Community associations are one of the fastest-growing segments in American housing, yet the software most of them use to manage their finances hasn't kept up. According to the Foundation for Community Association Research, there were approximately 373,000 community associations in the United States by the end of 2025, housing nearly 80 million residents and collecting over $120 billion in annual member assessments. These aren't small operations - a mid-sized community management company overseeing 50 HOAs with 200 units each is handling 10,000 unit-level ledgers, separate operating and reserve funds for every association, hundreds of vendor relationships, and board-level financial reporting on monthly cycles. And most of them are still doing it in QuickBooks, spreadsheets, or a patchwork of niche tools that don't talk to each other.
NetSuite is already the ERP of choice for property management companies handling residential, commercial, and mixed-use portfolios. But community management — the business of managing HOAs, condominium associations, cooperatives, and planned communities on behalf of their boards — is an adjacent vertical that NetSuite serves equally well, and almost nobody is talking about it. If you've searched for NetSuite for HOA or HOA ERP software, you've probably found almost nothing — because this is genuinely uncharted territory. Oracle doesn't market NetSuite as HOA software — which is exactly why this opportunity is untapped. The platform's capabilities are there; the industry just hasn't connected the dots yet. This guide shows exactly how.
Community management (sometimes called HOA management, strata management, or community association accounting and management) is the professional administration of homeowner associations, condominium associations, cooperatives, and other common-interest developments. A community management company is hired by the association's board of directors to handle the day-to-day operations that volunteer board members don't have the time or expertise to manage: collecting assessments from homeowners, paying vendors, maintaining reserve funds, enforcing community rules, and producing financial reports for the board and its members.
Unlike traditional property management, where a landlord owns units and collects rent, community management involves collecting assessments from homeowners who are also the association's members. The money doesn't belong to the management company — it belongs to the association. This creates a fiduciary accounting structure where every dollar must be tracked by fund (operating vs. reserve), by association, and by unit. The AICPA recommends the Fund Accounting Method of Reporting for homeowners associations, which requires separate tracking of operating funds, reserve funds, and any special assessment funds on the balance sheet.
Most community management companies start with QuickBooks. But it was built for small business bookkeeping, not as HOA management software for member-based organizations. The limitations hit fast:
The market splits into two camps: purpose-built HOA platforms (AppFolio, Buildium, CINC) that handle operations but run lightweight accounting engines, and general tools (QuickBooks, Sage) that can't scale to multi-association fund accounting. NetSuite occupies a third position: enterprise-grade financial infrastructure that handles the accounting complexity neither camp can match.
NetSuite wasn't built for HOAs - but its core architecture (multi-entity management, fund-style accounting via custom segments, SuiteBilling for recurring assessments, approval workflows, and consolidated reporting) maps directly to community management operations. With the right configuration, it replaces QuickBooks, the spreadsheets, and the disconnected niche tools with a single platform.
NetSuite's value for community management companies comes from five core capabilities that align directly with HOA accounting requirements.
The most fundamental operation in community management is HOA assessment collection — collecting monthly or quarterly dues from homeowners across dozens of associations, each with different assessment amounts, billing cycles, and fee structures.
In NetSuite, each association is set up as a separate subsidiary (in NetSuite OneWorld) or as a distinct class/segment. Homeowners are created as customer records linked to their unit. SuiteBilling generates recurring assessment invoices automatically on the defined schedule - monthly, quarterly, or annually — for every unit in every association. When a homeowner sells their unit, the customer record is updated and the unit's ledger history is preserved, solving the QuickBooks problem of orphaned customer records.
Late fees, interest charges, special assessments, and fines can be configured as separate line items with their own GL accounts. NetSuite's online payment integration (via SuitePayments or third-party processors) lets homeowners pay electronically, with payments that can be configured to apply in the order required by state law or governing documents — typically through workflow rules or scripting.
Reserve fund management is where general accounting software fails HOAs most completely. Under GAAP (as recommended by the AICPA), reserve funds must be tracked separately from operating funds - separate bank accounts, separate balance sheet presentation, separate income/expense tracking. Reserve contributions shouldn't inflate operating income, and reserve expenditures shouldn't flow through operating expenses.
NetSuite handles this through fund-style accounting configured using custom segments or separate subsidiaries. Each association's reserve fund gets its own asset accounts (1100-series), income accounts (4010 for contributions, 4510 for interest), and expense accounts (7000-series for project spending). SuiteBilling generates assessment invoices with separate line items for operating dues and reserve contributions, each posting to its respective fund segment — eliminating most manual journal entries and month-end reclassifications when configured correctly.
