I neither have the time nor inclination to spend very much of my time engaged on this or any other forum so often what I post is a short version of what I share with clients and customers.

Also, down the road (When you decide that running your own books is no longer fun and your time is more valuable than doing data entry and month end reconciliations) your system would need to be taught to an employee or outside accountant... it's a custom solution, which means that automatically the learning curve is going to be much worse for that person vs.

You will be able to make accurate repair assessments and estimates which will lead to better buy-side offers for you and much greater customer appreciation from your buyers.Owning your own investment properties is one of the best ways to learn, but that takes some time. 

I rent tools and equipment all the time, am a great customer, and have never received or expected a reward.

Some relatively simple formulas can make it almost automatic and will suit your needs.If you want to get additional features support, my personal favorite cloud based accounting platform is Xero, but also Quickbooks is extremely popular with lots of customization options.Let me know if you have any other questions.

@Brian Erlich -Very few (if any) excellent contractors are going to be willing to let the customer buy materials themselves.

Most of my long time HVAC customers either do electrical and plumbing or some combination of the trades.

I am reading that it is best to list customer security deposits under ONE liability account but list them by name so you can use an "item" to refer to them and issue a credit memo upon a tenant leaving.  

Your property manager is your employee (or company you are a customer of), make it clear that they are not fulfilling their obligations to communicate and forward you the deposits.  

I guess you can say that I have trouble selling ourselves to the customer, I'm trying to learn by shadowing my contractors when they're speaking to them.