Has anyone use Rental Hero for bookkeeping?
Eric ChappellPro Member
Rental Property Investor · Fort Worth, TX · Member since 2017 · 24 posts · 18 votesI have been trying to research the least expensive way to keep my records until I build my real estate rentals more. I tried to set up quickbooks online, but without paying $720 a year for the ability to do class tracking, it seems like it wouldn't be as beneficial.
I know there are other tools out there more geared towards real estate like xero, etc, but I'm still trying to avoid paying so much every month.
Has anybody used realtyzam or rentalhero (rentalhero.io) they seem to be linked? It seems like it could be geared towards my needs, but I see no mention of it anywhere. Maybe it's just a small company.
Just started the free trial of Rentalhero and it looks like it will be able to cover everything I need for my 2 small MF properties. For all the features provided with the current price, I've got my fingers crossed that it will work.
I just started using Rental Hero and I love it! I am a rental property investor but i hate making things complex and the last thing i wanted to do was create a separate bank account for each property..yikes. This software allows me to keep one bank account (and 1 credit card) for all my properties as you can categorize each expense to the property it's correlated to. Definitely great price for the functions it has! you can auto categorize as well like quickbooks.
If you have a regarded tax entity, e.g. partnership, S Corp, C Corp, you need complete financials -- P&L and balance sheet to adequately prepare the tax returns and answer tax related questions. Microsoft Excel, and most budget or free online bookkeeping isn't going to cut it in this situation.
For the rental properties you own directly, I often tell clients and prospects that a P&L in Microsoft Excel is just fine and a balance sheet is not necessary for tax purposes. Lenders will often still want to see a personal balance sheet.
The problem with a SMLLC that is disregarded for federal income tax purposes is that you may decide to bring on partners or flip to an S Corp a few years down the road. Without complete financials up to that point, extra work (and headache) will be required to get everything straight after years of failure to keep complete financials.
There also might be an asset protection wrinkle by not maintaining complete books for an LLC, but I won't comment on that as I'm not an attorney.
@Dee Heck Clients who do not keep a balance sheet even though they are a SMLLC have a few issues. It is extremely difficult for your tax preparer to know if what you give them is right without a balance sheet unless they dig into each transaction which will be very costly. This in turn usually leads to missed deductions on the tax return. It also is very difficult for tax planning and advising without a balance sheet. From my experience, 95% of the time if someone is doing their books on their own, it is not correct. So not having complete financials will cost more in the long run.
I had someone I worked with this year with only 1 property, and she had only done 1 or 2 things just a little incorrectly by not having a balance sheet. She wanted me to take a look before submitting her tax return. Just a quick look and it saved her over $1,000 in taxes. That was a very small property too. So I think it's worth the cost for complete financials. Also, as was mentioned earlier, your bookkeeper or accountant gets QuickBooks at a discount. Ask them about it and get them to pass the savings to you.
I've been using Rentastic.io to keep track of our rental expenses. It sounds super similar to RentalHero, but I feel like the interface on RentalHero is pretty dated. Not to mention Rentastic is a little bit cheaper and sounds to have all the same features.
This is an old thread, but curious if many of you who started RentalHero (RH) back then are still using it? I've been using it a few years as well and mostly like it for my smaller portfolio across multiple entities and states.
The thing I'm trying to do better with going into the new year is handling receipts. I have never used that feature in RH, are any of you using that? I'm thinking that I need to go to an electronic receipt tracking system, I've been doing it old school all these years - dump them on my desk, some month down the road go through them all and file them to folders for reach property, start a new folder each year. Not bad, but a lot of work and hard to find a specific expense if I can't remember it when I'm categorizing the expense a week later in RH or something.
Anyway, what are you guys that use RH doing for receipt tracking?
This is an old thread, but curious if many of you who started RentalHero (RH) back then are still using it? I've been using it a few years as well and mostly like it for my smaller portfolio across multiple entities and states.
The thing I'm trying to do better with going into the new year is handling receipts. I have never used that feature in RH, are any of you using that? I'm thinking that I need to go to an electronic receipt tracking system, I've been doing it old school all these years - dump them on my desk, some month down the road go through them all and file them to folders for reach property, start a new folder each year. Not bad, but a lot of work and hard to find a specific expense if I can't remember it when I'm categorizing the expense a week later in RH or something.
Anyway, what are you guys that use RH doing for receipt tracking?
