Discussion:QuickBooks for Real Estate Investors
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| 21 November 2006 | |
| Has anyone seen a good QB manual or book for RE Investors? I am interested in getting the items and templates set up quickly and easily.
TIA RD | |
Bottom Line (talk|edits) said: | 21 November 2006 |
| Haven't seen a book. Have a few investors and have done this set up myself. Separate your F/A by property and subaccounts for land, original cost and improvements (I group the depreciation all together since a CPA does the tax return and he has the info.) You need to do class tracking to separate your income & expense by property. (You need this for both tax purposes and to allow the investor to better monitor his properties.) Set up each property address as a customer. Put the tenant(s) info in the "Ship To" field. As the tenants change, simply update the info in the customer screen. (Wouldn't recommend setting up each tenant as a customer, makes the customer list too long over time.) Under Additional Info set up some custom fields for things like Rent, Pet Deposit and Case Filing Number (for evictions). Under Job Info, amend the Job Status selections to Vacant, Lease, Lease Option, etc. Put the lease expiration date in End Date. Put the property address (including city, state, zip) in Job Description. Do an invoice for each property's rent each month. (I set these up as memorized transactions.) Set up your standard delinquency letters and eviction notices as QuickBooks letters. You can then have QuickBooks fill in all the blanks for your legal documents. (One of my investors rents to a lot of hispanics. We got someone to write the legal stuff in spanish too!) You or your investor will need to be familiar with your state laws. The initial set up can be time consuming but will save a lot of time in the long run. My big investor has 80 low income houses. Took a couple of full days to do the initial set-up but now it only takes me 3-4 hours a week to do the bookkeeping for all these houses! Hope this helps! | |
| 22 November 2006 | |
Thank you Bottom Line: I also have clients that do lease options and other forms of owner finance. Some flip houses and others are buy and hold. I was pretty sure there was a book out there that showed how to set up memorized transactions for mortgage escrows, etc. I actually thought it was written by the same people that did "Quickbooks for Contractors" but I could not find it.
Thank you, Happy Thanksgiving! | |
| 22 November 2006 | |
| Thought I would get this to front of the pack again!
Happy Thanksgiving! | |
| November 22, 2006 | |
| Has your client consulted an attorney? I have a client that invests in real estate and does a lot of 1031 exchanges. Generally they put each property into its own LLC in order to protect the other properties. All of the LLCs are owned by the couple's trust. In this case then, each LLC has its own company file. A drawback to having so many company files is that it can be difficult to tell the total "bottom line," but I think they're using Enterprise solutions which allows them to print consolidated statements. | |
| 23 November 2006 | |
| Natalie - My wife and I have been investing in real estate for about 3 years ourselves. Being a CPA and while at our local Real Estate Investor meetings and other real estate investing seminars I am alway asked how to record various transactions in QB. By being an investor and a CPA I am also developing a concentration in real estate investor clients. What I thought I would do is create a shell QuickBooks Company file that has many of the features for real estate set up and give the file to clients and support them plus get their tax work.
If anyone reading this has tips on recording real estate transactions I would be interested in those tips. Is this the correct board for that? Regarding tax structure - we have our revocable trusts which owns our entities. We hold title to the properties in a land trust and the beneficial interest is our LLC. The Land Trust does not disclose the beneficiary. Right now we have six properties - 4 we are holding in our LLC (with the land trust) for the long term. The other 2 are still in our name as we got mortgages on them (mortgage companies don't seem to understand or like entities, trusts & LLC's) and our intent is to sell them. We have flipped several properties. We run those through my wife's "S" corp. As our portfolio grows we may start a "C" corp for management and related benefits. I don't know that I like having to pay payroll in all the entities just for some bennies. The other aspect of our overall plan is that my CPA firm is an S corp. and for planning I bill the other entities for services. Now my overall problem is that I don't want it so complicated that my life is tied up doing all the accounting. Have a terrific thanksgiving! | |
Bottom Line (talk|edits) said: | 26 November 2006 |
| An attorney here in Florida is recommending setting up a separate LLP for each property. As properties are flipped, the LLP can be reused. He says an LLP is better than a trust, corp, or LLC for property ownership. Apparently Florida case law says everyone in the LLP is a limited partner.
My guy with the 80 houses has his houses in Trusts. There are around five houses in each trust. He S-Corp is the manager of the houses. The trusts do not file any tax returns. Everything is handled through his S-Corp. Therefore there's only one QuickBooks file. | |
| 26 November 2006 | |
| BL - One reason we do the flips in the S corp is to avoid dealer status. Does each individual LLP have to file a return? Who owns the LLP? Who is beneficiary of the trusts? I guess I am confused on the lineage? If everything is handled by S corp is it owner of the LLP's?
Is this it? The "S" corp owns the LLP's & gets a K-1 from the LLP's; then, the LLP's is/are the beneficiary of the trusts which are actually guarantor trusts and disregarded. A while ago I looked at setting up an FLP in Florida - It was expensive to set up - like $1750 to the state. I think the LLP would be similar to the FLP at least as far as cost goes. That is why we put our long term hold in the LLC. | |
Bottom Line (talk|edits) said: | 26 November 2006 |
| Not sure if the individual LLP's have to file tax returns. The LLP's are owned by individuals. The attorney that is recommending the LLP's says that this is a fairly new thing for RE ownership - at least in FL. The guy with the houses in Trusts has been in RE since the mid-90's and uses a different attorney than the one that's recommending the LLP's. The beneficiary of his trusts is his S-corp. Are you sure that $1,750 went to the State? Seems real high for Florida. Sounds like that was actually the attorney's fee and he would pay the state out of that. Most state fees are less than $200. | |
| 27 November 2006 | |
| Here is a copy of the LLP fees. The annual renewal appears to be $500 also. The LLC is only $50 renewal - a lot cheaper.
Filing Fee $ 965.00 Registered Agent Designation $ 35.00 --------
Total $1,000.00
Restated Certificate $ 52.50 Amended and Restated Certificate $ 52.50 Amendment $ 52.50 Statement of Correction $ 52.50 Certificate of Dissolution $ 52.50 Certificate of Revocation of Dissolution $ 52.50 Statement of Termination $ 52.50 Certificate of Merger $ 52.50 per party Certificate of Conversion $ 52.50 (+ New Entity Filing Fees, if applicable) Other $ 52.50 Annual Report $ 411.25 Supplemental Fee $ 88.75 --------
Total $ 500.00
Amended Annual Report $ 411.25 Reinstatement $ 500.00 ($500 for each year or part thereof the partnership was revoked plus the delinquent annual report fees) Notice of Cancellation $ 52.50 Certificate of Status $ 8.75 Certified Copy $ 52.50 (15 pages or fewer,$1 each page thereafter) Change of Registered Agent/Office $ 35.00 Resignation of registered agent $ 87.50 Photocopies $ 1.00 per page (please call (850)245-6053 for a page count) http://www.dos.state.fl.us/doc/feelp.html | |
Bottom Line (talk|edits) said: | 27 November 2006 |
| Learn something new every day | |
