All Forum Posts by: Simon W.

I did forget to mention that I also help do the accounting and consulting for clients using Buildium as well.

My favorite is actually Yardi Voyager but that's a different game lol 

Quote from @Patrick Bavaro:

Hello PMs! 

Looking for some guidance from either property management company owners/brokers or landlords that have 100+ units managed through property management software such as Buildium, AppFolio, Propertyware, etc.. 

Anyone on here use them? 

Patrick 

 I was a CFO for a PM company managing 1500+ units using AppFolio.

I am currently consulting for a PM company with about 200+ units and set to obtain another 45+ units by the end of this month.

not sure what kind of guidance but I think I can help. 

Different accountants will do something different. You can always make it the best you can, but a CPA can reclassify it to see how they see fit. Another CPA can reverse all of that as well. It really all depends on the situation.

I personally do not like so many GL codes in COA.

If I am working on a client who has 250+ GL codes and another client with 50 GL Codes, the cost will be very different.

A lot of the times it is overkill with those GL Codes. Tax Accountants would simplify it even more. If you ever look at your tax returns on those schedules they have an even smaller list of categories.

When you have someone handling your books, you will be utilizing a bit more GL codes so you can have a better read on your financials on a month-to-month basis to see if you can make any changes. Detailed.

Tax Accountants/CPA look at it once a year to just see an overview of your books. Summary.

Quote from @Alecia Loveless:

@Saji Ijiyemi There could be extenuating circumstances. I have someone who occasionally works for me that has extenuating circumstances.

There is likely a work around to claim some sort of something to get to the point of writing off the expenses but you might be hard pressed if you were to get an audit.

Extenuating circumstances maybe for $1000 but saying that for $50K-$60K (this is someone salary for the year) and doesn't want to get reported, is clearly trying to manipulate the books.

Hi @Mary Ho

The market for bookkeeping in real estate is quite saturated, and it can take years before you establish a steady income.

While you don’t necessarily need an accounting degree to do bookkeeping, you’ll be competing with many people who have that degree and years of experience.

I recommend taking some accounting courses at your local college. My career started in real estate accounting right out of college, and I learned practically every aspect of the industry before focusing on my own businesses.

Online courses often provide generic accounting knowledge, but they don’t delve deeply into real estate accounting.

There are many different types of accounting within real estate:

• Long-Term Rental (most common)
• Construction/Flipping
• Commercial (Retail, Shopping Centers, Office, Warehouse, Self-service Storage)
• Condo/HOA
• Development (different from construction)
• Short-Term Rentals
• Property Accounting
• Corporate (real estate) Accounting

I gained experience in all of these areas by working for various real estate companies. Now, I also offer consulting services.

The key aspects of real estate accounting are property and corporate accounting. Self-managed properties usually handle both, while property management companies focus on property accounting and the owners on corporate accounting.

QuickBooks is not the best platform for real estate, though many of us on BiggerPockets use it because our clients do. Larger players in the industry often use property management software with corporate accounting features, such as Yardi, AppFolio, Buildium, and others (and the companies I worked for were the big players back in NYC).

Quote from @Saji Ijiyemi:

Hello -- I need to do a major rehab on a rental property that will cost about $50k-60k but the contractor does not want 1099 and wants nothing to be reported to the IRS. I want to be able to claim deductions. For tax purposes, can I still claim deductions if I don't give the Contractor 1099? Will the IRS want to know who I paid the money for the major repairs? I will appreciate your help. Thank you.

 you are going to have to report it one way or the other. if you spent $50K-60K on construction labor, IRS is going to ask you who did you pay all that money to? You certainly won't say I paid to thin air. IRS will think you are just pocketing the money and you will get an audit.

IRS Audits aren't random. 

It really depends the type of work and the volume.

This is why accountants/bookkeepers do not have a flat-rate that they charge to every client.

Quote from @Daniel M.:

Hey BP!

I'm diving into QuickBooks Online for the first time and could use some guidance. To give you a bit of background, I know very little about bookkeeping beyond managing my budget for the last three decades (ugh), so this is all pretty new to me.

Here’s my current setup:

I’ve had a property management company using AppFolio to handle the heavy lifting – rent collection, owner distributions, expenses, and the whole shebang. They give me an Owner Statement each month with all the details like Beginning Balance, Cash In, Cash Out, Owner Disbursements, Ending Cash Balance, Property Reserve, and Net Owner Funds.

It's super helpful, but it doesn't cover all expenses, and I need to get all this info into QuickBooks. I have a checking account and a credit card under my LLC. The loan for my property is in my name, but the deed is in the LLC. While I only have one LLC right now, I plan to expand to multiple LLCs (one for each property).

Here’s where I need your help:

1. How should I set up my account to reflect all the real estate activities like rental income, expenses, and distributions?
2. My Owner Disbursements aren’t the total rent amount because of the expenses the property management company handles. What’s the best way to track this in QuickBooks?
3. Has anyone successfully integrated AppFolio reports with QuickBooks? If yes, how did you do it?
4. What’s the best way to set up QuickBooks to make handling multiple LLCs easier in the future?

Any advice, templates, or resources you can share would be greatly appreciated! Thanks a ton in advance for your help!

This is funny. I literally took on a client, well more like a Capital Fund Group that purchases multiple properties and they have different PM companies all using AppFolio and I had to setup their QB and also Fixing their existing QB.

You need to get the cash flow statement from your PM company. 

A little background, I was a CFO/Controller for a PM company and have been doing multiple roles for PM companies for 20 years so now I am helping out on the otherside of the PM world.

Your PM's financials are Property Accounting. What you have in QB is considered Corporate Accounting. So you need to differentiate both.

Welcome fellow NYCer. Am I correct that you are doing a house hack ex. buying multi-unit and living in one?

I didn't even know lenders care about job distance. I was living in Astoria, NY and moved to Lehigh Valley and nothing about that criteria

Are you using another bookkeeper? I think you need to find one that understands flipping business. If you get a COA from here it might not fit to your needs. If the current bookkeeper doesn't know how to create a COA for flipping then it's pointless to give you a COA because that bookkeeper wouldn't know how to use it in the first place.