Property Management and QuickBooks (Purchases & Sales, Management, and Financial Tracking for Rental Homes, Condos, Apartments)

• A customer (tenant) wants a specific product and/or set of standardized (or customized) actions to take place. 
• Employees are assigned to, work on, and may incur additional expenses related to jobs (properties).
• Certain materials may need to be ordered and/or sub-contractors hired to improve or maintain the finished service and/or product. 
• Company owners are obligated to know the profitability of each property for tax reporting purposes. 
• If you can create and retrieve reliable, timely financial information about income earned and related costs for each property, you will be in a position to intelligently manage and control your financial future.

Because of the unique nature of property management companies you are constantly at risk for loss of rental income, time and cost over-runs, market and demographic shifts, and eroding profit margins. 

To balance those risks, you need accurate job (property) cost information so that you can:

• Track income and expenses on individual properties and monitor financial results.
• Keep an eye on changes that impact your profit margins.
• Be in a position to make informed financial decisions.
• Accurately record property purchases, improvements, and sales.

Additionally you will need to develop a system that can help you:

• Create rent roll reports.
• Enter and track security deposits received, applied, and refunded.
• Record property loans and payments
• Record depreciation on each property

The most important benefit of accurate costs by property (or rental unit) and overall company financial and profitability information is the ability to shape your own financial future. 

How does this information bring that about?  A.  When you are intimately familiar with your cost by property and rental unit, and with your company’s financial numbers, you’ll be able to make smarter pricing and purchasing decisions.

Working smarter, instead of harder, is the real way to truly make a permanent and lasting change in your bottom line!

• At a minimum, you will probably want to use your accounting system to:
• Record purchases and sales of properties, record interest costs and loan payments, and track escrow contributions, payments, and balances.
• Assign sub-contracted, and materials costs to properties or rental units.
• Assign payroll and payroll tax cost for direct labor employees to individual properties.
• Perform a variety of basic accounting functions within a single integrated accounting system (e.g., Accounts Payable, Credit Card Entry, Write and Print Checks, Invoicing, monitor Accounts Receivable, 1099s, etc.). 
• Create a variety of financial reports that will provide information to help run your business more profitably.
  
• You may wish to utilize more advanced features such as:
• Purchase Orders.
• Budgeting.
• Payroll preparation and related tax filings.
• Fixed assets tracking.
• Customizing and printing Forms.
• Using QuickBooks® to assign fully burdened labor cost to jobs.
  
• Additionally, you are probably looking for a system that:
• Can be customized to match the specific way that you do business.
• Can be managed in-house by trained accounting staff.
• Is reasonably priced, with minimal maintenance fees.

Fortunately, QuickBooks® and/or QuickBooks® Enterprise is an ideal match for most property management companies IF Lists are properly structured and IF bookkeeping staff is trained in various specific aspects of property management accounting and reporting. 

Lack of knowledge regarding these crucial accounting and business topics causes numerous errors and frustration, and can cost a business literally hundreds of thousands of dollars in lost revenues and/or excess cost.  But that’s why we’re here:  We can help you address a majority of the typical concerns faced by property management companies through focused training and, if necessary, by providing additional assistance from qualified accountants and Certified QuickBooks Pro Advisors.

Additionally, we have developed a pre-built QuickBooks file (template) that we have developed over our years of working with property management clients.  It contains a full Chart of Accounts, Items, and memorized transactions designed to help you get up-to-speed quickly and efficiently – and will provide you with exactly the types of reports that you need for both tax reporting and management decision-making.

With our training services and support products we can provide you with essential basics as well as advanced QuickBooks® applications knowledge. We bring thousands of hours of hands-on QuickBooks®, job-cost, and technical/project-oriented service company accounting experience to the table in these subjects. 

We are here to help you discover how to build your QuickBooks® system to provide you with the information that you need to make more informed, and more profitable, operating, estimating, and pricing decisions for your property management company.


We offer one-to-one support and consulting services to clients throughout North America, and industry-specific QuickBooks online training seminars as well.