Development Cost Accounting/Tracking
I would like to start this post with some context to my current situation.

I’m 19 and currently in my sophomore year of college. Last summer I landed a commercial real estate internship at a boutique brokerage firm. Most of my summer was spent learning the basics of the industry. I’ve continued to work for this company remotely during school.

This past week I met with my boss and was updated on a development project our company is currently working on. There are four buildings currently being designed, they haven’t broken ground yet but will soon. The buildings consist of a hotel, restaurant, apartment building, and retail. 

My responsibilities for the project are to track costs. We’re starting with the smallest building (thank god) and will eventually work our way to the others. By this point you guys have probably determined I’m very inexperienced for such a crucial part of a real estate project. However, I’ve never been one to turn down a challenge and the possible networking and experience gained from this is invaluable.

My first task is to determine what software we should use in order to track our costs. My boss mentioned Microsoft Projects and Property Metrics as possible solutions. Are either of these feasible? What recommendations do you guys have? Between the two I personally thing Property Metrics would be ideal as they have multiple tutorials that would help me and our team.

I would gladly take any other advise you guys have, and if anyone would be interested in “mentoring” me on future questions I would greatly appreciate it. This is a hell of a project, luckily I don’t have any equity in it and can focus on learning. 

I hope this all makes sense and if you’ve made it this far I appreciate the time.




[{"id": "eah422m", "text": "Track the cost of ??? the entire project? Sounds to me like an accounting software (Quickbooks?) is what you need, but the software you mentioned seems to be more oriented towards if X costs Y you need to get Z to make a profit (proforma).  \n\nPerhaps I am misunderstanding your question \n\n", "replies": [{"id": "eahcbid", "text": "Thanks for your reply.\n\nTo be more specific I need to monitor expenses for each individual building along with the project in its entirety.\n\nThis includes proforma and construction costs/ schedules. So far I\u2019ve concluded I need to include land cost, design and engineering expenses, and site development/building construction costs.\n\nAfter more consideration I\u2019m thinking this may be possible with the use of both Excel to keep track of costs and Property Metrics to determine our ROI.\n\nI hope this helps you better understand my goals and let me know what you think about my thoughts above. ", "replies": [{"id": "eahene0", "text": "Try wallstreetoasis bigger CRE help", "replies": [], "depth": 3}, {"id": "eahkh84", "text": "Ok, I can\u2019t imagine they are expecting you to do their book keeping, so yes excel should do the trick. Throw in some fancy graphs and pie charts and you should be good.  \n\nProperty Metrics should work, but take a look at the other suggestions in this thread as well.  Good Luck!", "replies": [], "depth": 3}], "depth": 2}], "depth": 1}, {"id": "eahdz40", "text": "I might be able to steer you in the right direction. My background is in CRE development and I\u2019ve also launched a software platform that helps automate development project cost management that might be a fit for you. \n\nShoot me a PM if you want to chat some more. ", "replies": [], "depth": 1}, {"id": "eahhfds", "text": "Dude, use excel for cost tracking at this point. Find some development templates online and tweak to fit your needs. I cannot believe that they\u2019re actually relying on a 19 year old to do cost tracking. Part of me feels like they\u2019re seeing how resourceful you are. That being said, good luck bud. ", "replies": [], "depth": 1}, {"id": "eaiomhs", "text": "I gave an initial answer, but let me also provide some more detailed info since others may find this useful.\n\n&amp;#x200B;\n\n1. Proforma - This is not directly applicable to monitoring project costs since I assume at this point in the development process this document should already be built otherwise why are they moving forward with the projects.  The only impact that active development is likely to impact the proforma would be the total project cost (which will ultimately impact returns) and updates to the anticipated start of operations.  Neither of these tasks are what I would consider \"Project Cost Tracking\".  Most proformas are typically built in excel, although i know web-based tools are becoming more popular.\n2. Corporate Accounting - typically a corporate accounting solution would already be in place by whatever development group is managing these projects.  Think of something like Sage or Quickbooks.  This is to create more \"corporate\" type of reports like balance sheet statements and general auditable documentation for investors and/or tax purposes.  In my experience these are typically high level and do not have much detail.  They are also utilized to control and manage actual disbursement of payments whether via wire or checks.\n3. Microsoft Project is really only a scheduling tool.  It does not directly relate to the task you are describing.  However, someone on your team should be actively managing the project schedule, but certainly your job description is not that person.\n4. Project Cost Accounting is the day-to-day management of contracts, invoices, lien waivers, tracking budget, and providing funding requests and cost details to investor/banks.  It is somewhat related to the Corporate Accounting, but in my experience a very different and more detailed type of reporting.  It also includes things such as review of construction pay applications, lien waiver tracking, and insurance documentation.  This typically culminates in a monthly draw report.  As I mentioned in another response, I have a relatively new software product that assists in administering this process ([www.rivur.com](https://www.rivur.com) for any interested).  Almost everyone in the industry today uses excel and email which is a terrible way to manage things and was the primary driver for the creation of or software.\n5. Missing from all of this is the day-to-day project management of the project.  If you are truly only tracking project costs than much of the opinion of those costs need to come from someone else who is actively managing the project team.  Who is reviewing/approving change orders, which invoices are not proper, is the work be billed, but not yet in place, what is the new project schedule.  That project management function can overlap with project cost accounting to an extent, but they are different roles to be sure.\n6. Also for what you are asking 4 x $10M projects I am dubious that you would be able to properly administer these without some heavy oversight from the main development team.  No way this can be done in a vacuum.  The company I work for would have a team of people managing this type of project.  At least 1-2 dedicated project managers, a part-time project accountant, and some executive level folks who would handle periodic financial proforma projection updates and larger finance-related deal issues.\n\n&amp;#x200B;\n\nI would get a very clear understanding on what he is expecting you to manage and/or control and what support team you will have to either direct you or provide feedback that you will need to properly manage your portion of the work.", "replies": [], "depth": 1}]