Tracking income and expenses

[Tyler Eastman]

I am a new real estate investor that just closed on my first single family house two days ago. I am trying to get everything in order before I start renting it out.

That being said, should I use an excel sheet to track my income and expenses or is there a better way or better software?

I want to keep my expenses as low as possible because this is my first property, therefore I need any software I use to be free or very low cost. I have heard of Stessa but have not looked into it yet..

Any help or advice would be greatly appreciated! Thanks!

[John Underwood]

I would keep it simple to start with.

I have multiple properties and track this in Excel. It is very powerful and highly configure. I use this to easily have the data to give to my CPA.

You can likely Google a good Excel template that you can use to customize as time goes on.

I keep tenant info, AC filter sizes, trash pickup days, Magistrate info for potential evictions, Section login info in addition to the normal income and expense info.  I have a tab for each property and a summary tab that collects all the data from the individual tabs. I can easily track rent as it comes in and know if I need to enforce a late fee.

It works great for me!