Accounting for Multiple LLCs

[Jayse Brock]

Ok, so after a recent visit to my CPA for personal taxes, I was asking how I should set up my accounting. I have read a variety of articles on BP and they have been helpful but not exactly specific to my problem. Right now I have one LLC (partnership) that maps to one "business" in Wave. Great! Except my CPA said I need to be able to separate each property due to some tax thing.

His suggestion was to move to Quickbooks, although I don't really want to. I realize it's good but I'm also just cheap and Wave is free. Since Wave doesn't have "classes" like Quickbooks, I planned on having each property as it's own "business" and having another "business" as the operational arm, that pays for common expenses.

My question is around how to handle this? Does the operational business every actually record income? Right now it would appear only the subsidiary businesses do, and the parent business just makes money through equity holdings. Do you purchase a property with the operational business and transfer assets to a subsidiary business in Wave by just recording loans and assets, or would the purchase be recorded inside the sub-business? I suppose I am fine just getting a Quickbooks license if I have to, but I have other businesses also, so having a QBO account for each would be hundreds a month.

FYI, I am also curious about any opinions on whether each property should have its own LLC vs just getting an umbrella policy. I understand most people get LLCs, but there are some benefits and drawbacks (e.g., financing loan terms for one) and I mostly just hear to do it because of fear of liability. Aren't there practical ways to mitigate this without a web of LLCs?

[Michael Plaks]

@Jayse Brock

I have no idea why would one need separate books for each property. I'm with @Kory Reynolds: pretty much all rental properties qualify for the 20% QBI deduction. As long as they have positive net income after depreciation, which most properties don't.

What you need is an ability to separate income and expenses per property within your books. In QuickBooks Online, you have Classes in its more expensive versions, and you can hack it using Customers feature in the cheaper versions. I'm against QuickBooks Desktop in any of its flavors.

As long as Wave allows you to assign expenses and income to a specific property and create per-property reports - you are fine.