Bookkeeping do it yourself or hire

[Frank Lodge]

Hi BP members, am hoping the brilliant minds here can help me out once again. I did a search in the forum on bookkeeping and only three questions came up on bookkeeping none of which got a reply so here goes the fourth. As a general rule of thumb at what point do you bring in a bookkeeper at 10, 20 or 3O units or should someone typically be able to handle the books for 30 units, and at what point would you move from a bookkeeper to an accountant. Is there some financial point where if its taking you X number of hours its better to hire help ? Also while there are many sites to get an accountant there seems to be only a few to find bookkeepers. Really curious about how others are handling their accounting. In my case am only dealing with seven SFH and one active rehab. Appreciate the feed back.

[Account Closed]

Michael, I hear what you are saying, and when I talk about Quickbooks and say it is easy, it's because it truly is.  

But with anything in life, from the time we crawl and talk as babies, we need to learn how to do it? That is a given.  

We can learn on our own, but the results end up being junk as you say.   So we go to school to learn to read and write, and we go to college to learn a trade, and when we get a job we have to learn how to use their computer and their software program, etc.  

When we buy a software program for home, we need either to read the manuals that come with it in order to use it.  Most of the time we fall asleep. 

Once we learn something, as you state, we become a pro.  We become good at it, if we enjoy it, we get even better.  

The people I have taught, and that covers CPA's, after learning how to use QuickBooks can't believe how easy it is to use.  It's all about filling out forms in QuickBooks.  Everything is in outline form.  And that outline is derived from the data we enter on a form.  Surely we all fill out forms.  Doctors offices, applying for credit, or a job.  Our life consists of filling out forms.  

Investors could buy a cheap program or an expensive program, and everyone will have a learning problem trying to learn how to use it.  Even a simple excel spread sheet can drive someone insane trying to learn how to multiply in an excel cell.  

When I first began in this business I used Tenant Pro because it had cute little colorful cartoons as Icons.  Hey, I can do cartoons, I thought to myself.  You know what.  I don't care how colorful or cute a program is, you still have to learn how to enter your data and read reports. 

So I went to QuickBooks because the one thing I like about it, even though I didn't no squat about it, was the reports.  How professional they they looked.  They weren't correct because I didn't know how to use QuickBooks, but I wanted to and so I began to learn, and I took courses in QuickBooks and became a Certified QuickBooks Pro Advisor.  

Yes it was hard to learn QuickBooks, because I had to learn all Industries except ours, the rental industry.  Nobody taught our Industry.  Therefore,  because I was Landlord I decided to customize QuickBooks for me, and that's how I began.

So, yes, QuickBooks is hard to use if you don't know how.  Yes, Tenant Pro was hard to use because I didn't know how, but then later when I did learn how to use it,  didn't like it and continued with QuickBooks.  But both programs I had to study and learn it. 

As much as I had to learned about QuickBooks, I bought a Mac Computer and purchased QuickBooks for Mac Users and when I tried to use it I thought to myself, Gosh this stinks.  It's not at all like Quickbooks Desktop version.  I was frustrated.  I had to learn the program all over again. But I did it and now it's a piece of cake.  It doesn't have all the features as the desktop version, but it is doable. 

But once again my point is this.  I feel the best software program out there is QuickBooks because we can customize it to fit us is QuickBooks.  If we have to learn a financial software program anyway, why not get the one we find is best.  One we can CUSTOMIZE. 

My main reason for being passionate about QuickBooks is because I was a landlord with 40 properties.  I lived it.  I breathed it. and being a landlord was also my other passion.  I've always been good with numbers as well.  So even though I do make a living teaching Quickbooks, I want to help you and that's my bottom line.

Nancy Neville