These are properties you can rehab and furnish yourself, with the potential to refinance and pull out some or all of your initial investment. 

Flat rate is assigning a charge to each task , now if they say before the job they charge 2 hours to change a bulb , thats what you pay , if it takes 10 minutes , or all day . 

The Almanack of Naval Ravikant (it's free as well)@Will Gaston sent me a copy and it was excellent

I'm in a small community where all the active agents know me personally and I have an excellent reputation, but I still put it in writing. 

Excellent advice.

The key factor is the follow-up capabilities, so pick one that excels in that area.

Just excellent. 

Working with our Rockstar agent, Bill Beck, we identified an excellent lakeside investment property near Silver Dollar City and other key Branson attractions that should (eventually) generate a 50% COC return (we have a lot of learning to do - so I'm not banking on that high of a return in the first few years).

He’s a pleasure to work with, and his work is consistently excellent.

As far as keeping income and expenses just use excel.