Accounting Manager

$90,000 - $100,000 per year + performance bonus
Full-time | West Chester, PA

About the Role

Rentwell is hiring an experienced Accounting Manager to become the senior internal owner of our accounting operations and financial controls. You are the senior internal accounting authority at Rentwell. When an accounting or financial-control problem cannot be solved by the team or our outside partners, it comes to you—and you are expected to determine the answer and drive it through resolution.

Rentwell is a growing residential property management and real estate company serving Pennsylvania. Our accounting environment includes AppFolio, QuickBooks Online, outsourced accounting partners, trust accounts, multiple entities, owner funds, security deposits, vendor payments, and significant transaction volume.

This is a hands-on accounting leadership role—not a transactional bookkeeping position.

You will report directly to the COO/Integrator and take ownership of ensuring our financial information is accurate, reconciled, controlled, timely, and understandable.

You will not personally process every accounting transaction. You will work with internal team members and outsourced accounting partners who perform transactional work.

You own whether the finished result is right.

If you enjoy taking an accounting environment with too many moving pieces and creating structure, controls, accountability, and reliable numbers, this may be an excellent opportunity.

What You'll Own

Accounting & Month-End Close (cash based accounting)

• Own the monthly accounting close and ensure financials are complete, reviewed, and management-ready.
  
• Review bank, credit card, debt, intercompany, and balance-sheet reconciliations.
  
• Review journal entries, corrections, and account activity for accuracy.
  
• Identify unexplained balances and resolve them rather than carrying problems forward.
  
• Maintain accounting standards, documentation, and close controls.
  
• Ensure significant accounting conclusions are supported by appropriate documentation.
  

Trust Accounting & Client Funds

• Oversee accounting controls surrounding trust accounts, security deposits, escrow, and client funds.
  
• Review and understand three-way trust reconciliations.
  
• Ensure trust reconciliations are completed monthly with zero unexplained variance.
  
• Investigate trust discrepancies and escalate potential shortages or control issues immediately.
  
• Ensure client funds are appropriately segregated, recorded, and supported.
  

Cash, AP, AR & Debt

• Maintain clear visibility into company cash and upcoming financial obligations.
  
• Maintain a rolling 13-week cash forecast.
  
• Oversee accounts payable controls, vendor payments, credit cards, duplicate prevention, approvals, and payment deadlines.
  
• Monitor accounts receivable, cash application, aging, and collection issues.
  
• Maintain accurate debt schedules, loan balances, principal and interest allocations, amortization information, and payment obligations.
  
• Ensure owner-funded and reimbursable expenses are properly identified and recovered.
  
• Identify financial problems before they become emergencies.
  

Revenue Integrity

A major part of this role is making sure Rentwell captures the revenue it has actually earned.

You will develop recurring controls and audits around items such as:

• Management fees
  
• Leasing fees
  
• Renewal fees
  
• Lease-break fees
  
• Late fees
  
• NSF fees
  
• Utility reimbursements and tenant bill-backs
  
• Maintenance and construction markups
  
• Credit-card and owner reimbursements
  
• Other ancillary revenue
  

When revenue leakage is discovered, your job is not simply to correct the transaction. You will determine why it happened and fix the process that allowed it to happen.

Owner & Property Financial Controls

• Establish financial quality controls for owner statements and owner distributions.
  
• Ensure distributions appropriately consider available cash, reserves, bills, and pending obligations.
  
• Oversee the financial-control portion of move-ins, move-outs, security-deposit dispositions, and end-of-management closeouts.
  
• Ensure property and owner financial closeouts are complete and timely.
  
• Help identify and eliminate recurring owner accounting questions by correcting their underlying cause.
  

Reporting & Financial Visibility

Provide leadership with a concise monthly financial package that makes it easy to understand:

• Profit and loss
  
• Balance sheet
  
• Cash position
  
• Budget versus actual
  
• Accounts receivable and payable
  
• Debt obligations
  
• Key financial KPIs
  
• Material risks and exceptions
  

We do not want reports that simply present numbers.
We want an Accounting Manager who can explain: What changed? Why did it change? Is it temporary or structural? What should we do about it?

Systems, Controls & Process Improvement

Our accounting environment touches multiple systems, including AppFolio, QuickBooks Online, PayHawk, banking platforms, spreadsheets, and outsourced providers.

