Bookkeeping Advice for Landlords

[Jeremy Blackman]

I just got my first rental in November and I’m trying to get my bookkeeping together as the year closes and I Only have 2 months worth of income to track. I’ve been playing with QuickBooks to figure it out which I’m making some progress but not complete yet. I use Cozy to receive payment to my business account. Any tips on setting up QuickBooks or maybe should I use Excel for this short year?

[Cathie Kovacs]

Excel would be fine for 2018 but it’s just as easy to use Quickbooks if that’s the direction you’re heading in anyway. 

Add your tenants as customers. Make recurring invoices for those tenants for their monthly rent. Post their Cozy payments against those invoices. 

If you’re planning on adding more doors in the future, you’ll need to use Classes. Use a separate Class for each property & assign a class to each transaction (money in or out). Profit and Loss reports can be generated for each class/property which is how the tax returns will work (each property reported separately).