Accounting Software for Under 6 Units

[Ben K.]

Hello everyone. I only have a few rental units. The first one is a 3-plex (building with only 3 apts), and the other is house (not split up into units or anything, just a single unit property). Currently I first started off just using a basic spread sheet, that sucked and only did that for 1 year. After that I started using Quicken Rental Property Manager; that software sucks too. Even with it linked to my business bank account, and I would go through all the bank transactions line-by-line and specified what each transaction of for (utilities, rents received, repairs, etc) it would never associate the rent received for the apt/unit & the tenant in that unit to the tenant I had listed for that apt; I kept getting notifications that this person is past due on their rent when they weren't. If I used the "Tenant Dashboard" to say they paid rent then it would add a rent received transaction into the bank transactions making it look like I double collected on rent. Deposits were also a joke too with duplicate entries and stuff that just made it easier to do a work around by entering it in as the tenant lost all their deposit and then paid the tenant like I was paying a bill and just note that it was a deposit refund. Its the kind of software that makes doing bookkeeping dreadful. Plus you cant even send a year end to an accountant, so I'd have to print off a bunch of sheets & reports to hand to the CPA because I don't know what they all need.

Since I only have a few units, I'm looking for basic and very simple to use accounting software that I can send to the accountant at the end of the year. I don't need to be able to pay bills thought the software, I use my bank's online bill pay for that, so it should be able to see that from the bank account when it pulls it in. Besides I don't want to have to start buying paper checks to print off and mail out. I'm not checking and/or making reports throughout the year, I can see how I'm doing by looking at my bank account balance. Basically itemize income (rent), expenses (repairs, utilities, cleaning, etc), and show that deposits are set to the side, just these most basic of basic features.

I don't use turbo tax so I'm not concerned about that feature. I have my W2 and all my stuff from my regular job, the stuff for my home mortgage, health insurance, all that jazz that I already take to an accountant. Also, I wont be using it to track my personal finances or anything like that, just the rentals. These few rentals are just a very small secondary income that hopefully pays off more down the road.

I'm not looking to expand anytime in the foreseeable future so I don't have to worry about growing to 50 or 100 units anytime soon. If that day comes in 10 or so years then I guess that'll be something to consider then, but for now I need simple and easy without many bells and whistles. I was looking at either QuickBooks Self-Employed or QuickBooks Simple Start. Does anyone have any experience with either of these? If so, what are the pros/cons of each, and which would you recommend?

Thank you everyone in advance for your recommendations.