Rental Properties, Vacation Rentals, Commercial. From the landlord with one rental property to the property manager or investor with hundreds, QuickBooks is an affordable alternative. Jun 9, 2017 - QuickBooks offers the following explanation for rental property accounting on their website: “QuickBooks Desktop allows you to set up a company file that lets you run your property management business and do tasks such as receiving and tracking rent from tenants, paying property owners and management companies, fees.
To add: when you use classes, it allows you to just have ONE set of accounts for expenses and income (ie. Plumbing 1 main st., plumbing 2 main st., etc.) you simply add each building as a 'class' plus one extra I like to add called 'general' which is a catch all for expenses not for any particular building. You could just leave those 'unclassified' but then you don't know if the expense or income really IS UNCLASSIFIED or if you just FORGOT. With 'gneral' you know you made a move to put it somewhere, hence anything lef 'unclassified' is soemthing you forgot. When you run PL statement, you run 'profit and loss by class' and you'll get nice column showing your complete profit and loss by building.
I suppose you COULD also have 'sub classes' for each unit if you have lots of multi units so that you can quickly see costs associated with a particular apartment for instance. Hope this adds some context.
You report it on your tax return based on the property, not the customer. I have always set up the properties as classes. Each class then gets its own Schedule E on the personal return. Customers and jobs seems like more work than necessary. The advantage for cutomer/job is more for billing vs. Customer is building / Job is tenant.
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Now when you run various reports, they are all organized by building (not PL reports, but things lik AR, etc.) You have to set them up anyway (customers or jobs) so you might as well have the building be a customer, then tenant a job.
I found my way here looking for a simple system for using QB for rental property accounting. I have a 2012 ver of QB and I have used it in the past for a construction co. I think I could go through the steps to set up a simple company with each rental as a customer/job and work out all of the expense accounts as needed but I'm a bit rusty in my QB skills and it would be time consuming. I'm guessing someone must have worked this all out before and I'd be happy to pay a reasonable amt for the pre-set template. I don't need to invoice tenants, write payroll or anything complicated. Just wanting to use it for bookkeeping and to be able to send my tax accountant a P&L report at the end of the year. Does what I'm looking for exist?
Customer:Job, such as Property address:Tenant, allows you to track prior tenant, current tenant, moving in tenant, using Job start, projected end and end dates, job status, security deposits by Job (tenant), etc. Don't overlook Items. Rent, Security Deposit, pet deposit, utilities, etc would be charged to the tenant. You didn't mention if you are managing from the perspective of landlord or property manager for property owned by others.
The differences include if this rent is your income or owed to others as your liability, for instance. You would need to understand your needs from the perspective of the accounting and reporting requirements. QB 2012 is not meant to run on W8 or newer; it reached end of life in May 2015.
If you are using Windows 7 or higher, it would be time to move to QB 2019 for compatibility and security reasons; for the ability to email invoices and reports and handle electronic banking activities directly in the QB program. You have none of this in QB 2012. QB Pro costs about $150, typically, and would be a business expense on the tax forms you file. You risk the data file can become corrupt and/or not even updated or accessible, the longer you use incompatible software or unsupported (reached end of life and no longer updated) programs. We had an All Star, Gita Faust, here who has books for QB and Property Management. Thanks for taking the time to post in the Community space. I’m here to share some information about running property management business in QuickBooks Desktop.
I can see that you’re actually skilled when it comes to setting up each rental as a Customer:Job in your company file. With QuickBooks Desktop, you don’t only set up a company file, you can as well perform tasks such as run your property management business, track and receive rent from tenants, paying property owners and management companies, record fees and overhead charges for property maintenance.
If you’re asking for a pre-set template for rental property accounting, I’d suggest reaching out to your local accountant. Your local accounting professional can provide advice tailored to your situation since laws and regulations relating to property management may vary based on the state, industry or specific facts and circumstances involved. If you need additional information in creating a property management company in QuickBooks Online, you may refer to this helpful article:. Please let me know if you have any questions or if I can be of additional assistance. Wishing you all the best and Happy Thanksgiving!
Thanks for the replies! I'm a landlord/owner and while I'm also a Realtor, I don't manage properties for others.
Simple bookkeeping is all I'm looking for. I already have an online system in place for collecting rents and keeping track of what's due when. I just need a system to keep track of my income/expenses on an ongoing basis instead of trying to figure it all out at the end of the year (as I am now):-/ I'll check out that article and talk to my accountant though I've asked him for something like this before and he didn't have much to offer. Happy Thanksgiving to all! Good day, localHero.
Thanks for turning to the Community. I’d be glad to help and ensure you can efficiently track these transactions.
To stay on top with your financial records, make sure the data from the current online system is also recorded into QuickBooks. Doing so will help manage your business time. If the current online program is capable of importing these transactions, then you’ll be able to bring the data directly into QBDT. However, if your accounting system is unable to automatically bring the transactions into QuickBooks, you may want to consider using a third-party application.
The is a one stop shop where you'll find third-party apps that integrate with QuickBooks Desktop. I've added articles that will guide you through the steps on how to record income and expenses:. If there's anything else that I can help you with, drop a comment below. Please know that I'm here to make running your business more simple.
Wishing you continued success. Good day, Isa144.
It’s nice to see you in the QuickBooks Community. I can help you in tracking the income and expenses from your rental property. Currently, we don't have a video tutorial on how to input these transactions. As mentioned by, the Create a property management company article will guide you through the steps on how to set up property management and track income and expenses. If the property management is already set up in QuickBooks, you can start with recording the payments by property. I'll guide you through the step by step process.
To receive payments:. From the Customers menu bar, choose Receive Payments. In the Account drop-down, select the accounts receivable sub-account for the property. From the Customer:Job drop-down, choose the tenant. Enter the amount of the payment. If you have multiple payments on a property, select Group with other undeposited funds.
Choose Next. Then continue entering all the payments. To make deposits in QuickBooks:. Go to Banking at the top menu bar, select Make Deposits. In the Payments to Deposit window, choose the payments to deposit and select OK.
In the Make Deposits window, select the Deposit To drop-down, and choose the checking sub-account for the property. Once done, save the deposit. For the detailed instructions on how to input income and expenses, click on this link and going directly to the section. The following steps will help get you moving today. If there's anything else that I can help you with, leave me a comment.
I'll be glad to assist you further. Wishing you the best.
I have been using quicken for over 25 years with my rental properties. At one time I had over 125 units. I set up rental income, under category, then tag it with the property address and then sub expense account like this 'Rental income' then under tag '157 Highlander:Rent' If you have an expense it just as easy Or category 'Utilities' then under tag '157 highlander:Water'.
Reports are ease to filter out to each property, category or tag. Tried to do this on quick books and found it so much more involved. They have a new Quicken with rentals, but like my method better.