All Forum Posts by: Account Closed

QuickBooks has been on the shelves of every Staples and Best Buy Stores and sold online since the 1990's.  It is a tried and trusted financial software program that you can CUSTOMIZE to  your own Industry and needs.

QuickBooks is the major choice of CPA's to use when it comes to taking care of their clients because you are able to send your CPA or Accountant an Accountants Copy so they can view it, make changes and send it back to you, and you don't need to leave your office to do it. 

No matter what financial software you purchase, there is a learning curve.  

You didn't begin to read when you began to walk.  You needed to be taught what words mean and how to use them in sentences.

The problem is in this world, is that we want to do stuff without having to read or study.   I am no different.  I buy a bookshelf and it comes with instructions and a manual, but I don't want to read the manual. I just want to get the darn shelf up there so I can store by stuff.

I also didn't want to study the manual that comes with QuickBooks. Plus it's boring!  But in the end I had to have a financial software program, and after spending thousands of dollars on other software programs like Tenant Pro, Property Boss, Quicken, you name it, I bought it, I always came back to QuickBooks, because I liked the Reports.  I didn't know how to use QuickBooks very well at the time, but I did like the Reports that I generated, even though at that time they weren't correct because I didn't know how to use QuickBooks correctly, and was too busy to learn.  

Nobody had books out there on QuickBooks to teach me, so I had to bite the bullet and study the manual.  After studying and practicing QuickBooks, I felt  pretty "Cocky" about myself once I learned it.   Patting myself on the back, filled with pride.  So to see just how good I was I took a test to be a Certified QuickBooks Pro Advisor, but boy did I get a rude awakening.  I realized I had only knew enough about QuickBooks to be dangerous, and didn't know half the stuff QuickBooks could do and how. 

So I had to study, study, study, in order to pass my exams in QuickBooks in order to become Certified, and I have to tell you, I learned a lot!  

Most people today don't know the POWER OF QUICKBOOKS.  They only know enough to be dangerous, or just can't get off the ground with it.   But once you find someone to teach you, either by calling a Certified QuickBooks Pro Advisor in your area, or purchasing a book on BP or by reading comments on here regarding QuickBooks, you will be very very glad you chose QuickBooks.  It will grow with you. 

You can pay as little as $239.00 (tax write off) for QuickBooks Pro, all the way up to $5,000 or more for QuickBooks Enterprise.  Depends on the size of your company and the data you need)   So I guess you can tell that I highly recommend QuickBooks.  It just doesn't get any better than that!

Nancy Neville

If they were nice they would pay their rent since you too have Holiday Expenses!!!  

Thanksgiving this month, Oh Oh Christmas next month, and Oh oh New Years Day.  

Make them pay November's rent, December's Rent, and January's rent, and if not, serve them with a Notice to Quit for non-payment of rent.

I'm nice to my Mortgage Company, but they want the Mortgage Payment this month, next month and New Years.  Hey....But...I'm nice!! :(  Surely they can wait until next year for me to catch up..right?

Hmmm, I had to pay extra money for groceries this month with Thanksgiving and all, and I'm nice to the Grocery Store people.  I shop there all the time!  Why do I have to pay for my groceries this month, when they know we have expenses because of the Holidays, after all.....I'm nice  !!

I'm not trying to be sarcastic with you, Jim, I'm just trying to give you some examples. This is a business, just like the Mortgage Company Guy, and the Grocery Store.  Why do we feel that being  a Landlord entails giving everyone a break!  

Make them pay their rent, too bad so sad, if they need for the Holidays.  You need it too.  

Just my 2 cents.

Nancy Neville

Yes, classes gives you a visual to see how much each property made you in income and what properties caused you grief in expenses, then gives you the bottom line.

Customer/Jobs tells you where the tenant lives and allows you to invoice them for rent, late fees, security deposits, make deposits, etc. By choosing the Class Column on transactions you are able to assign an income or expense account to that property or unit. 

Yes.  The classes keep track of your income and expenses and give you your bottom line.

The Customer/Job keeps track of your tenants and where they live. From here you are able to invoice your tenants for rent, late fees, and damages.

Classes will appear on almost all transactions so that you able to choose what property that income or expense belongs to. 

When you do a Profit & Loss Report by Class, it gives you income, minus expenses equals Profit or loss per property.

I did not read all the comments, so forgive me if I am duplicating an answer, but I just have to put in my two cents worth.

Being a Landlord is a business.  We have houses we rent out that cost more than any other product that is rented out as far as I know of.  Our homes are worth more than $100,000 most times and more.

We jump through a lot of hoops to get our business up and running, and we go through a lot of "stuff" to provide good rental homes to the public, to the community, not mention all the laws we need to learn and obey.

When we choose an applicant to rent to, are we looking for children that must be pampered?  Or are we looking for Adults that are capable of paying their rent, which includes the capability of getting it into our office on time. 