You will help create a cleaner financial operating system by:

• Establishing clear sources of truth.
  
• Eliminating duplicate or obsolete trackers.
  
• Creating consistent accounting processes and definitions.
  
• Building exception-based controls that surface problems quickly.
  
• Improving workflows between operations and accounting.
  
• Automating repetitive processes where appropriate without sacrificing financial controls.
  
• Documenting critical accounting processes and creating backup coverage.
  

Accounting Partner Leadership

Rentwell uses outside accounting and financial partners for portions of our transactional work.

You will be the internal accounting owner responsible for ensuring their finished work meets Rentwell's standards.

That includes:

• Establishing clear responsibilities and deadlines.
  
• Reviewing work for accuracy and completeness.
  
• Holding partners accountable for service levels.
  
• Rejecting incomplete or unsupported work.
  
• Resolving recurring issues rather than repeatedly working around them.
  
• Coordinating with CPAs, banks, payroll providers, and other financial partners when needed.
  

What Success Looks Like

• Monthly close consistent, accurate and timely.
  
• Trust reconciliations have zero unexplained variance.
  
• Leadership has reliable visibility into cash, debt, AR, AP, and profitability.
  
• Accounting problems are discovered through controls. Not by executives, owners, vendors, or CPAs.
  
• Revenue leakage is identified and systematically reduced.
  
• Critical accounting processes have clear owners, standards, and backup coverage.
  
• Finance can operate successfully without continuous executive intervention.
  

Required Qualifications

• 5+ years of progressive accounting experience.
  
• Meaningful responsibility for month-end close, reconciliations, and financial reporting.
  
• Strong understanding of journal entries, accrual accounting, and balance-sheet reconciliations.
  
• Experience investigating and resolving accounting discrepancies.
  
• Experience with accounts payable, accounts receivable, cash management, and financial controls.
  
• Strong QuickBooks Online skills.
  
• Strong Excel or Google Sheets skills.
  
• Experience working with or overseeing bookkeepers, accountants, or outsourced accounting providers.
  
• Ability to independently investigate unusual financial activity and reach a supportable conclusion.
  
• Ability to personally understand, review, and explain a three-way trust or escrow reconciliation.
  

Strongly Preferred

• Residential property management or multifamily real estate accounting experience.
  
• AppFolio experience.
  
• Trust, escrow, security-deposit, or other client-fund accounting experience.
  
• Multi-entity real estate accounting experience.
  
• Experience managing outsourced or offshore accounting teams.
  
• Experience taking over an accounting process that was delayed, disorganized, or poorly controlled and improving it.
  

  
  

  The Person We're Looking For

  You are a strong decision-maker and an exceptional problem solver.

  You see an unexplained number and keep digging until you understand it.

  You don't respond to a difficult accounting problem with, “Who should I ask?” Your first instinct is, “How do I figure this out?”

  You know how to research, investigate, test assumptions, follow transactions, examine supporting documentation, ask better questions, and reach a defensible conclusion.

  You are comfortable making decisions and taking responsibility for them.

  You would rather say: “I don't have enough evidence to conclude that yet, but here's what I need to determine the answer.” than provide an answer you cannot support.

  You surface problems early and bring leadership solutions and recommendations—not problems that need to be handed back to someone else.

  You are comfortable getting into the details of a reconciliation or journal entry while also being able to explain the issue, make a recommendation, and decide what happens next.

  You don't need every process to already exist. You figure it out, build the process, and make sure the problem stays solved.

  You don't need every process to already be perfect. You help make it perfect.

  Why Rentwell

  This is an opportunity to do more than maintain an established accounting department.

  You will have meaningful ownership over how the accounting function operates and direct influence over financial controls, cash visibility, systems, processes, reporting, and profitability.

  You will work directly with company leadership and have the opportunity to build a finance function capable of supporting Rentwell's continued growth.

  Compensation: $100,000 base salary + performance bonus

  Interview Process

  Final candidates should expect to discuss real accounting scenarios rather than only hypothetical interview questions.

  This may include reviewing a three-way trust reconciliation, diagnosing an accounting discrepancy, and explaining how you would improve a financial process that is not working properly.