I agree with a lot of the points made here and I use Quickbooks both for bookkeeping services I provide and my own small (4 unit) portfolio + the occasional renovation. I personally love the online version and works great for what I need, but I would ask myself:
- What system fits my personality best such that I will maintain it? I work in QBO and have worked in large accounting systems as well, so I think it's awesome/easy to use. If you have an aptitude or some background, Quickbooks is great and there are countless resources to learn. However, I've also done a lot of clean up projects where people thought it would be easy and created a mess where their P&L's were basically useless. Quick Tip (to steal from the podcast): If you continue to use Quickbooks (any version), just make sure you learn how to reconcile your balance sheet. It will catch and help you fix a ton of issues with your financials.
- Where am I going with my business and what is overall strategy? If you think you are going to maintain a few properties, no reason to me you couldn't start with Quickbooks and eventually work towards a more robust property management software later. Excel is a bit dicey to me. Like others have said, its a great tool and I also use it daily, but its easy to get wrong to actually perform regular accounting. It may help you do your taxes once per year, but I wouldn't suggest using it to run your business. If you are going to try to scale your business quickly with a ton of properties, it may make sense to get ahead of the technology curve.
I agree with some thoughts that even if you only have one property, the sooner you treat it like a business, the more it will help you in the long run to effectively manage your properties.
Anyways, just my two cents.
