All Forum Posts by: Michele Roberts

All of the solutions above work. I would actually advise against having a separate QB file for each Property/LLC because it's too darn cumbersome and you have to be methodical about making sure your setups are identical if you want to compare. It also won't allow you to easily look at your whole portfolio. You will, however, need to be able to print/export your financials by property (Customer/Class/Location -- whichever you choose) and be disciplined about entering that information into every transaction. Also, Location is a relatively newish feature in QBO, and I'm not sure about the flexibility in reporting on it (we don't use it often). Hope this all helps.

I still vote for a proper property management system over QB. 

Monica, the preference for using customers versus class is more of a personal preference.  I'd prefer to use classes for departments within your operation.  The term Customers in QuickBooks is generally synonymous with "Project" or "Job," and that's how I view the properties.  

Buildium would be one subscription for all properties.  They have a sliding fee based on the number of units and is a more comprehensive subscription. You can have the tenants pay you electronically, you can pay vendors electronically, store leases, post notices, accept task requests, screen tenants, and more.  It has bank feeds like QBO does, so reconciliation is pretty simple (depends on the bank).  

We used to handle accounting for multiple properties in separate files (like the other accountants were suggesting to you), and in 2014/2015, we migrated to using Buildium and haven't looked back.  We still support some clients in other industries using QBO, but when we see a real estate owner/investor, we suggest Buildium.  

While technically it's most correct to keep each legal entity in a separate QBO file, you can certainly either use Classes or even Customers to track each property separately.  If you use Customers, I would then set each Lease up as a sub  customer and each Tenant up as a subcustomer of that.  

A good QB ProAdvisor will understand how to set this up and how to run reports by class or customer. You should have a separate bank account for each LLC though and it is important not to commingle funds. Any transfers that you do between properties will need to be considered Intercompany (or "Due To/From") transactions. It can become a bit tricky, but it can be done.

I would actually suggest that you consider another software to handle this though. We use Buildium to manage our clients' accounting, and they use it for the Property Management aspect.  You can also use AppFolio or others.  We like Buildium though.  If you choose to track it in QBO, I would suggest using the "Customer/Subcustomer" route rather than classes. 

Thanks,

Michele