same reason. Under convention B in section 3.4 the reserves row equals 8010; under convention A it is funded at 4020 or 9010 and has no operating fund line. Stated once either way. Chapter 720 has no equivalent of the condominium's paragraph (g) narrowing, so unlike row k in section 10.1 this row takes the funding of every component you carry.
The residual row is doing real work, so read what is in it. 6380, lake, pond, canal and waterway maintenance, appears in 54 percent of the Florida budgets measured, ahead of irrigation repair and well ahead of pool service. It is not lawn care, it is not building maintenance, and the statute's named list has no home for it. Forcing it into lawn care to avoid an unnamed row misstates both classifications; leaving it out of the crosswalk entirely, which is the easier mistake, drops the single most distinctively Florida line in the chart out of the disclosure altogether. Disclose it in its own row and name the accounts, which is exactly what "including but not limited to" contemplates. The same reasoning covers fountains at 6385, storm cleanup at 6390, pest control at 6400, site lighting at 6410, signage at 6420, entry features at 6430, site amenities at 6440, and the contingency and non-recurring block at 7210 to 7240.
Note the statute's own wording on the reserves row: reserves, if maintained. Chapter 720 requires the classification to be disclosed if you have it, not that you have it. Two further reporting consequences follow from the fork in section 3.1, and they land in the annual financial report rather than in the ledger:
If the budget does not provide for reserve accounts under § 720.303(6)(d), or the declaration, articles or bylaws do not obligate the developer to create reserves, and the association is responsible for repair and maintenance of capital improvements that may result in a special assessment if reserves are not provided or not fully funded, then each financial report required by § 720.303(7) must carry the conspicuous-type statement at § 720.303(6)(c)1., Fla. Stat.
If the budget does provide funding accounts for deferred expenditures but those accounts were not created under paragraph (d), each financial report must carry the conspicuous-type statement at § 720.303(6)(c)2., Fla. Stat. instead, the one that tells owners the funds are not subject to the statute's restrictions on use and are not calculated in accordance with it.
Reproduce the applicable statement verbatim from the current statute text. It is prescribed language in capital letters, not a paraphrase.
10.3 What the chart has to feed at year end
Your reporting tier is set by revenue, and for HOAs also by size. Under § 718.111(13), § 720.303(7) and § 719.104(4), Fla. Stat. the dollar tiers are the same across all three chapters:
| Total annual revenue | Report required |
|---|---|
| Under $150,000 | Report of cash receipts and expenditures |
| $150,000 to under $300,000 | Compiled financial statements |
| $300,000 to under $500,000 | Reviewed financial statements |
| $500,000 or more | Audited financial statements |
One trigger applies only to HOAs: § 720.303(7)(a)4., Fla. Stat. requires an association with at least 1,000 parcels to prepare audited financial statements regardless of revenue. There is no equivalent unit-count trigger in Chapter 718 or Chapter 719.
Deadlines differ and are easy to get wrong. All three chapters require the report to be prepared within 90 days after the fiscal year end. Delivery to owners is not later than 180 days after year end for a condominium under § 718.111(13), and not later than 120 days for an HOA under § 720.303(7) and a cooperative under § 719.104(4)(a), in each case within 21 days after the report is completed. Applying the condominium's 180 days to an HOA is a real compliance failure, not a rounding difference.
Also worth putting in the calendar rather than the ledger: an association may not use the lower-tier substitution at § 720.303(7)(d) for consecutive fiscal years. The statute says plainly that an association may not prepare a financial statement pursuant to that paragraph for consecutive fiscal years.
11. Sub-accounts, segments and shared costs
A flat list of accounts stops working the moment your association is not one uniform community. Add a second dimension rather than multiplying accounts.
| Situation | What to add | Statutory driver |
|---|---|---|
| Multiple condominiums under one association | A segment per condominium plus one for the association | § 718.111(12)(a)11., Fla. Stat. requires accounting records for the association and separate accounting records for each condominium it operates; § 718.112(2)(f)1. requires a separate budget of common expenses for each condominium and for the association |
| Limited common elements maintained at the expense of only those entitled to use them | A sub-account or segment per limited common element group | § 718.112(2)(f)1. requires the budget or an attached schedule to show the amount budgeted for that maintenance |
| Villages, phases or product types assessed differently | A segment per class, and separate assessment revenue accounts | Corpus practice: charts split single family, townhome and condominium assessment income onto separate accounts |
| Shared facilities with a neighboring association | Receivable at 1280, income at 4510 or a dedicated account, and a segment for the shared cost | |
| Master and sub-association relationships | Segment, plus a payable or receivable, never a netted single line | |
| Buildings, where costs are tracked per building | A segment per building | Useful for milestone inspection and structural integrity reserve study work |
The rule is: the account says what it is, the segment says whose it is. Do not create 6310-A, 6310-B and 6310-C for landscape maintenance in three villages. Create one 6310 and three segments. Otherwise every crosswalk in section 10 has to be rebuilt each time a village is added.
