Teacher/Real Estate Investor · Mason City, IA · Member since 2011 · 80 posts · 10 votes
I am looking for a form to use to keep records for tax purposes. We have several rentals and I always struggle with this come this time of year. I'm looking for a one sheet form that has all the pertinent info on it my tax preparer would need.
I would be grateful if some of you could share with me what you use.
Using a spreadsheet you will be able to do some type of record keeping. But to make it efficient you need accounting software. For that I'd say Quickbooks. And if you can't seem to learn Quickbooks, then you can get give your information monthly to a bookkeeper who can enter into Quickbooks for you. At tax time your CPA can use your Quickbooks file to do your schedule E.
Want to know what your income statement per property? You can do this with Quickbooks. Want to know how much money you spent on insurance across all your properties, Quickbooks can do that. Need a balance sheet or income statement for your bank...Quickbooks can do it. So if I were you, I'd get Quickbooks.
Then the next question may be where are you going to store all the receipts and paperwork. I store it on my computer by using a scanner. I scan into Evernote so I can access from anywhere. I can pull up receipts according to any "tag", so in my case I'll put the property address as a "tag", then I can search by property address...all the receipts for that particular property pull up. The IRS no longer requires you have the receipts themselves, scanned receipts are enough.
I would Google "schedule E" it will give you a pdf that consists of the categories of expenses allowed for rental units. This is the form that is filed with your federal tax return, assuming you don't have the rental units in a partnership or corporation. This should help you categorize the expenses correctly. Or....hire a bookkeeper who has experience with rental units.
Using a spreadsheet you will be able to do some type of record keeping. But to make it efficient you need accounting software. For that I'd say Quickbooks. And if you can't seem to learn Quickbooks, then you can get give your information monthly to a bookkeeper who can enter into Quickbooks for you. At tax time your CPA can use your Quickbooks file to do your schedule E.
Want to know what your income statement per property? You can do this with Quickbooks. Want to know how much money you spent on insurance across all your properties, Quickbooks can do that. Need a balance sheet or income statement for your bank...Quickbooks can do it. So if I were you, I'd get Quickbooks.
Then the next question may be where are you going to store all the receipts and paperwork. I store it on my computer by using a scanner. I scan into Evernote so I can access from anywhere. I can pull up receipts according to any "tag", so in my case I'll put the property address as a "tag", then I can search by property address...all the receipts for that particular property pull up. The IRS no longer requires you have the receipts themselves, scanned receipts are enough.