All Forum Posts by: Matt Bob

Quote from @Joe Villeneuve:

Excellent idea, but I can see how many would look a this as a redundant cost.  My suggestion would be to design everything in an Excel spreadsheet, call it software, and sell it with instructions on how to fill it out.  Sell it as a subscription model and make multiple incomes per user.

Thanks Joe,

I actually already built that. I gor resistance from two sides. The partners didn't want to send it to clients because they wouldn't use it, and clients... well didn't want to do it thenselves. 

This was before ever reaching the instructional piece of using the spread sheet.

Another barrier to this, is once sold, anyone could just email it around (right)?

Quote from @Nicole Heasley Beitenman:

I would be hesitant to pay you for one tax service and a CPA for another. It would be cleaner for me to pay one person to do it all if I could find that. But I might be in the minority; I'm curious to hear what others have to say.

I can clearly hear prospdcts saying this. Thanks for the feedback! I guess to be a little clearer, I would be creating monthly FS's that the cpa would just punch into their software. I would easily be able to provide all of the support for how I created the numbers as well. 

The thing is with rentals, owners do not track things well, so as tax preparers we literally just go with whatever we're given. If it looks similar to last year, then it passes our sniff test. That catches things like insurance or mortgage interest, but not the 1-time purchases. I actually had a client that randomly brought in a $5k insulation invoice because I asked about a refund (completely different things). 

If I created FS's and reconciled like the large investors do, this would be virtually impossible, and a much better product than the cpa firms can create. 

I'm not sure how I would market this understanding without one-on-one meetings that I would need to quit my job to have... all in the hope people would see the benefit of paying for a service versus pulling their hair out at year end tax time.

I have done tax prep for 7 years and the rentals are always a low value, high input tax return. The client thinks bringing in a wad of receipts is legit and you're stuck categorizing everything in excel while thinking about how much trouble you'll be in for spending too much time on the return (like you wanted to). 

The clients almost never bring everything in, which tells me they don't really know what's happening with their investments. 

I am playing with the idea of starting my own business where I categorize rental properties monthly and POTENTIALLY prep the tax return at year end as well. I could also help prepare Personal FS's. If I didn't do the tax return, then the CPA would just have to 10-key things in in a matter of seconds.

Is there a need for this In the rental business where investors would be willing to pay?

Thanks in advance.