Why Quickbooks Is Not The Right Income/Expense Tracking Tool For Rental Properties

When managing a rental property portfolio you need to ensure you have all the tools for success. A large part of this is ensuring you keep accurate and up to date accounts using an efficient system. This will ultimately help you claim back every deductible expense and could be the difference between making a profit or making a loss at the end of the tax year.

Additionally, should you want to scale your portfolio, having accurate records that you can access easily through a professional reporting feature is vital.

There are a few ways that property managers and landlords choose to track income and expenses for their properties. This could be via spreadsheets, through software like QuickBooks, or an industry-specific solution. In this article, we take a look at the pros and cons of using QuickBooks vs. a property management software like Landlord Studio.

QuickBooks for Rental Property Accounting

When people think of accounting tools there are a few that immediately spring to mind. QuickBooks is one of them, and probably the reason you’re here. Quickbooks is a flexible software that can be used (and is used by many) for income and expense tracking for rental properties. However, using QuickBooks for rentals comes with a unique set of issues and challenges for landlords and property management.

Despite being one of the leading solutions for small businesses, QuickBooks has its limitations which become increasingly evident as you use it. For example, it’s a challenge to set up, you can’t easily keep track of your leases and associated tenants. Nor can you manage your accounts on multiple levels such as organization expenses, building expenses, and unit expenses.

View a direct feature comparison between Quickbooks and Landlord Studio.

Additionally, while they have a great support team and numerous support pages their primary function is small business accounting. As such, most of the support is tailored towards this.

You can learn more about how to set up Quickbooks for your property portfolio here.

In comparison, property management softwares often offer industry-specific accounting systems with the same powerful reporting features of QuickBooks. Additionally, while QuickBooks is great for general accounting, it is missing the tools that are designed to make the management of your property easier. For example, property management software like Landlord Studio has features such as automated rent reminder emails, tenant screening, and lease document storage.

Property Management Software vs. QuickBooks for Rental Properties

The problems experienced by many property managers and landlords can be solved with improved organization and online tools that help streamline business tasks associated with managing rentals.

Landlord Studio is a property management software that gives rental managers and landlords all the tools they need to run a successful business.

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When it comes to choosing the accounting solution for your portfolio it really is worth exploring industry-specific options as they come with time-saving features such as:

• Generate, print, and share professional reports instantly.
• Built-in Schedule E report for faster tax filing.
• Task automation such as rent reminder emails.
• Native app and cloud storage meaning you can track income and expenses anywhere and access your data on any device.
• Scan receipts with your phone camera and store them safely in the app against the relevant expense. (Meaning you can do away with your shoe-boxes of receipts!)
• Track expenses on an organization, property, and unit level.
• Track your portfolio’s capital gains and equity.
• All the relevant expense and income categories are already entered and the software remains fully customizable so you can edit and add to these categories as suits your needs.

Additionally, you get support and educational materials produced by experts in your industry to help you achieve growth.