Accounting software for Real Estate Investing? (1 Viewer)

[Sabertooth]

I've been flipping houses for 6 years now. I've meticulously tracked everything in Excel but was thinking I need to move my business out of the dinosaur age. So I'm looking for an off the shelf system that can track my investments, rentals, and other business expenses. I just feel like I'm letting valuable information fall through the cracks here.

Any recommendations on software? I do have some experience in Quickbooks, but that was in like 2007 so it's probably rather useless.

I do have an business degree and an IT degree so I'm literate but I don't really like working on accounting or computers for that matter.

Any suggestions or resourses would be appreciated.

 

[Tom Hagen]

You'll be surprised how little the basic Quickbooks functions (checks, deposits, etc) have changed since 2007.

Your best option may be Quicken Rental Property Manager. It's geared more toward rentals than flips but should still allow you to segregate costs per property. I believe it will also track investments which Quickbooks will not.

 

[Harris]

I'm at a commercial real estate investment company and we use Yardi to track accounting and lease activity.

I can guarantee you that the product we use is unnecessarily powerful and expensive for your needs, but Yardi may have an off the shelf or smaller platform for your needs. I'm just not sure of their products available on an individual level.

 

[Sabertooth]

You'll be surprised how little the basic Quickbooks functions (checks, deposits, etc) have changed since 2007.

Your best option may be Quicken Rental Property Manager. It's geared more toward rentals than flips but should still allow you to segregate costs per property. I believe it will also track investments which Quickbooks will not.

Amazon reviews for this are pretty bad. Says the software is quite buggy.

 

[Steve Tasker]

Not sure about flipping properties, but I have a handful of moderately-large real estate clients who use Timberline. Depending on your size it might be a little too "big", so to speak, for you, but maybe they have a light option or something. No idea.

I googled it, it's actually called Sage 300 Construction and Real Estate now....they changed the name. They bill it as "Powerful, Integrated Construction Software and Property Management Software."

 

[Jayrod]

QuickBooks will be your most economical option. In the hands of an experienced bookkeeper it will do everything you need. However, if you don't really know your accounting and bookkeeping it's too wide open and has too little structure to it. You would probably just get frustrated with it trying to do any kind of advanced property tracking. Again, it has the capability but you really need to know what you're doing.

Yardi is a pro option but I don't know if they have a smaller, more economical option.

 

[Jayrod]

In my experience with people who move from spreadsheet to QuickBooks, they get really really frustrated with the fact that their spreadsheets work better because they feel it is too tedious to maintain the QuickBooks properly.

I've done some bookkeeping work for homebuilders in remodelers, I would basically take the QuickBooks reports and upload them into the budget spreadsheets they had for their jobs. That way it had the look they were used to but the precision and automation of QuickBooks.

However, that was very labor-intensive. It was worth it for one guy but we met weekly to go over how each project is doing.

 

[Harris]

I'm at a commercial real estate investment company and we use Yardi to track accounting and lease activity.

I can guarantee you that the product we use is unnecessarily powerful and expensive for your needs, but Yardi may have an off the shelf or smaller platform for your needs. I'm just not sure of their products available on an individual level.

This may be the most stripped down version of Yardi, Genesis 2.

http://www.yardi.com/products/yardi-genesis-2/

Not sure how much it costs, but there's an online demo to see if it fits your needs.

 

[jon_mx]

I would used the simplest program you can find that can print your checks and can identify things by classes, subclasses and jobs. Quicken used to give you that ability, but now I think they dumbed it down to so there are no more subcategories. So if you wanted to say have a catergory for flooring, you could have subcategories like Flooring:Tile and Flooring:Carpet and Flooring:Tile Labor, etc. QuickBooks is fine, but it makes it too unforgiving for people who are not into accounting. A non-accountant software package like Quicken is easier to correct mistakes and friendly to use and get the information out of you like. I used a program called MasterBuilder by Sage and it was a PITA. QuickBooks was better, but still not overly friendly. I liked Quicken99 better than all of those, but the new versions of Quicken just don't give you the level of detail. You could make it work though.

 

[comfortably numb]

Have someone build a customized excel doc for you.

With everything you need exactly how you need it?

 

[Tom Hagen]

You'll be surprised how little the basic Quickbooks functions (checks, deposits, etc) have changed since 2007.

Your best option may be Quicken Rental Property Manager. It's geared more toward rentals than flips but should still allow you to segregate costs per property. I believe it will also track investments which Quickbooks will not.

Amazon reviews for this are pretty bad. Says the software is quite buggy.

Interesting, I've never used the program but I've used the reports it produces and those are pretty good for a relatively inexpensive program.

 

[sbonomo]

I'm at a commercial real estate investment company and we use Yardi to track accounting and lease activity.

I can guarantee you that the product we use is unnecessarily powerful and expensive for your needs, but Yardi may have an off the shelf or smaller platform for your needs. I'm just not sure of their products available on an individual level.

just came to post the same thing..my mom has used this program for years.