Software, Quickbooks, excel...

[Shea Spinelli]

Ok, I know this question has been asked 500 times, 500 different ways, but it still seems clear as mud. Quite possibly the most confusing part of the business to me. What software should we use that has management capabilities, bookkeeping, and is inexpensive? We are newbies, buying 15 units (3 need rehab before renting) with 12 inherited long-term tenants who pay by check and the landlord picks up rent on the 1st each month. It's a blue collar community. We want to manage appropriately from the beginning. Should we use pm software, free software, Quickbooks, paper, an excel spreadsheet...any ideas?

Thanks in advance!

[Ray Lai]

@Shea Spinelli. @Andrew Acuna

Cody swears by Buildium for his 1000 units but other people have had issues. This is what I took down. My PM uses Buildium and as a client it's OK.

You'll get lots of people chime in about using quickbooks and appfolio as well I bet. Here are my notes:

Property Management / Accounting

Quickbooks pro “I'd love to use quickbooks pro but they won't allow me to import expense data, nor allow subdivision of income/expenses as I would like.” ~Brandon Schlichter

“We have been using quickbooks for 12 years. I can tell you what profit I made on each rental, new home construction, rehab, flip. What the money was spent on. A detail P & L per property. It is all you need.” Arlan Potter

“I would recommend QuickBooks Pro on-line version. We set up quickbooks to create invoices for tenants. You don't need to mail them, but you can or you can email them automatically. Then we apply the rent payments against these invoices - Very easy when you hook up QB to your bank account -happens mostly automatic every night. We also enter future bills for taxes and insurance and PM fees etc... The benefit that this can create for you (with a couple downloads to excel) is an ongoing cash flow forecasting tool and a comparison of what you thought your cash flow should be to what it actually was. Plus it alerts you of bills due so everything is getting paid on time and provides you a report of past due rents or past due bills you owe.

Their phone app connects directly to the cloud based software. You can take pictures of receipts (before they are lost) and upload into QB for permanent retention. This process also requires you to select what property the receipt is for, what bank or CC you used and what account it should charge this expense to. So, it is all posted and done at the same time. This is very simple, straight forward and takes only a few moments to do. No more spending hours manually entering into your PM software!

So, you can replace the majority of the features that a PM tool offers you with the added benefit of a great P&L, budget vs. actual and cashflow analysis.” Kevin Schulz

Pros: commonly used accounting software
Cons:2.5 star rating on AmazonCost: QuickBooks Pro 2017 web download 189.99, $45/month for online

Buildium – Property management software

“The current software I use is Buildium.com, the software is one of the more inexpensive softwares to get for your management systems at $40.00 a month up to 200 units and then the price bumps to $200.00 a month. This software has some hidden fees in ACH transfers, which are charged to the property manager for every ACH transfer a total of $.50 and could be more depending on the days it takes to transfer. If you have a lot of properties this can add up quickly!” Peter Mckernan

“I have been using buildium for 2 months now managing 14 units. It's great for costs, budgets and the money management. It allows all units or properties to stay separate or combine by owner. The online rent collection has saved me a ton of time and effort.” Blake Garcia

“I used Buildium and it's a great software for starting out. It just doesn't make sense to pay around $50 a month to manage two units. It wouldn't cost too much more to hire a property manager and they would do all the work for you.

There are services available for screening that won't cost you a dime or require any effort on your part. Free online payment options are available or you could have the tenant set up direct deposit into your account for free. All of these options take less time than it would to set up Buildium, they don't require upkeep, and they won't cost you anything.” Nathan G

Pros: mentioned often on BP so commonly used
Cons: Hidden fees that add up
Cost: Starting at $45 / month, additional fees for features like ePay, tenant screening, 1099 eFiling

Appfolio - Software used for property management

“The next software that is pretty expensive is out of the gate is Appfolio.com, which charges $200.00 fee. This service does not take any money for ACH transfers and the software does charge an extra amount for building a website for your company (this is optional).” Peter Mckernan

“I have to say, they have a lot of cool things, but their accounting system is awful. That alone was a deal breaker. They told me that I would have to manually enter every single charge I do on the credit card for the business manually. If you use quickbooks and download the transactions from your bank, you know how much time that saves you every month. They also force you into working in their molds and expect you to adapt to their software. Most of the time are small compromises, but still annoyances.” Rafael Floresta

“My PM uses Appfolio (which seems, on here, to have it's share of fans and detractors) so it's easier and quicker for me to login and review rent collections, expenses, invoices, etc. I can't speak to maintenance management or anything else like that but now that I've had a PM with a cloud solution that has an owner portal, I don't think I'd want to go back. At the very least it would save you and your partner time with owners who are similar to me calling you up with questions that they could get the answers to online.” Andrew Johnson

“I use Appfolio out of santa barbara, ca its definitely not free and my property mgmt company passes those costs down to me which I think is around 50-60 bucks a month based on number of units under the service.

I am able to see all reports from rent rolls, cash flow statements / trailing 12 month cash flow, tenant ledgers, maintenance requests, dialog between tenants and mgmt staff, resolutions to maintenance requests, move in pictures, move out pictures, or video, and many more features.

What I like is that it allows the vendors to be in a dialog/text/chat box so they are prepared (vendor) prior to job assignment with lockbox codes, scope of work and pictures before they even go to the site so we dont waste time figuring things out and run up a huge $$$ bill for lack of efficiency.” Albert Bui

Pros: mentioned often on BP
Cons: accounting module is very weak, expensive for small operations
Cost: $1 per unit, per month plus an onboarding fee (equal to two months of service). Note that there is a $200 minimum monthly fee. App Folio offers a 15 day free trial.

Rent Manager – PM software
“Rent Manager has a pretty solid maintenance feature. I can create workorders and assign them individually to specific vendors or handymen. Those guys can then view their individual workorder lists from their mobile devices. When they have completed each workorder they can close them out and add comments detailing their scope of work. I am able to add/remove/edit/reassign workorders anytime.

All closed workorders are saved and can be cross referenced by tenant, property, or unit at any time from anywhere. Very handy.” – Ryan Murdock
“We have been using Rent Manager for years and its works very well for us. It can do as much or as little as you need, it is very affordable, and if you pick the cloud version (what we use) it is very convenient. Owners love having a portal to access their property information and performance in real time. “ Ante Vujic

TenantCloud “I do all of that with TenantCloud and have closed my paid account with AF. I only have 22 properties (all homes), but it works great. I do applications, listings to zillow and others, website, payments, accounting, maintenance, reports and its all free. I am still waiting for the got ya as they are free, but they claim they will always be free for up to 75 units. At SXSW I saw one of their people and they said they will have the ability to get bids on jobs like cleaning, painting and such soon - I assume this is how they make money. “ Ben Travis

Pros: they are new and offer free operations for landlords and tenants
Cons: new company, not mentioned on BP much
Cost: “We get paid by service providers - like insurance companies, plumbing companies, screening companies, A/C and heating, moving companies..... oh you get the idea. TenantCloud is free, but if you decided to use any of the service providers products then you can buy in TenantCloud, which only makes life even more convenient.”

Receipts By Wave – tracking expenses

“I use an application (via both phone and web browser) called 'Receipts by Wave'. It's free and very simple to use. You can setup categories, create users with different permissions, etc.

When you start a flip you
1: setup a new account
2: create categories (ie, kitchen, bath, plumbing, landscaping, etc, etc)
3: as you make purchases take pictures of the receipts via the phone app and choose the category
4: via the web browser (computer) portal you the administrator can go through and verify all the incoming receipts
5: then you can create reports showing who's spending how much on what very easily”