All Forum Posts by: Alex Pelletier

Congrats on closing on your property. Depending on the details of the property, you could have significant tax savings. I'd recommend consulting your CPA, but if you want to explore options, there are a couple of names that are commonly recommended:

KBKG
ELB Cost Seg

If you have any questions feel free to connect with me!

3 Votes

Las Vegas, Nevada

Quote from @Joe Martella:

This is from an earlier post I made. I hope this helps. I have used TurboTenant successfully 4 times now.

I currently manage 4 SFH rentals in addition to having a very demanding full time job. There are many free resources out there for smaller investors. I am going to list them:

TurboTenant
- It is completely free to advertise your rental, screen your tenants.
- You upload your pictures, write a description and it posts to 20+ websites for free
- Takes about 24-48 hours for leads to come in.
- Once you select a tenant, they pay for the background check, upload documents (paystubs, ID, W2) and it is all set to you.
- It even helps you build a lease after you select a tenant (there is a $30+ fee for the lease)
- My referral code .disclosure. I do not get any money from TurboTenant, nor am I an owner or investor in the company.
- They have a referral program where they will send me a $25 home depot gift card for a referral - you don't have to use the referral code
- I also use them for rent collection now since they do free credit reporting for tenants

Stessa
- Stessa is a website that I use to track all my expenses.
- It is another free site and you can pull reports
- You even can upload receipts.
- Roofstock recently purchased Stessa
- Completely free

Zillow Rental Manager
- I use this to collect rent.
- Free for the landlord
- Tenant only pays a fee if they use a credit card to pay rent. ACH is free
- Takes about 5-7 days for the funds to hit your bank account
Excel
- I use an excel spreadsheet to track my check register. You can download a free template online

Other free websites I haven't used.

Avail.co
- This is another free website that I learned about this week listening to a podcast (may have been a BP podcast). I haven't used it and cannot speak to it.

Zibo.com
- This is another free website where you can collect rent electronically and have an interest checking account.
- I am still looking at this, because not all my tenants pay electronically. 2 like to mail checks. I haven't looked at how to deposit those - I don't like mobile deposits.

There are many free resources to use before you start paying for services. Out of my 4 rentals, I have placed 2 tenants with TurboTenant - one tenant is on year 3 and the other tenant is on year 2. I listed the properties, took some pictures (they weren't the greatest pictures) and had it rented in a week. I was able to recycle the leases upon renewal and didn't pay any commissions for the rental, which is a savings of over $4,000 if you consider the rental commission to be 1 month rent. I highly recommend it.

Here are some threads you may want to take a read of:

https://www.biggerpockets.com/...

This is a great write-up, thank you for sharing!

A couple of questions:
Are you actively using all of these tools? Turbotenant specifically for listing, Stessa for bookkeeping, Zillow for rent collection? Interested to hear how that works for you in terms of organization!

If you're looking for those functions in a single platform, have you looked into RentRedi, Innago, TenantCloud, or Baselane? They might streamline your workflow a bit.

I will connect with you in case you have any questions as you look into options. Thanks!

2 Votes

Quote from @Forrest T Schue:

Hello everybody,

What methods do you recommend for tracking and documenting businesses receipts?
shoebox? A software?

There are multiple options for you to consider:
1) A bookkeeping/accounting software for your business that allows you to organize receipts
2) A separate document scanning tool that allows you to quickly add receipts

Antonette is right that it sometimes is easier to manage this in a robust platform like Quickbooks Online, Xero, Freshbooks, etc, but there are rental-specific tools that can help you with your bookkeeping and maintaining compliance at tax time.

The main ones you'll find on BiggerPockets are Stessa and REIHub. These are both paid services if you want the receipt scanning and some of the other quality-of-life features, but you could also use Stessa or Azibo for the bookkeeping portion in tandem with a document scanning solution on your phone like OneDrive, Google Drive, or even the iPhone photo gallery (With their latest software, iPhone photos app allows you to search for text in images, making it easy to find a specific receipt).

If you have any questions feel free to connect with me!

2 Votes

Hey Melissa,

Many platforms handle background checks differently, but here are some options for you to look into depending on what you're looking for:

Hemlane, Rentredi, Tenantcloud, and Turbotenant -- these all have a background check offering.

I'd recommend getting advice from others in your area if you know other RE investors. Local real estate associations may have better-localized leases depending on your locale, though you may be perfectly happy with Zillow's lease document.

Feel free to direct message me if you have any questions!

3 Votes

Hi Kim,

I think with Stessa charging for receipt scanning, there’s not a good free rental-specific accounting solution with both transaction tagging/accounting and receipt management.

One way you can get around this is with an app like OneDrive. The scan feature will allow you to quickly store receipts for all your transactions!

Azibo recently released accounting features to provide a free platform for investors to have better visibility into their finances and to stay compliant at tax time. If you’re interested in learning more, feel free to message me!

1 Vote

Hartford, Connecticut

Hey Arthur, appreciate the mention.

Hi Travis,

Azibo may fit your needs if you want an integrated platform with rent collection, screening, accounting, and insurance al in one place. Lots of other good stuff coming soon. Other common options that you see recommended on BiggerPockets include RentRedi, Innago, Apartments.com, tenantcloud, and turbotenant. These all have similar use cases but differ in cost and strengths/focuses, as do all products in this space. If you have any questions as you explore, feel free to message me. Good luck!

