Rental Property Accounting & Bookkeeping Tips

You can use this information to make tax payments and prepare the business owner for a potential audit. Set yourself up for success by separating your personal and business finances with proper rental property bookkeeping. Open financial accounts for your business, such as checking and savings accounts, credit cards, and debit cards.

Keep track of all maintenance and repair expenses, as these costs directly impact your rental property’s cash flow and net income. This helps you ensure timely rent payments and contributes to your overall rental property income. Seems like a great option, but many spreadsheets aren’t built for real estate agents by real estate agents following specific principles.

Eliminate manual bookkeeping

These are Reddit’s most highly recommended free spreadsheets for budgeting, expense tracking, and managing your personal finances. And maybe you can’t decide if you should invest in a single-family home or commercial real estate. A spreadsheet template like this can help you weigh different factors like location, cost, and housing features.

Motivated investors looking for a CPA partner to help grow and systematize the financial, accounting, and tax aspects of his/her business. Learn how accounting reports drive your business’s real estate bookkeeping success, from setting up your monthly accounting cycle to annual reviews. Learn everything you need to know about choosing the right accounting tool, from spreadsheets to software.

Accounting spreadsheet template

Expense categories are specifically aligned with the best chart of accounts for real estate agents. This allows for consistency, the ability to upload files into software accounting solutions like Quickbooks, and allows real estate agents the ability to analyze their expenses. It’s important for every real estate agent to record their expenses so they can have an easier time filing their taxes and so an agent knows how much they earned that year, quarter, or month.