The stakes are real. A management company overseeing 50 associations with an average reserve balance of $500,000 each holds $25 million in combined reserve assets. If even a small percentage of reserve expenditures get posted to the wrong fund, the misstatement compounds across every association's financial statements — and for boards, auditors, and state regulators reviewing fiduciary compliance, that's a governance risk, not a rounding issue. Many reserve analysts recommend funding levels between 70–100% of projected replacement costs, with the HOA reserve study updated every 2–3 years. NetSuite's budget vs. actual reporting lets board members see at a glance whether reserve funds are on track, and saved searches can flag associations where balances have fallen below threshold levels.
Community management companies manage vendor relationships on behalf of their associations — landscapers, pool maintenance, elevator service, roofers, painters, plumbers, and dozens of others. Each association has its own vendor contracts, and expenses must be coded to the correct association and fund (operating for routine maintenance, reserve for capital projects).
NetSuite's procurement and accounts payable workflows handle this natively. Vendor bills are entered with the association (subsidiary or segment) and fund classification on every line item. SuiteFlow approval workflows route invoices to the appropriate approver based on dollar amount thresholds, association, or expense category. Routine maintenance under $500 can be auto-approved by the community manager, while capital projects over $5,000 require board treasurer approval.
When purchase orders are used, NetSuite's three-way match between POs, vendor invoices, and received goods/services ensures the association only pays for work that was authorized and completed. For capital projects funded from reserves — like a $150,000 roof replacement or a $75,000 parking lot resurfacing — NetSuite tracks the project from budget approval through purchase order, vendor billing, payment, and reserve fund deduction, with every step in the audit trail.
Board members are volunteer homeowners, not accountants. HOA financial reporting is one of the most time-consuming tasks for community management companies — and where QuickBooks falls shortest. In a QuickBooks-based operation, producing the monthly board package for a single association takes 2–4 hours of formatting, Excel manipulation, and PDF assembly. Multiply by 50 associations, and you have a full-time employee doing nothing but reports.
NetSuite significantly reduces this through automated, scheduled, and templated reporting:
NetSuite's saved reports, scheduled delivery, role-based dashboards, and SuiteAnalytics workbooks mean management companies can automate 80% of the monthly board reporting package. Property management SuiteApps like RIOO , Propertese, and others can extend these capabilities further by adding property-specific records, unit-level tracking, and community management workflows on top of NetSuite's financial engine.
A community management company managing 50, 100, or 200+ associations needs two views simultaneously: the consolidated management company view (fee revenue, internal costs, profitability by association) and the individual association view (operating fund, reserve fund, unit-level ledgers).
NetSuite OneWorld's multi-subsidiary architecture is purpose-built for this. Each association is configured as a subsidiary with its own financial statements, bank accounts, and account structure within NetSuite's shared chart of accounts framework. The management company is the parent entity. Consolidated reports roll up all subsidiaries for internal reporting, while individual subsidiary reports produce the association-level financials boards and auditors require.
For management companies not ready for full OneWorld, NetSuite's custom segments and classes can replicate much of this within a single-subsidiary instance — using segments to tag every transaction by association and fund.
Setting up NetSuite for community management requires a deliberate chart of accounts design, proper subsidiary or segment configuration, and assessment schedule setup. Here's the configuration guidance that most implementation partners don't cover.
Chart of Accounts Structure. The chart of accounts should mirror the dual-fund structure of HOA accounting. A recommended framework:
| Account Range | Category | Examples |
|---|---|---|
| 1000–1099 | Operating Assets | Operating checking, petty cash, prepaid insurance |
| 1100–1199 | Reserve Assets | Reserve savings, reserve CDs, reserve money market |
| 2000–2099 | Liabilities | Accounts payable, prepaid assessments, security deposits |
| 3000–3099 | Equity | Operating fund balance, reserve fund balance |
| 4000–4099 | Operating Income | Regular assessments, late fees, application fees, interest income |
| 4500–4599 | Reserve Income | Reserve contributions, reserve interest earned |
| 5000–6999 | Operating Expenses | Landscaping, utilities, insurance, legal, management fees, repairs |
| 7000–7999 | Reserve Expenditures | Roof replacement, painting, paving, elevator modernization |
This structure ensures that operating and reserve activities are cleanly separated in the general ledger, which is essential for GAAP-compliant fund accounting and for producing the dual-column balance sheet that auditors and board members expect.
Community-as-Subsidiary Setup
In NetSuite OneWorld, each association is created as a subsidiary with its own tax identification number (most HOAs file as either 501(c)(4) or 501(c)(7) organizations, or use IRS Form 1120-H for tax reporting). This gives each association its own set of financial statements, its own bank account reconciliation, and its own audit trail — completely isolated from every other association in the system.