12. Where common practice conflicts with the statute or the convention
Everything in this section was measured in the corpus. The frequencies are what associations do; the right hand column is what they should do instead.
| # | What the corpus shows | Why it is wrong | Fix |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | "Retained earnings" on 41 percent of balance sheets | An association has fund balances, not retained earnings. The label is a for-profit software default | Rename to operating fund balance (3010, 3020) and reserve fund balance (3100, 3110) |
| 2 | Fund columns on only 31 percent of balance sheets | § 718.111(14) and § 719.104(8), Fla. Stat. permit commingled investment but require commingled operating and reserve funds to be accounted for separately | Two fund columns plus a total, on every statement |
| 3 | Reserve assessments presented as operating revenue with no transfer recorded, so the money never reaches the reserve fund at all | Reserve money is constrained on arrival, not on transfer, and a fund that never receives it cannot report it | Convention A: 4020, and 4410 for interest, belong to the reserve fund. Convention B: 4010 carries the assessment and the 8010 to 9020 transfer pair does the funding. One or the other, never both, and never neither. Section 3.4 |
| 4 | Reserve interest swept to operating | § 718.112(2)(f)3., Fla. Stat.: reserve funds and any interest accruing thereon remain in the reserve account. § 720.303(6)(h) says the same for an HOA, but only for reserve accounts established under § 720.303(6)(d); for voluntary deferred expenditure accounts § 720.303(6)(c)2. states the funds are not subject to the statute's restrictions on use. See the fork in section 3.1 | Post reserve interest to 4410 or 9030, in the reserve fund. Where the HOA fork puts you outside the statute, do it anyway as board policy and say that is what it is |
| 5 | A single "Reserves" line: 71 percent of budgets show a reserve contribution, 8 percent show replacement cost, 5 percent show useful life | The statutory formula is defined in terms of remaining useful life and replacement cost. A single line has no derivation | Component accounts, 9110 through 9899, each carrying the five fields in section 9.3 |
| 6 | One blended insurance figure, in 73 percent of budgets | Not unlawful, but it makes a renewal increase unexplainable | Split 5610 to 5695 by policy |
| 7 | No allowance for doubtful accounts: only 33 percent carry one | On accrual books with delinquencies, this overstates assets and fund balance | Add 1290 and review it at every close |
| 8 | A suspense balance at month end, on 10 percent of balance sheets | Suspense is an exception queue, not an account | 2400 must be zero at every close |
| 9 | Interfund due to and due from accounts on 25 percent of balance sheets, not always matching | The pairs cross the funds. Testing 1510 against 2300, or 1520 against 2310, tests two same-fund accounts that are unrelated, so the test passes while a real break sits in the other pair | Test the cross-fund pairs: 1510 equals 2310, and 1520 equals 2300, every month. Each pair eliminates on combination. They do not sum to zero |
| 10 | Roof, painting and pavement carried only as operating repair lines | For condominiums these are mandatory reserve components regardless of cost, § 718.112(2)(f)2.a., Fla. Stat. | Reserve components at 9110, 9120, 9130. Keep non-reserve repair separately at 6630, 6640, 6730 |
| 11 | Reserve pooling across whatever components are convenient | § 718.112(2)(f)4., Fla. Stat.: paragraph (g) components may only be pooled with other paragraph (g) components | Two pools if necessary, one for (g) components and one for the rest |
| 12 | Capital contributions presented as income, on 20 percent of balance sheets | A working capital contribution collected at closing under the declaration is generally not operating revenue | 3200, and confirm the treatment with your CPA |
| 13 | The reserve study charged to the reserve fund | The study is a current-year operating expense; the work it recommends is the reserve expenditure | 5140 and 5150, in the operating fund |
| 14 | Contingency carrying monthly postings | Contingency is a budget line. Actual spend belongs on the account that describes it | 7210 stays near zero in the actual column |
| 15 | The $10,000 reserve threshold, still widely quoted | The current text of § 718.112(2)(f)2.a., Fla. Stat. reads $25,000 or the inflation-adjusted amount determined by the division, whichever is greater | Look up the division's posted figure each budget year. Do not hardcode either number |
13. Month-end control totals
Run these every month before the package goes to the board. Each one is a single comparison, and each one catches a specific failure.
