Real Estate Investor · Bayonne, NJ · Member since 2009 · 6 posts · 1 vote
Can anyone lead me in the right direction here: I am beginning to manage some of my fathers properties and we need to know what is the best software to record income and expenses.
I am familiar with quickbooks and I have heard of buildium. Is there any others I should be looking at. I need software for a landlord who needs to manage his daily income and expenses in a more efficient manner.
I am starting to do some rentals, I've read a lot about Buildium and I am thinking of signing up. I've read through the other posts on this site, but still unsure what the best solution is. I like Buildium's option on automatic ACH's, the price seems right.
Much respect to Niman for the above post, as he does work for a company that has software as well, but instead of pimping it out, he shared our resource pointing to various online property management software companies. Of course, be sure to check his site out as well (its listed there on the page he linked to).
Thanks for staying within the rules and being a good member of the community, Niman!
Mike - Is this just a handful of residential properties? I've been using an old version of Quicken Rental Property Manager and it suits my needs well. There is a brand new version that looks like it does a whole lot more. The price didn't seem outrageous either.
Mike - Is this just a handful of residential properties? I've been using an old version of Quicken Rental Property Manager and it suits my needs well. There is a brand new version that looks like it does a whole lot more. The price didn't seem outrageous either.
HE is handing them over to me one by one and so right now i am just overseeing a few. There are a few strictly residential and a few retail strips however the bulk of it is mixed use with retail on the bottom and residential on top. I am checking out the Quicken software. And thank you for the suggestion i really appreciate it.
I use Quickbooks Pro and I have all my properties set up as classes so I can boil the reports down to see how well each of my properties is performing. All expenses get classed either business or property address. My tenants are my customers and I create automatic invoices for their rent on the 20th of each month that way they are there when I start getting rent checks.
Since @Will F. revived an old thread, I'll jump in with a question too! :D What should I use to track an owner occupied SFR house hack? Should be pretty simple so maybe excel? Are there any free basic programs?
I have been paying for Buildium for months. It took quite a while to move my data from Propertyware to Buildium. We made the switch because Propertyware asked for more money for each additional service while we have under 50 buildings to manage. I was promised technical support from Buildium. Its just not there. The screens are not intuitive and Buildium does not define their data points well so it is very difficult to move data from another software because so many of the data points are ill defined. My ledger started each property with thousands in debt even though my ledgers were balanced and there was not debt for any property at the time. Buildium support told me that they did not know where Buildium generated this random "rent income" start date. Meanwhile the back-ground noise in the call center drowned out the conversation so much that I could not hear the person I was speaking with and could barely hear my own thoughts. For whatever reason, the call was disconnected THREE times.
Support line wait time is in excess of 30 minutes. After waiting 15 minutes I'm asked to give a callback number. (why wasn't I given that option BEFORE waiting 15 minutes?) I finally get a callback but have moved on to other work and have to get back to my question
When I told the support staff employee "Cam" these issues he recommended that I cancel the service.
I love Buildium!!! Quickbooks will allow you to track financial data but buildium is a one stop all-work orders, online maintenance request, advertising, leases, and financial data.
I love buildium also as of now. Its been a 1 1/2 years. I did run through the same problems Marla had but I worked through most of them. Still having some issues that I have to figure out still. I love their support. I do have to wait 20 minutes sometimes and they do not call you back when you ask them too. I'm just happy that who ever I talk to is super helpful. I'm going to be creating a new post on the problem with buildium I am having. I dont know if its a full accounting program for me. Any help would be appreciated!
@Edward Mccracken Buildium is a much better choice for managing properties than QuickBooks. Using Buildium will make you more effective and efficient as @Maria McCreless has mentioned Buildium will allow you to track your financials and do other property management related tasks such as "work orders, online maintenance requests, advertising, leases".
Getting started with any financial or property management software requires setting it up properly at the beginning. But a property management software that has more than just financial functions will give you a better return on your investment of time and money to get it set up right and running.
Quickbooks is not intended for property management. A PM software does more then just accounting. I use QB for one of my businesses but I don't use it to manage my properties.
@Keith Weigand - Which version of quickbooks are you using? If you are using desktop, the newer online version is much more intuitive and automates a lot of the accounting process. However it is not specialized specifically to property management and is much more accounting generalized. Surely it would depend on how you set things up on how effective if could be. With that said most people would like all of the reporting which sadly requires the maximum subscription.