Quickbooks - Yes or no?

I may be a CPA but I HATE bookkeeping. That is why I am so irritated that I have completely redone my books 3 times now to find the right system. Hopefully, this will save someone out there all of the hassle that I went through and get you started on the right foot.

After entering all of my data into first Quicken Rental Property Manager and then Rentec, I have decided that QuickBooks is the best system for me. (I briefly tried to use a combination of Quicken and Rentec but had to enter everything twice.

The way that I have QuickBooks set up now lets me see the profitability of each property separately as well as the rental payment history of each tenant and the profit and loss for the company as a whole.

THE SECRET TO SETTING UP QUICKBOOKS -

• Make each rental house a customer.
• Make each tenant a job
• Make sure that you assign each check and each deposit to a customer and/or job
• I currently have one customer called overhead. I allocate the overhead to each property at tax time, but it allows me to truly look at the profitability of each property separately with just directly allocated expenses such as PITI, utilities, taxes, HOA, repairs and maintenance, etc.
• Set up your books right in the beginning so you don't have to reenter the same information over and over.

QuickBooks can be a little confusing, but the good part is that I have never met a CPA that does not use QuickBooks. They can answer your questions, straighten out the things you mess up and possibly even help you set up the books and give you a tutorial n how to use it.

Morale of the Story - You cant go wrong with QuickBooks, but it may take some time to understand it. As a rule, your CPA can fix anything you mess up easier in this software than any other.

Please add comments if you have other tricks, ideas or if you completely disagree. I am still learning too. (Just don't tell me I need to redo all of my books a fourth time! I don't think I can take it.)