Landlord Organization/Filing System

[Victor Chico]

Greetings!

I am an accidental landlord hoping to become a real estate investor. I have several properties which I inherited. I have been actively reading and learning about rental properties.

I would like to hear opinions on documents that a landlord should have/keep and how to organize them properly.

As of now, I have 7 tenants. I have zero information on 6 of them except for their names. All of the tenants are currently section 8.

My plan is to have a system such as:

- Physical files - I have some idea on how to organize them, but would like to hear yours (i.e., one per tenant, one per property, etc). What should be in them?

- Digital files - A scanned copy of the paper files in a Dropbox folder, so I can share it with my partner

- Financials/Ledger - Use Quickbooks so I can quickly generate reports and also be able to input info from more than one place. I usually handle contract renovations, taxes and similar expenses. My partner lives about an hour away and he handles repairs and that sort of stuff.

I'll probably expand on this latter (i.e., give concrete examples of what I am doing or plan to do), but for now I wanted to get the ball rolling and hear your opinions on the matter. I have a very improvised system. I KNOW that if I want to grow I need a system that can grow as my number of properties/tenants increases and can be taught to others who I may have to bring in to help.

Thanks!