New investor looking for bookkeeping advice

[Kyle Stueven]

Hello,

I am a new real estate investor in Iowa and am looking for advice on how to set up an efficient book keeping system for my properties. I bought a five unit property two months ago and am currently working on closing on an 8 unit property. My plan as of right now is to use quick books, but I want to make sure whatever system I use is able to track my properties individually, but I wanted to come to the forums and see if any more advanced investors could give me any input on my situation before I commit to a bookkeeping system. Any advice would be greatly appreciated.

Kyle Stueven

[Dave Peirce]

I too would suggest Quickbooks.  As you can create multiple companies (and would really recommend doing so if you have different ownership structures) or use the class function (to track separate items for each property in one company file; though you do have to use a bit of caution and make sure that every transaction is coded to a class).  Though, you will probably also want to have a separate spreadsheet to track who the tenants are, how long the lease term is, the monthly rental amount and so on.

I would also probably suggest that you sit down with a bookkeeper, who could walk you through the use of Quickbooks (and do make sure you are reconciling the bank account monthly) and to help you set up your chart of accounts (the accounts that you will post income, expense, and assets and liabilities).  As in my experience as a tax professional, it is a lot easier for someone to get it right on the front end (even if it costs a few hundred) than to pay a professional's rates to clean it up at year end.