| # | Check | Passes when | Catches |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Total assets equals total liabilities plus fund balances | Exactly | A one-sided entry |
| 2 | Account 1210 plus account 1215 equals the assessments portion of the accounts receivable aged trial balance, and 1220 to 1280 each tie to their own subsidiary listing | Exactly | Owner ledger drift, misapplied payments, fraud. Under convention B, 1215 is zero and the whole assessment sits in 1210 |
| 3 | Account 2010 plus account 2015 equals the open payables listing total | Exactly | Unrecorded or duplicated invoices, and reserve project invoices coded to the operating fund |
| 4 | Every cash account equals its bank reconciliation | Exactly | Everything |
| 5 | 1510 equals 2310, and 1520 equals 2300 | Each pair equal, to the cent | Untracked movement between operating and reserve. These are the two cross-fund pairs from section 4.5; same-fund balances are not paired and never sum to zero |
| 6 | Account 2400 suspense equals zero, and where 9050 is run as a clearing account rather than a non-posting presentation line, 9050 equals zero too | Exactly | Unidentified receipts and disbursements, and a reserve draw left sitting as an inflow with no payable recorded beside it |
| 7 | Reserve fund assets, 1110 to 1140 plus 1215 less 1295 plus 1520, less reserve fund liabilities, 2015 plus 2240 plus 2250 plus 2310, equals the reserve fund balance, 3100 plus 3110. Run the same test on any restricted fund: 1150 and its share of 1220 and 1270, less 2110 and 2120, equals 3300 | Exactly | Reserve money spent on operating costs, and reserve or restricted liabilities parked in the operating fund. Under convention B, 1215 and 1295 are zero and drop out |
| 8 | The reserve fund balance, 3100 plus 3110, equals the sum of the component balances, 9110 through 9899, from the balance field in section 9.3 | Exactly, once both sides are on the same basis. See the note below | Component schedule drift, and reserve funding counted twice under both conventions at once |
| 9 | The dark accounts for the convention you did not choose carry no activity for the period. Convention A: 8010 and 9020 are zero. Convention B: 4020, 9010, 1215 and 1295 are zero. Under both: whichever of 4020 and 9010, and whichever of 4410 and 9030, you did not choose | Exactly zero | Reserve funding counted twice, which is what makes check 8 fail with no coding error to find. Section 3.4 |
| 10 | Under convention B only, 8010 equals 9020. Under both conventions, 8020 equals 9080 | Each pair equal, to the cent | A transfer recorded on one side |
| 11 | Where operating and reserve are commingled in one investment account, the combined balance is at least the identified reserve amount | Always | A breach of § 718.111(14) or § 719.104(8), Fla. Stat. |
| 12 | Two separate agreements, run together, not against each other: 1410 to 1450 equals the unexpired portion of each policy premium at month end, and 2200 equals the finance company's remaining principal balance | Each to its own schedule | A prepaid that has stopped amortizing, or a finance balance that has stopped being reduced |
| 13 | Year-to-date revenue and expense agree to the budget comparison statement | Exactly | Statements built from two different sources |
Why check 12 is not one comparison. Prepaid insurance amortizes over the policy period, normally twelve equal months. A premium finance agreement normally takes a down payment and then eight to eleven level installments that carry interest. The two run on different clocks and different amounts, so they are never equal, and a check that demands they match sends a treasurer hunting for an error that is not there. Reconcile each to its own schedule. What you are looking for is the pair going stale: a prepaid balance that did not move this month, or a payable that did not.
What your basis of accounting does to this list. Checks 1, 4, 5, 6, 8, 9, 10, 11, 13, 14, 15 and 16 hold on the accrual, modified accrual and cash bases alike, because none of them depends on when an amount is recognized. Four depend on it. On pure cash books 1210, 1215, 1290, 1295 and 2015 do not exist and 2010 holds nothing, so check 2 and check 3 do not run at all and check 7 reduces to reserve cash and investments, 1110 to 1140, plus 1520, less the reserve liabilities that survive on cash books, which are 2240, 2250 and 2310. Check 12 assumes you carry prepaid insurance at 1410 to 1450, which section 3.3 drops on the cash basis; where you have dropped it, reconcile 2200 to the finance schedule alone. Section 3.3 is the list of accounts the basis moves.
