How many bank accounts do you run for your rentals,

Question

Every year around this time I start seeing the same thing: an investor with four or five LLCs, one or two bank accounts, and a full year of transactions that have to be sorted out by property before anyone can file anything.

I get why it happens. Opening a new account for every entity feels like overkill when you're trying to close a deal. Moving rent from one account to cover a repair on another property feels harmless. But by December nobody remembers which transfer was a loan, which was a capital contribution and which was just convenience. Sorting that out takes time and money. Commingled accounts can also make it harder to show an LLC is operating separately from you, though how much that matters is a legal question for your attorney.

The opposite problem is real too. Some people have so many accounts and logins that reconciling them becomes a part-time job.

For my own rentals, I keep one operating account per entity and track each property with tags or classes in the bookkeeping software, not with more bank accounts. That's not the only right answer.

How have you set yours up (one account per property, one per entity, or one for everything), and what made you choose it?

Aaron Zimmerman · Answer

2 bank accounts; one for operating and one for security deposits. One credit card per property/llc.

Christopher Tile · Answer

I'm with Aaron here.

Run your transactions for each property through the property specific credit cards.

For transactions where you need to pay from a bank account (or get a decent discount for doing so), create rules in your software or even just take note of when they are pulled in the month. Take 20 min after month-end to sort out the payments directly from the operating bank account, and you are good. Couldn't be simpler.

Ametria Chaney · Answer

Jason, the common setup I see with serious small-portfolio investors: one operating account per LLC (or per portfolio segment), with rent in and all property expenses out — clean and auditable. Security deposits go in a separate account, which several states require anyway. Keep personal money completely out of the mix; commingling is what pierces the LLC veil faster than anything. Whether you need four LLCs or one is a CPA/attorney question, not a bank-account question — the accounts follow the entity structure, not the other way around. Simple rule: if you can't explain a transfer in one sentence, your structure is too complicated. Do you have a real estate CPA advising on the entity side?

Aristotle Kumpis · Answer

Just one account for all of my 9 rentals. Keep it simple. There’s no point in my opinion to have separate bank accounts for each property. That’s just adding more work and tracking of things.

Sundeep Babbar · Answer

I run one checking account per LLC too, plus a separate savings for each one's security deposits so those never get mistaken for income. The habit that saved me was writing the reason in the memo the same day money moves between entities, like "loan from LLC 2 for water heater, repay March." Come tax time my CPA just reads the memos instead of asking me to remember.

Rachel Mazzanti · Answer

One operating account per entity is what we run for clients too. It's the setup that survives real life. Here's the part people underestimate: the number of accounts is rarely the problem. The undocumented transfers are. Every time rent from Property A covers a repair on Property B, log it as what it actually was: an intercompany transfer, or a loan, or a contribution. On a commingled statement at year end, nobody remembers. In the books, we book due-to/due-from between entities so each one can stand on its own. Two habits make the structure work regardless of how many accounts you have: reconcile every account every month, and keep security deposits as a liability on the books rather than opening separate deposit accounts you then have to reconcile too. If those two are clean, year end is a review instead of an archaeology dig.

How many bank accounts do you run for your rentals,

How many bank accounts do you run for your rentals,

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