Hi everyone!

I’m hometown investor with 3 rentals currently and rehabbing a 4th right now. Expenses are getting harder to keep track of. How do you all track income and expenses? Looking for a user friendly software to keep track of everything. I’ve heard quickbooks is what a lot of people use but I can’t decided whether to use the online or downloadable version. Is there anything better than quickbooks or is that your go to?

Thanks, Logan

@Logan Oliver check out the expenses video for GovernRent on YouTube, it has a pretty straight forward way to keep track of all your expenses.

@Logan Oliver  My boss (who I work for in the healthcare marketing industry) has multiple businesses, one being a real estate business for flipping. He uses Quickbooks and I've helped with that account, it's pretty straightforward. He has Quickbooks Online. It's nice because there's a lot you can customize to meet your needs and style. Setting up the credit cards and/or bank accounts to sync automatically with Quickbooks makes a huge difference vs. manually doing each item or even uploading a monthly statement. One thing I will say, I think it's something you either need to work at every other day to keep it clean and up to date, or delegate it to someone who can do that. Good luck!

@Logan Oliver

Honestly, I just use MS Excel. Keep a spreadsheet per rental. Enter your transactions like any other ledger but include a column for expense category. Sum by the category to get your yearly numbers per SchE category and you are good to go

With 4 rentals I'd say stick to excel. But we use qbo. The desktop version can save you money but it cost more to sync with the bank and to allow multiple people to edit the books

My suggestion would be to go with QuickBooks. Reporting function is quite robust compare to what you can do with spreadsheet. Also, done right, you'll be able to see your mortgage balance, properties basis, bank account balance, escrow account balance, which tenants owe how much, etc. I used both a spreadsheet and QuickBooks, and I'll never go back to a spreadsheet.

It's better to buy the Desktop version. In order to use the class function, which is what you need if you have more than one property, you have to pay ridiculous amount every month if you go with the Online version. With 4 properties, it's no big deal to type in your transactions, as opposed to syncing with bank accounts.

I've been using QuickBooks online for several years.  Very user friendly, customizable, and can track all your business ventures separated by "class" which is basically categories you set.  QBO also sinks with all your bank accounts, credit cards, etc that you use for your business. Finally, QBO helps save you time at tax time.  Good luck!!

I use a spreadsheet for that just because it’s easy to customize and free. It just takes some time to build but once you have it, you can keep it for years!