@Bob Smith Glad to help. This is how the tax/book keeping side works. You buy a package of 160 "credits" (I think there is also a version where you can get 320 credits but I didn't do this at first and I am unsure of the cost at the moment) which you can use whenever you want for however you want. Depending on who you are talking with, they pull from those credits at an hourly rate:
Book keepers pull 7 credits per hour
Tax Preparers pull 10 credits per hour
CPA/Attorneys pull 20 credits per hour
They will set up everything up for you without using any of those credits. (a side note you have to ask them for build a spreadsheet that shows you how much you have used and what's left because they have a glitch in their system where they don't automatically do this) Quick books online which comes with a discount from QBO due to their relationship with Anderson. They will even allow you to use your credits for them to train or teach their system to an accountant that you choose to bring in which is what I initially planned on doing. (That accountant advised me to use the plus version online "$35 per month per entity" because of it's capabilities for class and location codes. I recommend using class codes, and setting up a class code for every property you buy and/or sell. When class codes are enabled, every transaction can be assigned to a class code and from that information, you can run a Profit and Loss Statement not just as a total aggregate number but broken down by each property. That way you can see the individual profitability for each of your projects and compare which ones did better and which did worse. Based on what you said about multiple entities this may be of a benefit to you)
In terms of level of detail. They seem to have an incredible amount of detail and specificity that they will provide. In my walkthrough set up meeting with the book keeping supervisor and my personal assigned book keeper, they walked me through QBO that they had already set up (they are very systematic in their set up and process and it's very easy to follow), they showed me how to use it (or another accountant if I wanted), they had everything from my property, bank accounts etc in and walked me through. They were under the impression that I was bringing my own accountant so they left some things off, but when I told them that I was going to use them they quickly said that they were going add more detail, and complete everything for my review. I also asked as I mentioned above about the ability to build out custom reports based on the financial information that they are getting and the supervisor said that she would work on some custom reports for me. (She hasn't delivered that yet so I'm not sure how helpful that they will be just yet). But all and all they seem very detail and flexible to my needs and are willing to custom tailor what you want within the guidelines of their package.
To answer your last question they do not have different charges for multiple entities. But they bill according to those credit rates above so if it takes them a super long time to do your book, my sense is that they will use more credits to do them. Just to give you a sense of how fast they use that time, I gave them 3 entities and everything that I have mentioned here over the last month cost me 3.22 billable hours or 22.54 credits. (137.46 credits left).
Now I forgot to mention this but I haven't even touched the taxes side of things. They first will do a thorough audit of your last 2 years of taxes for ALL entities and then walk you through where things are good and where you may be at risk and then create a tax strategy moving forward. Their tax manager literally spent 2.5 hours in a deep dive and answered all of my questions (and I had a TON) and I learned an enormous amount from that conversation. That doesn't count against your credits. If you do platinum like I did they will put all notes in a "box" file on their platform, upload all of your entity information and you have lots of legal forms to use. You can have unlimited conversations with their legal team, unlimited email responses from their tax team and a Sr. Advisor or higher to bring it all together in a cohesive strategy. Since they have everything in-house, they will ask you how you want to handle your taxes and if you choose to do them with them the book keepers will transfer all of your financials over to them and they fill out (or you) a form that goes with it and then everything is done at that point. You use your credits for them to do your taxes at the rate I gave you above.
I hope that answers everything!
