Quote from @Justin R.:
Quote from @Bonnie Low:
I switched from QBO to Baselane a year or so ago. We were paying a bookkeeper $450/month, plus the $90 QB subscription to do our books but I felt like we were still having to tell her how to categorize everything so it just didn't feel like we were getting our money's worth. My portfolio is not that large and it irked me to pay a bookkeeper so much and still have to do a lot of the work. To me, QB felt like overkill and I found it difficult to use since I don't have an accounting or bookkeeping background. Baselane is much easier to use and has so many other features I like, too. For me, the reports available in Baselane are ideal, but I'm also not trying to run a different business through it like it sounds like you may be doing. I do know that I was able to archive my QB data and still have access to it for up to a year after I canceled my subscription. I think they maybe charge you a reactivation fee if you decide you need to access that information, but I didn't need to so I can't recall for sure. Hope this helps.
Yes @Bonnie Low this does help. Both Business' are real estate, so that doesn't really matter, just the fact I need to have double the QBO subscriptions.
Everyone should have some "general expenses" I would think, that are not tied to a particular property. Such as Accounting fees, home office, business liability insurance, and similar. Does Baseline give you the option to track expenses without attaching it to a particular property?
How does your accountant pull info from baseline to do taxes, or track your cost bases/balance sheet?
@Alecia Loveless thanks for your thoughts. I don't think Im paying my bookeepeer an outrageous amount, although with economies of scale (I have one commercial insurance plan, commerical portfolio loan from a single bank, one bank account, etc) it probably doesn't take the Bookeeper 3x to do my books compared to yours.
If I could move to a more simple software than QBO, it would save me several thousand a year, and the simplicity would be valuable as well. Best to you!
Hi, Justin. Yes, I have general expenses that are not attributable to a single property, like legal and accounting and home offices like you mentioned. However, my business structure is maybe a little different than yours. My Holding Company holds all my LLCs. I have an LLC for each state I do business in and each property is held inside the LLC for the appropriate state. So those general expenses get categorized to the holding company as the parent organization. To be honest, my CPA may apportion them to each LLC but I don't think he does. Now that you asked, I need to double check that. As for sharing information, I use the reports available inside Baselane to send my CPA whatever he needs. If he needed something beyond the standard business forms and Schedule E, I could give him limited access to my Baselane portal, just like my bookkeeper had limited access. You have the ability to grant permissions based on the user's security level, which you determine. My CPA had no problem using it. While QBO is probably more common, I've learned that they have had to become accustomed to a lot of different programs because their clients use so many different platforms. Again, this is just my personal experience.