Assessment Schedule Configuration
Using SuiteBilling, recurring assessment invoices are configured per association. The assessment amount for each unit is defined on the subscription line item, with separate line items for operating dues and reserve contributions. NetSuite generates invoices automatically at the start of each billing cycle, posts the operating portion to operating income (4000-series) and the reserve portion to reserve income (4500-series), and creates the accounts receivable entries at the unit/homeowner level.
Implementation reality check
Setting up NetSuite for community management is not a weekend project. A typical implementation for a mid-sized management company (30–75 associations) takes 3–6 months when working with an experienced NetSuite partner, including chart of accounts design, subsidiary configuration, SuiteBilling setup, historical data migration, and board report templating. Companies migrating from QuickBooks should budget for a parallel-run period where both systems operate simultaneously to validate data accuracy before cutover.
Key reports by audience:
| Report | Audience | Frequency | NetSuite Source |
|---|---|---|---|
| Balance Sheet by Fund | Board of Directors | Monthly | Financial Report (by segment) |
| Budget vs. Actual Income Statement | Board of Directors | Monthly | Financial Report (comparative) |
| Assessment Aging | Board / Collections | Monthly | A/R Aging by Customer |
| Reserve Fund Status | Board / Reserve Analyst | Quarterly | Custom saved search |
| Vendor Spend Summary | Board / Manager | Monthly | Expense report by vendor/category |
| Management Company P&L | Internal Management | Monthly | Consolidated financial report |
| Delinquency Summary (all HOAs) | Internal Management | Weekly | Cross-subsidiary saved search |
Q1. Can NetSuite handle fund accounting for HOAs?
Yes. NetSuite can be configured to support fund-style accounting through custom segments and the balancing segments feature (introduced in the 2020.1 release), which ensures that balance sheet entries balance by fund. Each fund - operating, reserve, special assessment - gets its own segment value, with separate asset, income, and expense accounts tracked independently.
Q2. How does NetSuite track assessments by unit and homeowner?
Each unit is linked to a customer record (the homeowner). SuiteBilling generates recurring invoices per unit at the assessment amount defined in the subscription. When ownership changes, the customer record is updated while the unit's full ledger history is preserved — solving the duplicate-address problem that plagues QuickBooks-based HOAs.
Q3. Does NetSuite support multi-association management?
Yes. NetSuite OneWorld allows each association to be configured as a separate subsidiary with its own financial statements, bank accounts, and account structure within the shared chart of accounts framework. The management company operates as the parent entity, with consolidated reporting across all associations.
Q4. How does NetSuite handle late fees and payment application order?
Late fees are configured as automated charges triggered by past-due assessments. Payment application order (which varies by state law and association governing documents) can be configured through workflow rules or scripting to determine whether payments are applied first to assessments, late fees, fines, or other charges.
Q5. Can NetSuite handle HOA tax reporting (Form 1120-H)?
NetSuite tracks the income and expense data needed for IRS Form 1120-H (the simplified tax return available to HOAs that meet certain criteria) or the standard Form 1120. Your CPA can pull the required data directly from NetSuite's financial reports. For associations with both capital and non-capital reserve components, NetSuite's account structure supports the necessary breakdowns for tax compliance.
Q6. How does NetSuite compare to purpose-built HOA software like AppFolio, Buildium, or CINC?
Purpose-built HOA management software like AppFolio, Buildium, or CINC offers features like violation tracking, architectural review workflows, and homeowner portals that NetSuite doesn't provide out of the box. NetSuite's advantage is in financial depth: fund-style accounting, multi-entity consolidation, advanced budgeting, and audit-grade reporting. For community management companies that need enterprise-grade accounting alongside operational tools, NetSuite with a property management SuiteApp provides both.
Q7. Is NetSuite overkill for a small HOA management company?
For a company managing fewer than 10 small associations, dedicated HOA software may be more cost-effective. NetSuite's value inflection point comes when a management company reaches 20+ associations, handles complex reserve fund accounting, needs multi-entity consolidation, or has outgrown the reporting limitations of QuickBooks and niche tools. At that scale, the efficiency gains in automated billing, fund accounting, and board reporting justify the investment.
Community management is one piece of the property management puzzle. Whether you're evaluating HOA ERP software for the first time or migrating from QuickBooks, NetSuite's architecture supports the financial depth that growing community management companies need.
For a complete picture of how NetSuite handles residential, commercial, and mixed-use portfolios, explore our pillar guide: Why NetSuite Is the Best ERP for Property Management Companies.