All Forum Posts by: Phillip Denny

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. 

@Jeff Wallenius @Mark Nolan @Andrew Syrios @Iverem Rose  Thank you all!  I've been listening to a lot of the poscasts and they are all great!  Will definitely get through the beginner guide.

Hey Stephen, good to see another person in Knoxville trying to get things moving in real estate.  Sounds like a good deal (on the surface) especially in Knoxville.  Seems like it's worth a deeper look for sure.  Being someone that enjoys playing with numbers though, I would start doing a more in depth analysis and see which numbers may have some risk involved.  I actually was running some numbers on a property the other day that seemed like a good deal based on the 1% rule ($110K duplex, $1450 per month rent with current tenants).  However, after starting to look a little closer though, the $1450 included utilities which could be $200-$300 per month easy and then upon driving by the property, it clearly needed a new roof (and who knows what else).  Very quickly started to seem like I would have to get the place for $80-90K.   If you haven't seen the calculator demos they have on here, they are pretty cool, but I love that kind of stuff.

Hello, my name is Phillip Denny and I'm from (and live in) Knoxville, TN. I started in real estate investing a few years ago buying a couple rentals, but somehow just now discovered bigger pockets and the wealth of knowledge available! I've always loved real estate and investing at a conceptual level (before ever purchasing), but have been working for large companies (hotels, manufactured housing and mortgage) in various accounting/finance operations positions until about a year ago. My wife and I had been planning and saving for quite a while to make a leap of faith into something different. After some time adjusting to a new baby in the house, I'm working on making real estate investing a full time job. I look forward to having some great discussions with everyone. Currently, I'm focusing on finding some buy and hold SFR or small multifamily to try out the BRRR strategy as I continue to develop my knowledge and network. I would like to eventually get into larger investments or partnerships.

It's been great so far seeing so many different perspectives, so can't wait to continue the learning!