New Landlord: What do I need to keep track of for future taxes

[Pat Dansdill]

BP Community - thanks in advance for your time and efforts! 

I'm renting my house out soon, and want to make sure I have systems in place to save documents, hold security deposit, keep track of repairs, etc. I've created another bank account for deposits to go to, but what systems do you have in place to make tax season go more smoothly? What could I be forgetting about?

Thanks - Pat Dansdill

[Jacob Sampson]

with one property it is pretty simple.  Just use a spreadsheet to track each months income and expenses.  You can make it as complicated or simple as you want.  Again, at 1 property its really no big deal.  You could get a manila file folder and store the lease and application in it.  Any time you send communication to the tenant store a copy of it in that same folder.

If you want to take it a step further you can get a free box.com or any other free online cloud storage and you can scan and store all docs into the cloud account.  You could also pay for Quickbooks (I don't recommend that yet) for tracking income and expenses.

Just keep it simple and add complexity only as you actually discover a need for it.