Quickbooks Pro setup if you use a property management company

[Libby Baugher]

Hi all, 

I finally purchased my first rental properties this past Fall after researching and learning for the last 6 months. I have 3 properties (2 sfh and 1 duplex). Now I’m ready to setup my quickbooks so I don’t have such a headache at tax time. I’ll probably have my accountant set it up for me but I’m not sure when I’ll be doing this since it’s now the holiday season and I don’t have much free time to spare. I’ve been playing around with quickbooks the last few days and feel I’m getting the hang of it however, I am curious how others who use property management company set their quickbooks up. I’m not sure how much detail people put into theirs but I do want mine to cover income, expenses, property purchases, how do I setup property management company data,etc...as much detail as I can get. I am a computer forensic analyst so I’m all about detail. I’ve looked through previous posts and found a couple that did cover how to setup quickbooks for owners who use property management company however those were a bit old and I’m looking for something more recent. The vast majority of quickbooks setup posts are for self managing and for the actual property management companies.

Anyway, sorry for such a long post, any replies would be appreciated! Thanks!

Libby

[Richard Sherman]

@Libby Baugher in general you set up each property as a "class" and then allocate expenses, income etc by that class.  That being said, hiring a book keeper (I use upwork and got an AMAZING company out of Mumbai that I now use for my main businesses as well) was perhaps the best money I have ever spent.  Getting it right with exchanges, depreciation etc can require some serious accounting knowledge.  The book keepers are VERY reasonable and I have a local accountant who then verifies and double checks everything