Using Quickbooks for self-storage facility

[Erin K.]

So we recently closed on our first self-storage facility. The prior owners used Quickbooks and gave me their license and back up file, but I think that they were not really optimizing QB - mainly just used it to generate invoices. I wondered if anyone has used it for this and could just give a little info about how best to set it up (is each "customer" a unit, etc.). I have used QB for years so am not starting from scratch, but want to start out on the right foot since it is a lot of units to keep organized.  

Thanks for any assistance! 

Erin in Ohio

[Dan V.]

@Erin K. It's actually a great idea to fully utilize QB as accounting software for your storage facility. If the seller provided you with financial statements and you like the format & details, then setup your chart of accounts based of it then customized later to  your liking. I would also setup each unit as a customer then the customer (person renting it) as sub-customer of the unit. Set up the sub-customer as bill to customer not bill to parent so that their name will appear in the invoice. I would also activate class tracking to track at least the admin/overhead and the building transactions. You may also use the class tracking to set up grouping, for example, Building A as class then units as sub-class.

Before you start customizing QB, I would also recommend to lay it all out in a spreadsheet the information that you want to track, and the level of details you wanted to see, then build it from there.