What Version of Quickbooks to go with???

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One other thing to consider is you don't need the newest version unless your doing lots of payroll stuff with Quickbooks. My Accountant told me first thing when I asked about upgrading that it wasn't worth it and many of his clients even go buy used copies off eBay to save a bunch of money. All the different year releases do basically the same thing when it boils down to it!

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I agree with Ann Bellamy about the upgrading. Don't upgrade unless you have to. I have not looked at John Hyre's system so I cannot answer on that. Cory Binsfield, I love and recommend the app called Mint for my clients. Especially those who do not want to hire a bookkeeper; however, need to keep track of things. http://www.mint.com -Steven

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I've used Rent Manager and it's a good program. If you are only ever going to buy rental properties I agree. But not so great for other types of transactions such as flips, lease options, etc. That's why I like John Hyre's instructions for quickbooks - they account for just about anything. I am currently using QB 2010, and expect to have to upgrade to 2013 this spring, you usually get 3 years before they force you to upgrade. I would never upgrade every year.

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they dont have pricing online... how much does it cost?

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If you want to simplify your life and grow your business, I'd ditch the quick books. It's not designed for rental property managers. I dumped them back when I had 6 units and went through a couple of providers unit I found a program called rent manger. For a flat monthly fee, you get a property manger program that resides on the cloud. It's easy to use and you can integrate it with quick books if you want. I know companies that have over 1,000 units that use this same program. If you plan on growing, this is a great solution. Google "Rent manager" for details. I've grown my portfolio from 6 units to over 83 with these guys and can't believe how much time they save me. For personal finances, I still use Quicken and a free monthly spending tracker called Mint. I still use Quickbooks for my investment advisory business as well.

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Thanks Ann Bellamy much appreciated. I am going to look into that and fool around with QB for a few weeks. My background is in IT so it will be interesting how these systems stack up. I'll report back.

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George Paiva, I use the KISS system from John Hyre. It is a full chart of accounts for real estate investors, and detailed instructions for every imaginable type of entry. http://www.realestatetaxlaw.com/ Moderator, I have no affiliation, just like the product. John is a CPA, tax attorney, and real estate investor. He is a selling speaker, but does not sell pie-in-the-sky get-rich-instantly stuff. He sells accounting systems, and his services as an accountant and attorney.

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i had the 2009 rental manager and then i upgraded to 2011 rental manager. ann is right, they stop giving you updates (i have stocks i like to update daily), so that's why i had to upgrade. Or maybe that was the first time i got Rental Manager (dont remember). but i know there was a reason to upgrade. whoever said to get the old version thought is correct. the "big" improvements they do from one year to the next are a joke. it's barely worth the paper they are printed on. all i need is Reports, Download stocks, Adding houses as accounts, etc. who cares about the other "fluff" they try to pass as "groundbreaking". Aaron, i wish you could remember what alternatives you researched. I miss Microsoft Money. it was so simple to use and worked great. Too bad they would not work for a rental portfolio holder.

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Ok I got my Quicken Rental Property Manager all straighten out for Tax year 2012. I also have Quickbooks Premier 2010 and the Enterprise v13. I may just stick to QB 2010 to keep it simple. I have 4 properties. 1 is bought thru LLC in 2012. The other 3 I manage for my mom. 12 units in total. So its not a big portfolio but I plan on adding a property every 2 years. What are the templates I have seen referred that you can prefill or import into QB to have all the categories setup properly for rental properties? I've seen many discussed I just want to get the one that works.

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One of the challenges with using old versions of QB: If you are downloading transactions, your bank has to be compatible with your version of QB. And banks, in order to be able to provide the formats of files downloaded to QB, are required by Intuit to upgrade the file format regularly. So every 3 years, suddenly you won't be able to open the file that is downloaded from your bank. I simply assume that I"m going to upgrade my QB regularly, but I only do it every 3 years, never every year. And I wait for the last minute to be able to do it, so that Intuit has issued upgrades and patches before I upgrade. Usually that is around May, if I remember correctly. Someone else jump in a correct me if I'm wrong or out of date. I think the payroll subscription works similarly.