Bookkeeping when managing 3+ flips at a time?

[Alex Fenske]

For those who manage 3+ flips at a time, I'm curious what bookkeeping software you use and how you keep all the expenses properly matched to each property. 

I use QBO for my corp books and Stessa for my rental portfolio, and I have a bookkeeper who manages those systems. We used Stessa for the flips last year, but as I've increased the number of flips, tying expenses to the appropriate project has become a bear and I'm wondering what others do. Contractor payments, online orders, card swipes at home improvement stores, utility payments... When these payees are shared across all projects, it's a mess tracking what expense goes to which property.

What's the simplest/easiest way to do this?

[Kevin Sobilo]

I do BRRRR not flips but the same issue applies when doing multiple things at once.

My approach is 1 checking account for each rehab. I typically use my own cash for rehabs and deposit the budget into the checking account at the beginning of the project. Everything for that rehab gets paid from that account.

For things like card swipes at home improvement stores, I can have them document a PO (Purchase Order) to identify which project this purchase is for. When I go to pay the bill, I do it online and select the purchases for 1 single rehab and pay those from the designated checking account. 

My bookkeeper will know that any transaction from that checking account is associated with that specific property and eventually they all come from there.

If you wish to pay anything from other accounts and I do that with a few things like utilities, insurance, etc, then I use my banks tagging feature to tag the transaction to annotate what the transaction is for. So, the tags might be "#123 Main St, #Utility" and the bookkeeper will know the property and category for the transaction clearly.