Diligent vs BoardPro for Property Managers Holding Client Funds

A property manager routinely signs vendor contracts, lease amendments, and management agreement changes on behalf of owners who trust the manager to act within an agreed scope. Because these signatures happen constantly and rarely get formally reviewed, it's easy for the underlying authorization to become a formality nobody actually checks, until an owner's own compliance or audit function specifically requests to see it, at which point the gap between practice and documentation becomes very visible.

Any amendment to a management agreement itself, changing fee structure, scope, or termination terms, should have a clear internal authorization on the property manager's side, not just the owner's signature confirming the amendment was agreed. Owners auditing their property manager relationships increasingly want to see evidence of the manager's own internal governance around material changes, not just proof the amendment exists.

A property manager working with dozens of ownership entities, each potentially requiring different signers or approval limits depending on the specific management agreement, faces a real tracking challenge: authority that was correct when a relationship started can drift as staff change roles, and a signature executed under outdated authority creates real risk both for the manager and for the owner relying on it. A regional manager promoted, transferred, or departed without a corresponding update to signing records is one of the most common ways this drift happens, precisely because the change feels like an internal HR matter rather than a governance one.

For each client relationship, confirm who is currently authorized to sign on the property manager's behalf, whether that authority matches what the management agreement itself specifies, whether any dollar thresholds requiring additional approval are being followed in practice, and when this was last reviewed. A property manager holding many client relationships should build this into a recurring review rather than checking only when a specific owner asks.

For each client relationship, confirm these points:

• Who is currently authorized to sign on the property manager's behalf for that client.
• Whether that authority matches what the management agreement for that client itself specifies.
• Whether any dollar thresholds requiring additional approval are actually followed in practice.
• When the authority was last reviewed, so drift from staff changes gets caught.

A firm managing a modest portfolio with a small internal team can track this on BoardPro: a signing authority resolution per client relationship or per authority tier, updated as staff roles change, and a simple log an owner's audit team can be shown on request. The tool needs to make it easy to find the right document quickly, since an owner's audit request rarely comes with much lead time.

A firm managing a large, diverse portfolio across many ownership entities, especially one working with institutional owners who run their own vendor compliance programs, benefits from Diligent's stronger entity and permission management: authority tracked per client relationship, an audit trail showing exactly when authority was granted or changed, and a system built to produce documentation quickly when an owner's compliance team asks.

Multi-signatory approval controls on accounts holding client trust funds, the kind Mercury offers, add a layer of protection that mirrors what owners expect from a property manager handling their money: no single person can move client funds without a second authorized signer, matching the same discipline the signing authority resolution is supposed to establish for contracts and agreements. When both controls are actually enforced and consistent with each other, an owner's audit finds a manager whose practice matches its documentation.

When a property manager onboards a new client, the signing authority and approval-threshold conversation should happen before the first vendor contract is signed, not after an audit years later raises the question for the first time. Building a short onboarding checklist that confirms authorized signers, approval thresholds, and how amendments to the management agreement itself will be handled sets a clean baseline the manager can point back to for the life of the relationship, rather than reconstructing an implicit understanding after the fact. That same checklist should also specify how the owner expects to be notified of any staff change affecting who has authority on their account.