3 Votes

Hey Arthur, thanks for mentioning us.

Nkechi, I think you'll find that as you look for solutions, there are a lot of different variables and great tools available. Some questions you may be asking yourself:
1) How much am I looking to spend?
2) How robust are the tools that I am seeking? Do you want to be able to scale to infinite or have the most simple and streamlined solution?

3) Do I need maintenance, listing, accounting, banking, insurance, and more all in one place? What's the best combination of these?

There are so many platforms like Turbotenant, Avail, Tenantcloud, Azibo, Innago, Apartments.com, Rentredi, and more which will all be great at some of these above! There are always strengths and weaknesses for every platform, especially lower-cost solutions. The good news is that because most of the above are free or have cheaper prices of entry, you can test these out and get a feel for what's best!

If you ever have any questions about Azibo, feel free to DM me! I'm part of the team there and am always looking for feedback so we can be the best solution for investors like yourself.

3 Votes

Houston, Texas

Quote from @Matt Bob:

Quote from @Alex Pelletier:

Quote from @Matt Bob:

Quote from @Nicole Heasley Beitenman:

Quote from @Matt Bob:

Quote from @Nicole Heasley Beitenman:

I would be hesitant to pay you for one tax service and a CPA for another. It would be cleaner for me to pay one person to do it all if I could find that. But I might be in the minority; I'm curious to hear what others have to say.

I can clearly hear prospdcts saying this. Thanks for the feedback! I guess to be a little clearer, I would be creating monthly FS's that the cpa would just punch into their software. I would easily be able to provide all of the support for how I created the numbers as well.

The thing is with rentals, owners do not track things well, so as tax preparers we literally just go with whatever we're given. If it looks similar to last year, then it passes our sniff test. That catches things like insurance or mortgage interest, but not the 1-time purchases. I actually had a client that randomly brought in a $5k insulation invoice because I asked about a refund (completely different things).

If I created FS's and reconciled like the large investors do, this would be virtually impossible, and a much better product than the cpa firms can create.

I'm not sure how I would market this understanding without one-on-one meetings that I would need to quit my job to have... all in the hope people would see the benefit of paying for a service versus pulling their hair out at year end tax time.

I understand what you want to do and see the value, but if there's anyone out there will to both organize financials AND complete the tax return, the client is more likely to go with them. If they aren't organizing their financials after a year or two of doing this, they likely don't care about any extra fees from their CPA for the time spent organizing financials.

Thanks for the feedback. I watched a couple videos on AZIBO as mentioned above and it appears to be a dumbed down but cluttered up version of QB's in some ways. I think most investors want something easier to use, BUT I also noticed they couldn't break 3k views on Youtube, further emphasizing a lack on investor interest.

I suspect I am stuck in tax preparation services for a while longer.

Hey Cliff,

Thanks for taking a look at some of the Azibo videos on accounting (this is a brand new set of features we have yet to start advertising!). Azibo is completely free to test, and someone from our team is willing to give you a full demo or help with onboarding if you want to check us out.

We're confident that Azibo will make it easy to go from setup to tax-ready reports in just a couple of hours-- feel free to shoot me a DM if you have any questions at all

Disclaimer: I'm part of the Azibo team :)

Hi Alex, it's Matt, but you can me whatever you like... as long as it's not Late to Dinner.

Need an accountant on your team? 😀

Oof, that's embarrassing. Sorry about that, Matt!

We have a major CPA partner today who helped us make the reports, but we definitely would love to chat with CPAs to make Azibo the best product possible for both rental owners and those who do the taxes for them. Feel free to message me if you'd like to chat further!

1 Vote

Spokane, Washington

Quote from @Matt Bob:

Quote from @Nicole Heasley Beitenman:

Quote from @Matt Bob:

Quote from @Nicole Heasley Beitenman:

I suspect I am stuck in tax preparation services for a while longer.

Hey Cliff,

1 Vote

Spokane, Washington

I think the best software for your use case depends on how many properties you look to manage and whether the financial tracking or maintenance piece is more important for you. Few platforms do everything well.

Some like Avail, TenantCloud, or TurboTenant are good all-rounders, but some are paid solutions and charge additional for accounting and other value-add features.

Stessa is easy to use for the bookkeeping bit, but is a bit less developed for managing leases, collecting rent, screening applicants, etc.

Azibo is building an all-in-one solution, free of charge, but the maintenance tracking features are still incoming. We offer free accounting, rent collection, tenant screening and applications, managing multiple portfolios of properties, etc. I'd recommend trying several with a trial and seeing what works best for you. Good luck!

2 Votes

Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania

All Forum Posts by: Alex Pelletier

Alex Pelletier has started 0 posts and replied 43 times.

Post: Cost segregation study, yay or nay?

Post: Good apps for collecting rent

Post: Receipt Tracking and Bookkeeping

Post: New to the rental market - need advice how to screen tenants and steps to lease

Post: Is there a free expense & receipt app?

Post: Property Management software

Post: First rental property - should I use Schedulemyrent.com?

Post: Playing with the idea of RE Accounting

Post: Playing with the idea of RE Accounting

Post: New (soon-to-be) Landlord: Zillow vs. TurboTenant vs. Something?