All Forum Posts by: Markus Shobe

The decision depends on your personal circumstances, preferences, and resources. Some landlords start with self-management to save costs and gain experience, then switch to professional management as their portfolio grows or their circumstances change.

To start off I would use wave accounting or excel. Once you scale up most of my clients use Quickbooks Online. Make sure to have a separate bank account for business transactions. A lot of CPA's are familiar with the software. 

To get off to a good start you want to have at least a sperate bank account for business transactions. You do not want to mix personal and business transactions. I would not get any paid accounting system until the cost is worth it. I would use excel or wave accounting to account for your expenses and income. You would want a CPA to file your taxes. It is never to early to start looking for one. 

Most of my clients use Quickbooks. I have heard great things about Stessa. 

I agree with Simon. My clients assign PO# to tie to a property and it has really helped out. 

Keep using Quickbooks for your business and use Wave accounting for personal use. Wave accounting is free and it's a pretty decent software. 

It's not about if you can do it or not. It's about spending your time else where. Most people can do their books themselves if the business is not too complicated, but is that the best use of your time. If it is then keep doing it, if not then it is time to hire someone. Usually as you start to grow its time to start getting rid of task such as bookkeeping. 

Yes definitely get a CPA to file your taxes. You want to find one that is real estate focused. Yes it may cost a little more but it will be well worth it. Getting one that doesn't know about real estate will cost you in the long run. This is one area that you don't want to mess around with as it will cost you in the long run.

Quickbooks can work for you and so can Xero. I have been using Quickbooks for my clients for years. One thing I do like is that it sync's with a lot of apps. I have a lot of clients that do Airbnb's and we can connect Quickbooks to Bnb Tally and it imports and classifies everything perfectly. 

Don't limit yourself to a local bookkeeper. That will really lower the amount of bookkeepers to hire from. There are a lot of great bookkeepers here on BP. A good bookkeeper will know how work virtually with you with no problems.