Rental property management in QuickBooks

 My husband and I own 98 units in Rhode Island.  We are very versed in the Rhode Island Landlord Tenant Act and all that goes with owning property and being a landlord.  Let's just say it is definitely not "easy money".  Especially when you get that sewer line backup call on Christmas Eve.

The easiest way to set up your records for property management using QuickBooks is to open QuickBooks and go to:

• File


• New company file


• Select property management chart of accounts from the default selections


• Now, depending on your business, you can make your tenants your customers and use the class feature for your property locations.  This way you can run a Profit and Loss Statement by class and it will show all income and expenses per property location.  Your CPA will need this at the end of the year for tax filing.


• Now create and invoice for the first month's rent and memorize it. Create a memorized group called "monthly rentals" and add the memorized transaction to the group.  Set the memorized group to enter automatically each month.


• Depending on your business, you will have to create the following items: rental income, security deposit and prepaid last month's rent.  Create separate invoices for each item to be invoiced to your tenant.


• Make and item for any application fee or credit check fee.


• Now, when the tenant pays you, go to customer, receive payments and enter the payment against the appropriate invoice.


• Make sure you classify all bills and checks for each property as well.

That is a brief description of how to set up property management in QuickBooks.  If you are managing a property for someone else, you will set up the books differently.  Your customer will be the property owner and the tenants would be the jobs under the customer name.  You would invoice the jobs instead of the customer, but will be able to run a customer report to show all properties for your client.

Added side note:  There is a really detailed help page on "Ask Intuit" on property management.   It will answer many of the questions not addressed in this blog.

Lynda
Check out my website www.artesanibookkeeping.com