Check 8 needs both sides on one basis, and this is the trap in it. The reserve fund balance at 3100 plus 3110 is whatever your ledger says on your basis. A reserve study's component balances are conventionally cash funded. On accrual or modified accrual books under convention A the ledger balance also carries the reserve assessment billed and unpaid, 1215 net of 1295, so the two sides differ by exactly that amount and the check fails while nothing is wrong. Resolve it one way and write down which: either maintain the component balance field on the same basis as the ledger, or compare the component total against 3100 plus 3110 less the net reserve receivable, which is 1215 less 1295. On cash books, and under convention B on any basis, the two sides meet without adjustment. A reserve draw at 9050 needs no adjustment either way, because the cash and the payable at 2240 or 2250 land in the reserve fund together and leave the fund balance untouched.
Three more run at budget adoption rather than monthly. Two are the footing checks in section 10 and the third ties the crosswalk's reserve row back to the ledger. Run them again on the year-to-date actuals before the annual financial report goes out.
| # | Check | Passes when | Catches |
|---|---|---|---|
| 14 | Condominiums: rows a, b, c, d, e, f, g, h, i and l of the section 10.1 crosswalk sum to total expenses, accounts 5000 through 7299 | Exactly | An account omitted from every classification, or claimed by two |
| 15 | HOAs: every row of the section 10.2 crosswalk except the reserves row sums to total expenses, accounts 5000 through 7299 | Exactly | The same, and specifically the grounds accounts at 6380 to 6440 that no named classification covers |
| 16 | The crosswalk's reserve funding, which for a condominium is row k plus the beyond-the-list row of section 10.1 and for an HOA is the reserves row of section 10.2 whole, equals the budgeted reserve contribution in the ledger: 8010 under convention B, or 4020 or 9010 under convention A | Exactly | A reserve contribution disclosed at one number in the budget and recorded at another, and the paragraph (g) narrowing of row k being read as the whole reserve budget |
Checks 2, 3 and 4 are the three that most often reveal something. They are also the three schedules least likely to be in a published package: the aged receivables trial balance appears in 40 percent of the association packages measured, the payables listing in 6 percent, and bank reconciliations in 5 percent. Include all three.
14. Setup and conversion
14.1 New chart, setup checklist
| Done | Step |
|---|---|
| [ ] | Fiscal year confirmed against the bylaws, not against habit |
| [ ] | Basis of accounting chosen and written down: [accrual / modified accrual / cash], and the accounts in the section 3.3 table adjusted to match |
| [ ] | Basis disclosed on the face of the monthly package and the annual financial statements, not only in the setup file |
| [ ] | Association type confirmed: [condominium / cooperative / HOA], because the reserve and reporting rules differ |
| [ ] | HOAs: reserve accounts established under § 720.303(6)(d), Fla. Stat.? [yes / no], with the date and the vote or written-consent record filed |
| [ ] | HOAs answering no: accounts labeled voluntary deferred expenditure accounts, not reserves, everywhere owners will read them |
| [ ] | HOAs answering no: the § 720.303(6)(c)1. or § 720.303(6)(c)2. conspicuous-type statement, whichever applies, reproduced verbatim in each annual financial report |
| [ ] | Funds created: operating, reserve, and [restricted, purpose] |
| [ ] | Reserve funding convention chosen and written down: [A, direct funding / B, operating recognition then transfer], per section 3.4 |
| [ ] | The other convention's accounts locked against posting: under A that is 8010 and 9020, under B that is 4020, 9010, 1215 and 1295 |
| [ ] | Reserve interest home chosen: [4410 / 9030], and the other one locked |
| [ ] | Reserve fund liabilities created in the reserve fund, not the operating fund: 2015 for reserve project payables, and 2240 and 2250 if the association has borrowed for reserve work |
| [ ] | Reserve borrowing set up as a financing inflow: 9050 against 2240 or 2250, with 9050 excluded from every reserve fund revenue total and interest posted to 9060 |
| [ ] | Component balance field and the ledger agreed on one basis, so control total 8 can run. Section 13 |
| [ ] | Sub-accounts created for the section 10.1 splits: 5300.1 and 5300.2, 5310.1 and 5310.2, 5320.1 and 5320.2 |
| [ ] | Member deposits at 2120 held in a separate bank account with per-member sub-accounts, § 720.303(8)(d), Fla. Stat. |
| [ ] | Number width chosen: [4 digit / 5 digit] |
| [ ] | Bank accounts named on 1010 to 1150 with institution and last four digits |
| [ ] | Reserve components taken from the current reserve study or structural integrity reserve study, not invented |
| [ ] | Structural integrity reserve study required? [yes / no], and if yes, the paragraph (g) components present: 9110, and 9140 to 9190 |
| [ ] | Segments created for [buildings / villages / limited common element groups / condominiums] |
| [ ] | Posting to header accounts disabled |
| [ ] | Section 10 crosswalk completed, reviewed, and footed: every account 5000 to 7299 in exactly one row, and the rows summing to total budgeted expenses |
| [ ] | Section 13 control totals set up as a monthly close checklist |
| [ ] | Chart reviewed by [CPA name] on [date] |
| [ ] | Chart reviewed by [counsel, if reserve or records questions arose] on [date] |
14.2 Conversion sheet, existing chart to new
Do not convert mid-year. Map, run parallel for one close, then switch at fiscal year end.
