Supplies from one store or many

[Joe S.]

Do you shop for convenience or do you shop for price, or quality?  Our workers typically buy everything from Lowe’s and I make a phone payment. I have a Sherman Williams account, but we do not typically buy paint there because it would take an extra trip. To be honest I don’t know if the paint is that much better to buy it at Sherman Williams if it takes an extra trip to go get it. We have redone quite a number of houses and made money buying everything from Lowe’s instead of piecemealing rehab supplies. With that being said I’m always looking to improve my endgame. What are others preferences or experiences in buying everything from one store versus piecemealing  different supplies?

[Jim K.]

@Joe S.

Joe, as you know, I run rentals. I have pro accounts at Home Depot and Lowes. Every time I use the specific charge card linked to the pro account, the point-of-sale computer system demands a job code. I make up and record a different job code for each of my properties.

I also buy specific stuff from Amazon, Big Lots, and Dollar Tree. For Amazon, I download my activity in a spreadsheet at tax time, go through it and mark work purchases, write in job codes. For Big Lots and Dollar Tree I save my receipts in a box. On the top of each receipt, I write the date of purchase and the property's job code in big numbers and letters. At tax time, I arrange the box receipts by date.

So with the three spreadsheets: HD, Lowes, Big Lots, and the pack of receipts all ordered by year, it's pretty easy to go through and figure out what you spent per month for which job on what property, which is ultimately what I wrote down in a list and send to my accountant.