Multiple LLCs and Handling Loans/expenses

[Jonathan D.]

Hi All,

My partner and I have started our businesses flipping homes. We have our main LLC (call it LLC-1) and then each property we purchase and flip gets their own LLC (for risk reasons). We have a general loan for all of our business activities which has been deposited into LLC-1 bank account. When we do work on each flip, we pull the funding from LLC-1 to pay for expenses and track everything separate. So this poses a couple questions:

1. Do we need separate bank account for each LLC we register or can it be centrally managed by a single one as long as we track expenses

2. How do we allocate the interest from the loan as a carrying cost to each of the flip properties? 

3. How do we account for overhead and general operating expenses? i.e. we have a business dinner, we pay for cell phones, etc. Since our main LLC (LLC-1) isn't really doing anything (no properties will be associated with it), how do i distribute those expenses against the flip properties?

Thanks! 

Jonathan

[Michael Seeker]

@Jonathan D. - I have a similar set up with my rental properties, however I do not have any loans to my LLC that handles transactions. When I have an expense that would apply to multiple operating LLC's, I'll split that expense based on the number of units in each LLC.

The loan makes things a little more complicated, but you should be able to account for how much debt each individual LLC is utilizing and split out the loan payments accordingly.