Real Estate Investing For Dummies, 4th Edition

Chapter 17

Recordkeeping and Accounting

IN THIS CHAPTER

Putting your property records and files in order

Tracking the income and expenses for your rental activities

Comparing manual accounting versus full-service software packages

Recordkeeping and accounting may not be the most exciting aspects of real estate investment property ownership, but they’re among the most rewarding. Every real estate owner should be interested in knowing how much money she’s making on her properties and how much she’s spending. She should also know how she can potentially reduce her taxes.

Traditionally, the least favored aspect of owning real estate is keeping all the required paperwork and doing the accounting. More property managers have gained (and kept) clients because of these essential but tedious requirements than any other reason. But recordkeeping has roles in maintaining your assets as well as documenting performance. And the accounting is the report card or feedback that tells you just how well you’re doing.

Now, we can’t turn you into an accountant in the course of one chapter. Whole books are written on the subject. But what we can do is provide you with practical and useful information ...