| Old number | Old name | New number | New name | Fund | Notes |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| [ ] | [ ] | [ ] | [ ] | [ ] | [ ] |
| [ ] | [ ] | [ ] | [ ] | [ ] | [ ] |
| [ ] | [ ] | [ ] | [ ] | [ ] | [ ] |
Rules for the mapping:
Every old account maps to exactly one new account. If an old account needs to split, it splits going forward, not retroactively.
Never merge two old accounts into one new account without keeping the prior-year comparative separately. You will lose the ability to explain a variance.
Carry the old number in the new account's description for one full year, so anyone reading a prior-year document can find its successor.
Reserve component balances transfer component by component. If the old chart had one reserve line, allocate it to components using the most recent reserve study, document the allocation, and have the CPA look at it.
15. Adapting this outside Florida
The account names in this template transfer anywhere: a landscape contract is a landscape contract. The structure mostly transfers: assets, liabilities, fund balances, revenue, expenses and reserve components by component is standard community association accounting, not a Florida invention.
What does not transfer is everything cited to a statute. Every document behind this template is a Florida association's, so nothing here is evidence about any other state.
Re-derive these eight before using this chart elsewhere:
Whether reserves are mandatory, permissive, or unaddressed.
Which components must be reserved for, and at what dollar threshold.
Whether a structural or life-safety study is required, and what it must cover.
The commingling rule, and whether it binds after developer turnover.
Whether reserve interest must stay in the reserve.
The vote standard for waiving or reducing reserves, and how long a waiver lasts.
The annual financial report tiers, the deadlines, and any size-based trigger.
Any statutory list of required expense classifications, which is what sections 10.1 and 10.2 exist to satisfy in Florida.
And three that are climate rather than law: the lake, pond and waterway account at 6380 is a top ten Florida expense and may be irrelevant elsewhere; storm preparation at 7230 is recurring in Florida and exceptional in most states; and there is no snow removal or heating account in this template, which most northern charts need.
16. What this template does not tell you
Stated plainly, because a chart of accounts that overstates its own authority is worse than none.
It is not your accountant's judgment. Whether to capitalize common elements, how to treat a working capital contribution, whether to file Form 1120-H or 1120, when to recognize fine revenue, and how to present a special assessment are all real accounting questions with association-specific answers. Every one of them touches an account in this template.
It does not read your governing documents. Your declaration may require reserve accounts your statute does not, may limit assessment increases in a way that constrains reserve funding under § 720.303(6)(b), Fla. Stat., or may define common expenses differently from the default. The documents govern.
It asserts nothing about the division's administrative rules. Chapter 61B-22, Florida Administrative Code, contains the division's condominium budget and reserve disclosure rules. The full text of those rules was not available to verify against when this template was written, so nothing here is stated on their authority. Have your CPA or counsel confirm the current rule text before you rely on a presentation for a condominium.
Statutes change, and this area changes often. The condominium reserve regime moved substantially for budgets adopted on or after December 31, 2024. Check the current text before an adoption vote.
The frequencies are measurements, not standards. That 41 percent of associations use the wrong equity label is a finding about the corpus, not permission.
Disclaimer
This template is a starting point, not accounting, tax or legal advice. It sets out one defensible general ledger structure drawn from documents Florida associations publish and from the Florida Statutes as they read when it was written. It is not a substitute for a professional's judgment about your association.
Your association's own governing documents control, and your accountant governs how your books are kept and how your financial statements are presented. Statutes and administrative rules change, and Florida's association reserve and financial reporting requirements have changed materially in recent years. Nothing here has been reviewed against your declaration, your bylaws, your reserve study or your prior-year statements.
Have a Florida certified public accountant experienced with community associations review this chart before your board adopts it, and Florida counsel review any question that turns on your governing documents, your reserve obligations or your records obligations. Nothing in this template creates an accountant-client or attorney-client relationship.
Template provided by Common Elements · commonelements.com/t/fl-chart-of-accounts
Free to use and share. Build this in the app instead and it fills itself from your association's record, then exports branded: commonelements.com/tools