Atlanta, GA · Member since 2021 · 163 posts · 58 votes
There's all these formulas for calculating expenses and backing in to cashflow, right? How do you guys manage this operationally?
In reality, rent will hit your bank account, but it doesn't separate itself into specific categories. Do you shuffle your estimated capex and opex to a separate savings account? Or do you just let it all sit in one checking account, and then only take a small portion of it as a distribution if you want cashflow?
Hey Steven! How you do things can come down to personal preference, but it depends on what you are doing with how you want to route things through your accounting software. I have everything go to a checking account and then deposit things into the a savings account for the capex/opex. This allows me to separate out what I should be saving. I also recommend you have a some sort of software like quickbooks to get your actual P&L (Profit and Loss) statements. This will help with determining what your actual cashflow is for the year and will help banks understand your financials if you ever need to. ALWAYS keep the checking account separate from your personal account and create a checking account for each property. This helps out tremendously for tax professionals and keeps things clean if you ever get audited.
As for taking it out, you can pay yourself a salary but just know that you will need to pay taxes on it. You can also do an owner's draw but these are more for bigger payments (quarterly, semi-annual, annual).
Hey Steven! How you do things can come down to personal preference, but it depends on what you are doing with how you want to route things through your accounting software. I have everything go to a checking account and then deposit things into the a savings account for the capex/opex. This allows me to separate out what I should be saving. I also recommend you have a some sort of software like quickbooks to get your actual P&L (Profit and Loss) statements. This will help with determining what your actual cashflow is for the year and will help banks understand your financials if you ever need to. ALWAYS keep the checking account separate from your personal account and create a checking account for each property. This helps out tremendously for tax professionals and keeps things clean if you ever get audited.
As for taking it out, you can pay yourself a salary but just know that you will need to pay taxes on it. You can also do an owner's draw but these are more for bigger payments (quarterly, semi-annual, annual).
One way to do it is to use property management software that has accounting capabilities. When rent is paid, it will automatically sync to a particular property or unit and you can categorize all of your income and expenses. Some software also has reporting features that allow you to instantly generate financial reports (including P&L and Schedule E reports).
I have 5 different checking accounts because every time I do a deal, I give that deal it's own exclusive checking account.
On buy & hold deals, the rent comes into the business checking account, I cut myself a wire sent to my personal checking account on the 5th of every month, and I leave plenty behind for maintenance, vacancy, capex, etc.