Boy, I can't tell you how many times a tenant would bring in their dad or mom to view the property with them, and then at the signing of the lease, try to put the muscle on me.  I flat out told them that I was renting to their son or daughter, and if they needed their parents to help them sign the lease, and tell me what to do, then they really weren't mature enough to rent my home.  One of the dads told my husband when he left his daughter to be alone with me to sign the lease, that "I kicked him out".  He couldn't believe it.  But I rented to her and eventually I sold her the house.   

We may feel, well we're doing a good deed, by bending over backwards to help our tenants by picking up the rent, or little things, but in actuality you are not helping to make the tenant be a responsible individual, but instead are being an "enabler"  to rely on others to do this or that for them.  (My prior life entailed working as an Office Manager in a Substance Abuse Agency and Mental Health, so I know a great deal about "enablers)

Some of my homes in the Inner City were in some rough neighborhoods.  (Some- only a few), so I had to deal with some pretty tough dudes.  And yet I made them pay their rent on time to me via mail or camel or donkey.  Oh they wanted me to pick up the rent.  Hey if you want your money come pick it up.  I'd reply, "Hey if you want to live in this house, get it in my office by the 1st".   They  would laugh, but believe it or not they got that rent into my office on time. 

You know why I did it? I did it because I needed to make them be more responsible adults.  If nobody teaches them how, then how will they know.  And if you have that good landlord/tenant relationship, that trust between each other, then they will listen.  They may get mad, but they will listen and they will respect you for it and be respectable adults in the future. 

I had learned a lot about people when I was an active Landlord.  It was the best experience of my life.  WE can make a difference.  WE can treat our Industry as a business, and still love itI  I LOVED IT!  I  Loved the people!  But I did't make it easy for them.  They must have liked it because most of them stayed with us for 6 years, 16 years,  20 years, and I have to tell ya,  it just didn't get any better than that!

Nancy Neville

Customer/Jobs vs Classes:

Aah that is the question!   

Classes are a Landlord's very best friend.  

CLASSES

The Class feature in QuickBooks, will give the landlord a detailed accounting of income per rental building, per rental unit,  per county, city, you name it, and QuickBooks will do it. 

Not only will the Class feature tell the landlord how much income they made per property, but will also tell them how much money they spent in expenses, per building, per unit, per county, per city, etc., and will subtract those expenses from the income and give you you're bottom line.    (I'm panting with excitement because I know what it can do and what it can do for you)

If you are in the red, you will know whether to sell that property or not.  If you are in the black, you will whistle all the way to the bank.

When you go to court and a tenant does damages to your rental, you will have an itemized list of all costs that you spent on damages because you have assigned those damages, those costs, to the rental property listed as a class. 

customer/jobs

QuickBooks was designed in the beginning for industry who sold things.  Builders who built things.  Therefore the word Jobs.   You had a customer and then you had a job you were doing for that customer.

In our Industry we will customize it to fit us!!! So we will make our rental property the customer, and the tenant the Job.  

When you see words in QuickBooks like  sub account,  Subclass, and Job, they're just another word for Indenting, because QuickBooks does everything in outline form. It has headers and accounts, sub classes, and jobs, that are indented under the Header.

FOR EXAMPLE

Let's add a rental property as a Customer and the tenant as a job 

Customer:  1234 Money Maker Drive                 

                     Job:   Betty Spendalot (Tenant)

Customer:  5678  Bank Street Avenue

                  Job:   Conrad Savesalot

Everything is neat as a pin in QuickBooks. 

All you are doing is setting it up in outline form.

Let's take a look at the class feature to see how your properties will look there.

SETTING UP YOUR PROPERTIES AS A CLASS

1234 Money Maker Drive

5678 Bank Street Avenue

If you can use two fingers to type on your computer, you can use QuickBooks. 

You have just setup your properties as a class and Your Tenants as a Job (Indent) of the rental property.

When you invoice your tenants. you will choose the rental address from  the CLASS COLUMN on the invoice.  

When you pay for a repair on a rental property you will choose the CLASS COLUMN on the check stub.  

Any time you want to know where you stand financially on a property, just do a Profit and Loss Report by Class.  Voila, with a click of a button, you can see your income less expenses and your bottom line.

You can see just how much money you spent for that building or that unit inside the building, or that single family home, right down to the penny!  

Once you know the POWER OF QUICKBOOKS, I kid you not, it will knock the socks right off of you.

I had a customer write me and tell me that he had used QuickBooks for over 25 years and didn't know the Power of QuickBooks until I wrote him exactly what I am writing you.

For a little over $200 (and it's  a tax write off), you will have the best friend you can have in this business.

Nancy Neville

Certified QuickBooks Pro Advisor

Tenant worked for the school system.  Paid rent on time.  Credit Check came out great.  Rented to her.  Three months later she gives notice and moves.  Husband and I went into the home after she moved and found the stairs missing, completely gone that leads upstairs to the bedroom.  I thought I was seeing things.  I had to stare at the missing stair case until it dawned on me they were actually gone.  Couldn't figure out why.  The next day when we went back to check things out again, the stairs were there.  (We had called the police to tell them that our tenant stole  our stairs.)  When the Police  came the second day, and saw the stairs were back, they told us that stairs are usually where druggies store their "stash".  

