Just closed my first SFR Rental deal! Looking for accounting software.

[Frank Jiang]

Hello BP,

I have been a reader of the site for quite some time but I have not yet posted. This week, my wife and I closed on our first deal: SFR in Memphis, TN with a 2-year lease tenant already in place.

In my day job, I work as a financial analyst and I see the importance of keeping a tidy set of books.  I would like to get off to a good start with our family's rental business and keep the financial transactions tidy from the get go.  Currently I'm doing things in Google spreadsheets and I have a suspicion that this process isn't going to scale very well.

Does anyone have any good suggestions for accounting software for landlords?

Unnecessary but highly desirable would be the ability to automate monthly transactions for items such as prepaid insurance, prepaid taxes, depreciation expenses.

Thanks all for your help!

[Michael Seeker]

Excel can do it all.  You have to do a bit more legwork up front to figure out how to categorize your expenses yourself (I just figured out the categories the first year I filed my taxes and have been using them ever since).  I could just as easily accommodate 1,000+ properties in my spreadsheets as I can the handful that I currently track.  Most tax professionals should be able to work with either QuickBooks or Excel...I don't think there are really any other competitive options especially for somebody just starting out.