How do HOA charges and the HOA expense work together?
HOA dues are a cost the landlord pays to the association. Some leases pass part or all of that cost to the tenant as a monthly charge. PropertyFolio supports both sides.
To bill the tenant, open Manage Payments for the lease, go to Recurring Monthly Charges, choose the type HOA / association dues, and enter the monthly amount. The charge is added to the tenant's Total Monthly Rent, appears on the lease PDF, and reprices future unpaid rent months.
To record what you pay the association, keep the HOA amount on the property itself, in the mortgage step under Paid to the community. That amount is the fixed HOA expense your budget, dashboard, annual report and tax report use.
If a lease bills HOA to the tenant but the property has no HOA expense recorded, Manage Payments shows a warning with one button that records the tenant's HOA amount as the property's fixed HOA expense. Nothing is written until you tap it. If your actual association bill is different from what the tenant pays, edit the property's HOA amount afterwards.
Because the tenant's HOA is collected inside rent, the budget and the annual report show it as a memo line called HOA reimbursed by tenant. It is already included in rent income and is never added to income, expenses or net cash flow a second time. On the property budget the memo row only appears in years where the tenant was billed HOA and cannot be edited; on a month where only part of the rent was billed it shows the full monthly HOA charge.