I rented to an older gent, who I called "Dear Martin".  He got into everything.  He was retired and bored.  He monkey'd around with the upstairs tenants electricity, gas furnaces, and more.  He was a "hoarder".  We evicted him because there was so much "stuff" in the house that it was like a maze.  No furniture just boxes, bags of diapers, some used, Yuk, and food half eaten such as fish, and more.  The weirdest thing we saw was a long red hair wig hanging from the shower stall.  It reminded me of the movie "Psycho" for some reason.  We pulled back the curtain and saw this wig staring us in the face, along with other unmentionable things.  He was single but did have a woman friend, but she was an old homeless woman who by the way,  he brought to court telling the Judge this was his mother who I was evicting.  (His mother had passed away many years ago)

We found dead dogs  left behind in our homes, starved to death.

We found a boa constructor....creepy since the house was pitch black in darkness when we went in to check things out.  Click on flash light....Hello Boa!

Found new $4,000 furnace missing. 

Water heaters gone

Siding on some of our non-brick homes missing

A woman who worked in the accounting office of the police station who we had to evict left us human poo poo in her bedroom.  Was too big a pile for a dog.  And 40 bags of garbage

Had a couple who wanted to turn our home into a funeral parlor and use the basement for embalming. 

Found a naked squatter in a rental that we were fixing up.  Another Detroit Story called "Pulling our weapons"  My husband entered through the front, I entered through back. Show down time!!!

Oh, well.....too many to mention. 

Nancy Neville

First of all you need to send your tenant an Itemized bill for his damages showing why you are holding his security deposit. 

If the Security Deposit is less than the damages, you can hold on to it.  If it is less then the damages, cut him a check and send it along with the itemized list to his last know address and it must be done within so many days according to your state law.  If you don't do this, then the tenant can claim treble damages.

Thank goodness the tenant didn't remove the dish from the roof of the house.  Never have anyone install a dish on the roof of a house unless you want to have roof repairs in the future.  Dishes can be installed on a pole in the backyard or alongside the house.  They should never be installed on the roof of a house.

Your tenant is a "Street Smart Tenant".  He knows the law and that's a dangerous thing, because he is a "player".  He has done this many times before. 

Did you take BEFORE AND AFTER PICTURES ????   If you didn't take before pictures of the property before this tenant moved in, how can you prove to a court that what he says about the property being in disrepair is not true.  It is your word against his.  

Take photo's of the damages.  Keep your receipts and make sure you have evidence and proof of everything when you go to court.  If you don't, it is "he said, she said" type scenario and 9 times out of 10 a Judge will lean towards the tenant, UNLESS there is more evidence in the case that leans more towards your side. 

Nancy Neville

Unless you can prove that the Tenant was responsible for the break in you can't charge the tenant for the broken front door.  

If you try to charge a tenant for damages done by a thief to the property, and you go to court the Judge will rule in the Tenant's Favor.  

You should also have in your lease agreement that you advise the tenant to have "Renter's Insurance   (Renter's Insurance is for an act of nature thing. Fire, Wind Damage, Hurricane's, things like that, not break ins.)  Renters Insurance is pretty cheap and can be obtained through their auto insurance policy.  $12.00 a year sometimes.   This protects their "Stuff" inside the building, but not the building.  That's why YOU should have insurance on the building.

Break-ins are 99% of the time done by someone the Tenant knows.  They refuse to believe that fact, but it is true.  

Be fair and balanced, (which you sound like you are) and do not charge this tenant for the broken door, or you may face a vacancy or damage the good Landlord/Tenant Relationship that I believe you have.

Nancy Neville

When obtaining a new rental building that has tenants in it,  you should right away introduce yourself in writing or in person, that's number one.

Then if the tenants are "questionable",( things you state above)  I would send them another letter in the Spring or about 60 days before their lease is ready to expire that the rents will be such and such and a deposit is required,  if one was not collected before, or enough.  

Chances are they won't pay their rent once they receive that letter, but that is something that you have to accept.  But keep in mind, you will be getting the correct tenant pool into the building that YOU screened and who are COLLECTIBLE, etc., according to your Criteria. AND....a big AND....the losses you face by not being able to collect rents on these units at that time, can be written off as a Write Off Expense at the end of the year, if you can't collect the money owed to you by these tenants.  

FOOT NOTE: 

I had to weed out a lot of people when I took over several rentals.  But it was worth it. Tenants weren't paying rent anyway, and it had to be done in order for us to make a profit, and start fresh.  Sometimes you need to clean house, but that entails money loss, but keep in mind, a tax deduction at the end of the year.  Make sure you get a Judgment whenever you lose money on an eviction or a tenant owing you money. 

Nancy Neville