Bookkeeping while having a manager

[Jonathan Khalily]

My partner and I have acquired 10 units across 4 properties the last few months. Independently I also own 20 additional units. I have a property manager who sends statements every month.

I’ve been using Stessa to manually transcribe my expenses from these PDF statements but to be honest, it’s getting tedious and not scalable. 

I’m debating if I should hire a bookkeeper that’s over seas to transcribe this stuff or if you guys have another program that’s easier to use. 

[Josh Lewer]

Quote from @Max Emory:

Hey @Jonathan Khalily, we usually manually translate the monthly PM statements into QuickBooks Online for our clients so their property-specific data and all other financial transactions that happened outside of their PM are compiled in 1 place. 

We have an operations management software that has an AI feature to help us not have to code each line manually, but it's new and still not 100% accurate. We still have to do some manual work for now.

With you having a total of 30 units between your partnership and your personal portfolio, as long as your cash flow is decent, I'd say it's time to hire an REI-savvy Bookkeeping Professional.

If you're good with how you're currently doing your bookkeeping, you can hire a cheap bookkeeper and train them to take over what you're currently doing. 

Or, if you think there is room for improvement, you can hire a specialized bookkeeper who will bring you into their processes.

Happy to discuss further. Hope that helps!

- Time Capital Bookkeeping (REI since 2019)

I’d agree with the above, especially the bolded section. Typically, if you need aggregate data from the property manager along with additional expenses outside of the PM, you’ll enter the PM info into QuickBooks on a one-month lag (since the PM company needs time to close their books). For example, as you’re closing September’s books in QuickBooks, you would layer in August’s statement from the property manager. That way, you’re always on a continuous one-month lag for bookkeeping. That's one approach at least.