Rental softwares Quickbooks

[Zach Logan]

Hi everyone. I am a licensed real estate agent and use quickbooks self employed for my miles and expenses for real estate. I now own 2 rentals and I want to start tracking my rental business numbers more in depth. I am struggling to see anything on how to set this up and get it situated from the self employed version. Do I need to use the separate quickbooks online and not self employed? Also if anyone has any price friendly other software's I would love to hear them or just get more info on how to set up my rental buisness through quick books . Thank you

[Max Emory]

Hey @Zach Logan, if you want to track rentals with QBO you'll need the QBO Plus subscription. Then, you can use the class feature or customer feature to track each individual rental. If you have multiple entities, I recommend using the location/business feature to track each "disregarded" entity within 1 QBO.

Bookkeeping for REI companies (especially rental property companies) is super nuanced. For example, for rental properties, lots of the categorization depends on the REI's specific tax strategy regarding what we're capitalizing versus what we're immediately deducting. It's heavily dependent on what the tax code allows and who is interpreting the tax code. There's room for flexibility depending on the desired tax strategy.

We use QuickBooks Online exclusively for all of our REI Clients. I use it for my personal portfolio as well. We've found it has superior reporting features, integration features, and is overall more efficient to work within than other REI-specific software.

The downside is QBO is not set up for REI so you'll need to do that or work with an expert to ensure it is set up for your business appropriately. That's the key component that is usually missing when I hear other entrepreneurs/investors say they don't like QBO.

Something else to keep in mind is your entity structure and how your entities file tax returns. As a general rule, each entity that files a separate tax return (partnership, s-corp, c-corp, etc) will need its own QBO subscription. If entities are disregarded, you can keep up with more than 1 in a single QBO account using the location/business feature to keep track of them separately. This will save you on subscription costs.

If you want to discuss any of this further, I'm happy to answer questions and help walk you through it.

Oh, our FB group "Bookkeepers for Real Estate Investors" may be helpful to you as well. It's all about this stuff and active daily.

Best of luck!