Life Used to be Simple, Now I have Dozens of Accounts & LLCs

[Julie Marquez]

I know I'm not doing this right, and could use some help/guidance/suggestions.

Back in the day when I had just a couple of rentals, I could do all my personal finance and budgeting using mint.com and google sheets spreadsheets. Now, 25 properties and multiple bank accounts and separate LLCs, I am still doing it this way. I can compile all the information I need to get to my accountant at the end of the year, but something in my system is broken and taking way to much of my time each month to stay organized. I would like more automation and clarity of income reports.

1. Is there a good software accounting that would work for someone like me who wants to spend less than 5 hours a month on this task that doesn't cost a fortune. From what I've read on past forums, and from other people, I'm not personally interested in doing my own QBO because of the complexity.

2. Which leads me to my next question, is there a "WHO" who can help me with this? Am I looking for a bookkeeper, or am I too small for substantial help? I think I need someone to deep dive into all my accounts and systems and straighten everything up and give me guidance on how to organize my spending and tracking. Is there someone I can hire, or is that again, a bookkeeper who understand the right accounting outcome? Again, I'm looking for simplicity, organization, clarity of reports and I'm willing to do this myself with a better system or hire it out if that makes sense too.

[Jason Marino]

Hi Julie,

Without going into any detail relating the precedent noted above, case law is usually very localized and fact specific. Based on that, your concept of isolating assets into separate entities is the right way of doing things. However, from an organizational perspective, there are easier ways of setting this up. The first option is batching assets, as described above. The second option would be to use a vehicle like a Series LLC. This is an LLC that usually has a single maintenance cost under a Parent LLC. This means a single registered agent and annual State compliance. The entity, unlike a traditional LLC, additionally has the ability to replicate itself into separate sub Series that are separate for limited liability purposes. These sub Series can own individual assets.