How Do You Do Your Daily Accounting? Apps/Software?

[Dave Younts]

So I currently have one rental property. It is under my name and not an LLC, but I plan to create an LLC and quit-claim it very soon (any advise on this would be greatly appreciated).

I have been using my personal checking account to pay for maintenance, repairs, etc.  Also the rent checks have been deposited into my personal checking account.  This makes things very difficult to keep track of.

How do you do your day-to-day accounting?  Is there a really great program or app that doesn't cost very much (keep in mind I only have one rental at the moment and will be growing to 2-5 within a couple years).  Any advise for me?

[Austin Fruechting]

Definitely get a separate checking account for the LLC when you get that established. If things are co-mingling into your personal account it could make things a HUGE headache if something happened where you needed the legal protection of the LLC. If there's no separate account you'd have to try to prove what is yours personally and what's the LLC's and they could freeze that account entirely during that process.

I would recommend quickbooks for accounting.  I've been using it since the start and it's pretty simple and just a couple hundred one time fee (just buy a desktop version, no need to subscribe to the monthly one and the breakeven on that isn't very long at all).  It can also expand as much as needed so there would be no need to switch again in the future.