Accounting Software - What Do You Use?
Recently formed an LLC for rehabs and rentals. Just looking to get opinons on what other people are using to keep their books. I'm looking at Quickbooks but have read a few bad things.
Thanks in advice for your thoughts.
Dave
Quickbooks and Excel.
What in the world have you read bad about Quickbooks? That has got to be a first. Intuit is one of the only companies that I know of besides Apple that is able to defend itself from Microsoft no matter how many times Microsoft comes after it with a competing product or how much money they throw at defeating them. Intuit has the market share for a reason.
The only thing I don't like about quickbooks is that it taylors itself to the idiot that knows nothing about accounting.
Maybe they have this feature in the new versisions but I think you should be able to default to a gold old journal and ledger for every transaction.
They do have the best product on the market for general accounting so I haven't switched.
I'm still trying to find a quality program to keep track and automate property management. I'm using excel right now but I know there is a better way.
I think Quicken is a great program though I haven't used it very much. I have used it some where I use to work but I didn't need to go into it very often. I always seemed to have trouble finding what I needed when I needed it . I guess that was due to inexperience. It may be a little more complicated than is necessary for what we do. I thought it was more designed for having lots of customers rather than for having a project but I'm not sure of that. I personally have used Microsoft Money for yrs so when I began doing rehabs, I got a bank account and a credit card that I just use for the business. I then download the transactions every week into MS Money, more often if a lot of money is moving one week. I go in and categorize each transaction and put a keyword, such as the name of the street, in the memo. Whenever I want to see what I have spent on a house, I just click 'find' and type in that keyword. It pulls up every transaction. I then compare that to my original estimation page that is in Excel. It's a simple list of purchase price and all expected expenses and the totals etc. It's actually three columns - one for the most everything could possibly cost, another column with the least that everything could cost and the third shows actual costs as I find out what they are. I create the Excel chart before I ever buy the house to help me calculate if it would be worth it or not. The last house I did estimated that I would make at least $8k and at most $27k. It looks like we will close next week or so with about a $20k profit. The least amount also includes if I have to use a realtor. (I sold it before I could even get it up for sell with no realtor fee.) So the system seems to work pretty good helping me keep up with all the expenses and it's only two pages. I never pay cash for anything. Everything is recorded with either the bank or credit card. That is the only way to keep up with it all for me.
HTH,
dkdrake
In the last commenet I said Quicken but I meant Quickbooks.
I have written an article here in the archives which takes you step by step through a setup using quicken 2002 home and business. I have 30 units and it does very well for me.
Good Luck,
Shawn(OH)
Where in the archives should I look? I have Quicken 2002 H&B, but have been frustrasted and mystified by it.
I understand Excel, so I have mostly used it to keep records for taxes. But being numerophobic, all these are difficult for me.
Thanks
Dan
This is a link to the article.