Just purchased 1st duplex. Do I need Quick Books?

[Anthony McKeen]

Hi all,

We recently purchased our first duplex and will be closing shortly.  We were planning on using Quick Books and I just found out that it's a subscription service rather than a one time payment.  All I can think about is how it will eat into our monthly cash flow now.  Any advice out there if this is needed with just 1 property?  Keeping in mind that we do plan to purchase more properties in the future.  Also, if you do use it, which version do you recommend?  Thanks in advance!

Anthony

[Kyle Keller]

@Anthony McKeen

I've never used quick books so I don't know the perks of it. I just use google drive and keep a spreadsheet with a list of all expenses. I only have a couple properties but I also use it to track my overall finances and work expenses. It works really well for me, and I can just duplicate the sheet for the new year.

[Kyle Keller]

@Anthony McKeen

Congrats on the first purchase btw

[Sean T.]

No reason you can't just use spreadsheets and a template.  Quickbooks has a cost for convenience and the prebuilt functions.

[Joe Roberts]

@Anthony McKeen

Check out Stessa! I love it as a bookkeeping/record keeping and portfolio analyzing tool. Its FREE and as long as you do a good job of entering your expenses in, it can kick out all sorts of great reports for you. 

[Pauline Zhao]

Congratulations on your first purchase! I would recommend you use Stessa instead. As a CPA as well as investor myself, I have years of experience using both Quickbook and Stessa, there will be much more complex setting and mapping for you to use QB, and more costly. However, I believe Stessa is a great alternative and it is very user friendly for buy and hold investors, more importantly, it is FREE! Any one with a portfolio smaller than 10 properties, Stessa has everything that you need! It also generates a beautiful reports for the year end tax filing purpose.

[Soh Tanaka]

FYI, you can still buy QuickBooks that is NOT a subscription base. You can buy it for under $300 and use it for 3 years, so that's less than $10 per month. 

This is a very high-level review, so I could be wrong, but it looks like Stessa doesn't have any way to enter journal entries, and that is a huge red flag to me. I like to keep track of escrow account activities, activities within the property management companies I hire, and assets. 

[Basit Siddiqi]

@Anthony McKeen

Quickbooks online is subscription based and the monthly fee is based on how many companies you have and the complexity of the companies.

Quickbooks desktop is a one time fee that will normally last you 3-4 years. Intuit(the creators for quickbooks) stop servicing the Quickbooks desktop version that you purchase after 3 years. With that said, it can still last longer than 3 years.

The questions is do you need an accounting software or will excel do. I think it depends on your specific needs.
I normally advice for an accounting software if you are looking for ease in generating reports for decision making capabilities or if you want neatly generated reports to show to third-parties.

[Bill Hampton]

I recommend Stessa as well. It's FREE and designed for real estate investors. Quickbooks too complicated and unnecessary for a beginner. 

[Theresa Harris]

@Anthony McKeen  Congrats on your first purchase.  You don't need any software to keep track of things.  Just keep track of your receipts, payments, bills, etc and you will be fine.  I print my receipts and put them in a folder for tax time.  I separate them by property and have a small notebook where I keep a running total for each.  If you do use a spreadsheet or software, make sure to keep back ups of everything.