This is an old thread and I don't have an opinion on Rent Hero (except that maybe this business name feels a little dated and pigeon holes them)
For tracking receipts
Real Estate Investors often think they need physical receipts for every single tax deduction. That's actually a myth. To debunk it, we're going straight to the source — the IRS.
The IRS says to keep records for your business tax deductions indicating:
And guess what? It doesn't mention requiring paper receipts at all. There is an exception. A receipt is required if you make an out-of-pocket cash purchase for > $75.
.
.
.
*This post does not create a CPA-client relationship. The information contained in this post is not to be relied upon. Readers are advised to seek professional advice.
This is an old thread, but curious if many of you who started RentalHero (RH) back then are still using it? I've been using it a few years as well and mostly like it for my smaller portfolio across multiple entities and states.
The thing I'm trying to do better with going into the new year is handling receipts. I have never used that feature in RH, are any of you using that? I'm thinking that I need to go to an electronic receipt tracking system, I've been doing it old school all these years - dump them on my desk, some month down the road go through them all and file them to folders for reach property, start a new folder each year. Not bad, but a lot of work and hard to find a specific expense if I can't remember it when I'm categorizing the expense a week later in RH or something.
Anyway, what are you guys that use RH doing for receipt tracking?
This is an old thread and I don't have an opinion on Rent Hero (except that maybe this business name feels a little dated and pigeon holes them)
For tracking receipts
Real Estate Investors often think they need physical receipts for every single tax deduction. That's actually a myth. To debunk it, we're going straight to the source — the IRS.
The IRS says to keep records for your business tax deductions indicating:
And guess what? It doesn't mention requiring paper receipts at all. There is an exception. A receipt is required if you make an out-of-pocket cash purchase for > $75.
.
.
.
*This post does not create a CPA-client relationship. The information contained in this post is not to be relied upon. Readers are advised to seek professional advice.
Thanks for that clarification. I've heard at least some of this before, but I'm paranoid and don't necessarily take the best notes of what I bought etc, so the physical receipt is a nice tangible record if I ever need to justify an expense. And in most cases, reading a receipt and knowing which property/my management company it is tied to (done automatically by separate accounts linking to my software), even if I don't do a very good job documenting, I have enough to go back and justify almost any expense.
I want simple - quick picture as soon as I leave the store, so I don't have to track expenses. I need to experiment with the RH option... it takes a few clicks to get to the option, but supposedly it will try to reconcile the bank pulled transactions and receipts for me, so if it does do that, would be nice.
This is an old thread, but curious if many of you who started RentalHero (RH) back then are still using it? I've been using it a few years as well and mostly like it for my smaller portfolio across multiple entities and states.
The thing I'm trying to do better with going into the new year is handling receipts. I have never used that feature in RH, are any of you using that? I'm thinking that I need to go to an electronic receipt tracking system, I've been doing it old school all these years - dump them on my desk, some month down the road go through them all and file them to folders for reach property, start a new folder each year. Not bad, but a lot of work and hard to find a specific expense if I can't remember it when I'm categorizing the expense a week later in RH or something.
Anyway, what are you guys that use RH doing for receipt tracking?
This is an old thread and I don't have an opinion on Rent Hero (except that maybe this business name feels a little dated and pigeon holes them)
For tracking receipts
Real Estate Investors often think they need physical receipts for every single tax deduction. That's actually a myth. To debunk it, we're going straight to the source — the IRS.
The IRS says to keep records for your business tax deductions indicating:
And guess what? It doesn't mention requiring paper receipts at all. There is an exception. A receipt is required if you make an out-of-pocket cash purchase for > $75.
.
.
.
*This post does not create a CPA-client relationship. The information contained in this post is not to be relied upon. Readers are advised to seek professional advice.
Thanks for that clarification. I've heard at least some of this before, but I'm paranoid and don't necessarily take the best notes of what I bought etc, so the physical receipt is a nice tangible record if I ever need to justify an expense. And in most cases, reading a receipt and knowing which property/my management company it is tied to (done automatically by separate accounts linking to my software), even if I don't do a very good job documenting, I have enough to go back and justify almost any expense.
I want simple - quick picture as soon as I leave the store, so I don't have to track expenses. I need to experiment with the RH option... it takes a few clicks to get to the option, but supposedly it will try to reconcile the bank pulled transactions and receipts for me, so if it does do that, would be nice.
This is one of the options I was considering as well. Probably simplest...