Q:

Subject: Property Mgmnt /QB's

Kerry after reading through your website I have come to the conclusion that you may be the only “QBGURU” that could efficiently help if you will?

 I am very familiar with QB’s but am finding it difficult to set up rental property in QB’s so that I may track income and expenses as well as the security deposits.  Without going into too much detail and wasting your valuable time maybe you are willing to help me with this?  

 Much thanks,

A:

It's very easy to do with the Class feature.  Set up a class for each property and when entering each income & expense item, assign the appropriate class.  You can also use sub-classes to group properties, such as by address or by owner if you are doing property management for other people.  When setting up your P&L, just specify that the columns should be arranged by Class and then you will get a separate side by P&L for each property.  I use this every day when working with clients' books to prepare their tax returns and it works beautifully. I explained Classes on my website.
 
Security deposits need to be treated a little differently because QB doesn't allow you to set up a Balance Sheet with columns by Class.

There are two main ways I have seen for keeping tabs on security deposits.  One way is to have a sub-account for each tenant.  The problem with this approach is that it makes the Chart of Accounts grow rather large and unwieldy.  Accounts for tenants who have left can be tagged as Inactive after being zeroed out; but there could still be a lot of accounts to wade through.

The other approach is the one I use for keeping tabs on the trust funds Sherry's exchange company is holding for client reinvestment.  There is just one current liability account called Client Trust Funds.  Each entry in and out is tagged with the customer name.  We run transaction history reports with totals by Customer in order to see a detail of each client's account.  This could just as easily be done for tenants.  In order to print out a detail for just one client (tenant), we check the box called "Page break after each major grouping" and it puts each client on a separate page.  We page though to find the client we want to print out and just print that page.

I hope this helps.  It's really pretty easy; but you can probably get some personal assistance from a QB ProAdvisor in your area.

Good luck.

Kerry Kerstetter

 

- posted by Kerry M. Kerstetter, MBA~CPA~ATP~ATA @ 4/06/2006 12:23:00 PM Send this post: