I am an accountant / bookkeeper in Sacramento and have always been an entrepreneur at heart.

It's keeping up with the entity and bookkeeping that can be a little harder. 

Put the bookkeeping on them :)It shows that you are thinking of them, but not putting any major expectations.If you want to inspect the property regularly, spell it out in the lease AND IN PERSON.  

(and a bookkeeper!) 

All the details of rent collection, leasing, maintenance, repairs and bookkeeping are handled by national class, professional property managers.

Hire either a bookkeeper or a manager or some buffer.  

I do recommend reading the BP tax book http://get.biggerpockets.com/taxbook/ I own a copy and felt it was very helpful.As for book-keeping I use an app called Scanbot, which automatically date stamps and writes the location into the file name of the PDF, which it automatically syncs with my Google Drive Receipts folder.

A little background: I operate a bookkeeping firm specifically targeting RE investors in Oklahoma.

Do my own bookkeeping on whose money is in there, track interest for their deposits, etc.

Breaking RE materials down for 2 or 3 houses like roofing nails or sheet rock would be silly, even 20 houses a year, maybe at 200 or at 2,000 units there might be a difference.The more you try to learn on your own in finance and accounting the greater the chance that you'll mess up, you don't need to go past Accounting 101 and 102, bookkeeping and preparation of a budget, income statement and balance sheet, from there that's all you'll really need for what you'll be doing, IMO.