Am I missing something, or is there no good accounting software for small real estate

[Sundeep Babbar]

I have a slightly weird setup and I'm curious how others are handling this.

I have:

• a couple of homes I own personally and rent out
• a couple of properties owned through an LLC
• another property I manage for a friend, where I'm just the property manager

I want to keep the accounting for all three separate, with a proper P&L and balance sheet for each ownership/entity.

Do I basically need three separate QuickBooks-type instances to do this properly?

That starts getting me toward $100/month just to keep books on a handful of relatively inexpensive rentals, which seems excessive.

I've looked at Stessa, Baselane, Hemlane, etc., but unless I'm missing something, they seem more focused on rent collection/property management and basic income/expense reporting. I actually want double-entry bookkeeping and a balance sheet.

I don't really need rent collection. TurboTenant/Innago already make that part easy.

Is there a simpler/cheaper way you guys are doing this?

Or am I overcomplicating the accounting and nobody else with a small portfolio cares about having proper double-entry books and balance sheets?

[Kaylea Sepulvado]

Honestly, you're not overcomplicating this at all, you're thinking about it the right way. Three separate entities really should mean three separate sets of books, each with its own P&L and balance sheet.

One thing worth knowing going in: platforms like RentRedi, Stessa, Baselane, and Hemlane are great for tracking income and expenses at the property level, but they're not built to be full double-entry accounting systems. So if that's what you need, they won't quite get you there. For a portfolio your size, I'd start by seeing if Wave's free features cover what you're after. If not, separate QuickBooks company files are honestly the cleanest way to go. I'd steer clear of combining separate legal entities into one file just to save a few bucks, it tends to cause headaches later.

The property you manage for your friend is a little different too. Your management work should stay separate from their books, with your fee showing up as income on your side and an expense on theirs.

So to answer your question directly: no, you're not overthinking it. You're really just choosing between something cheap and simple, or proper entity-level accounting. And if clean books and balance sheets matter to you, there isn't really a property management app out there that's going to do what real accounting software does.