rental property management

@craccbus 

Consider having this app to integrate with your QBO and accepting ACH payments for free from your tenants.

https://home.tenantcloud.com/signup?affiliate=3jqxsies8ncnqqwj

Thank you appreciate your help,

Thank you much appreciated

Thank you I appreciate the help

Hi,

If you are still struggling with how to set up your QBO for managing other people properties, I might be able to help a little.  QBO for managing properties that others own is a bit complicated .  You should have two company files.  One for your property management company and another for the rentals.  You should also have two separate bank accounts.  One where the rent payments are deposited and that you pay the landlords and repair bills with, and another for your business.  Tenants are customers and the landlords are vendors.  This is because you have to pay the rent to the landlords, less expenses and you can't pay a customer.  Customers owe you money.  You owe money to vendors.  Each landlord should be a Class and then each property is a subclass of that landlord.  Do not use the tenant's names in the Class because tenants come and go, but the properties remain.  The tenants are projects.

Create the tenants' invoices and save them as a recurring transaction. I don't know any tenant that receives a monthly invoice from the landlord or property manager.  If you've ever rented an house, apartment or office space, can you say you received monthly invoices? If you need to invoice them for a billable expense, like utilities you pay but the tenant reimburses you, or an HOA violation, those don't go on their monthly rent invoice. A late fee, NSF fee, or application fee, can be added to a rent invoice, with your company in the Class field, not the property.   

Create the landlord's payment as a bill, not expenses or a simple check. Save the bill as a recurring transaction.

Create a bill for your management fees. 

Create a P&L by Class for each landlord. You can save each one as a custom report.  Any repair bills you've paid the property will show up here, assuming you assigned the Class to the invoice from the repair company. You adjust the landlords bill by deducting any repair bills and your fee. The Net Income will be zero is you did this right.  You pay the landlord the third number from the bottom.  Caveat here.  You have to be sure the tenant has actually paid their rent before you pay anything to the landlord.

This is the tip of the iceberg. 

Good luck!

Thank you for the insight! Very helpful. The client I need to set up uses a trust account to receive rents and pay the owners, and he has an operating account where he transfers his management fees. But they are both in the same QB file. If I understand you correctly, I will have to have invoices to post rent payments to in order to get a P&L, correct? I was hoping to avoid it as all payments are done electronically by various means. No invoices needed. 

Thanks for the help! 

Hi there, AnneB.

Yes, you need to create invoices to post rent payments to the Profit and Loss (P&L) report. 

The P&L summarizes the total income and expenses of your business at a specific time. This means that all of your income and expense transactions (invoices, sales receipts, bills, checks, credit memo/refund) recorded in QuickBooks will post to this report.

If you want, you can browse this article as a reference on how we also track rentals in QuickBooks Desktop: Record transactions for a property management company. It can help you manage the two company files at the same time as mentioned by JenCTP.

Get back to me if there's anything else you need by commenting below. I'll be right here to answer your questions.

THISSSS!!!!!!!!!!!!!!  Everyone wants to create the landlord as a CUSTOMER and it's driving me nuts!

What do you mean 2 files? Two separate QBO accounts? 

Where can i go to get the correct CoA and set up? I can't find anything....

Why not use AppFolio?  It's designed exactly for this and much else that a property manager needs to do.