All Forum Posts by: Ken Weiner

For properties you own, check out BuyHoldTrack which lets you enter an annual summary of income, expenses, market value, and loan balance, and then gives you charts and tables for your portfolio including key real estate KPI's like IRR and Return on Equity. You can also compare various aspects of each property you own. It's meant to compliment your accounting software or spreadsheets, not replace them.

Will there be a way to join the meeting virtually?

@Maria G. I would put the new computer expense, as with everything else that doesn't fit into one of the categories, under "Other".

For expenses that apply to more than one property, I decide whether the expense is applicable to all my properties (e.g. tax preparation fee, a new computer, etc.) or a subset of my properties (e.g. registered agent fees in a specific state, apartment association dues in a specific city, travel to a specific city, etc.). Then I split the expense among these properties in my bookkeeping which results in the expense also being split on my Schedule E.

Since the amounts assigned to each property must add back up to the original expense, I use a simple web page called Divide Money ( https://divide.money/ ) to calculate the amount to assign to each property down to the penny.

For example, if I have to divide $234.23 among 5 properties, it would look like this:

$46.84 to Property 1

$46.84 to Property 2

$46.85 to Property 3

$46.85 to Property 4

$46.85 to Property 5

I started using Tellus last summer and thought it was great since it posted my listing to all the popular rental websites, the screening process via Naborly was free, and their support was very quick - they often responded within minutes to a few hours. I received monthly payments from tenants with no problems.  I've recently started using Tellus again to fill a new vacancy and it feels like things have gone downhill.  Their platform is no longer posting to Craigslist, Zillow (unless you pay a fee), and Apartments.com.  I am not getting reliable notifications when leads come in.  The screening process now costs $25 because their partner Naborly started charging for their service.  And Tellus support is taking much longer to respond and sometimes forgetting to respond without a reminder.  Also, I have to nudge their support to take certain actions which should be automated.  For example: checking Naborly to see if any applications have come in, re-posting my listing if I make any edits.  I hope things get better as it has the potential to be such a great platform.

@Carson E. I am not sure why you are having trouble tracking capital improvements separately from operating expenses in Wave Accounting.  I use Wave and easily do this by creating an Asset (Property) in the Chart of Accounts.  Then for any capital improvement transaction, categorize it under the Asset account you created instead of a normal Expense account such as Repairs.  Then that transaction will not be part of your Operating Expenses.

@Vasa G. I wasn't aware that the latest update removed the ability to move transactions between accounts.  Luckily this doesn't affect me because I use a separate bank account for each property.

@Meghan Billings have you considered live streaming the event so people can attend remotely? You could use Google Hangouts, Zoom, or even Periscope, Facebook, or Instagram.