Should You Really Use QuickBooks for Rental Properties?

Truth About Using QuickBooks for Rental Properties

Are you a landlord trying to keep up with everything that comes with managing your rentals? Owning property can be exciting, but it’s also a huge workload. Between collecting checks, dealing with repairs, talking to tenants, and tracking every little expense, it can start to feel like a full-time job. Many landlords reach a point where they just want something to make the process easier and more organized. That’s where tools like QuickBooks often enter the picture. It’s a familiar, trusted name, and a lot of landlords turn to it hoping it will help keep their finances in order and save them time.

Everyone knows QuickBooks is a massively popular accounting tool. Small business owners everywhere rely on it for tracking money, creating financial reports, and staying ready for tax season. But here’s something to really think about: just because QuickBooks is great for a general business doesn’t always mean it’s the best fit for managing rentals. On this blog, we’re going to discuss how QuickBooks works for landlords, what its strengths and weaknesses are, and whether it’s truly the right choice for your properties. Let’s break it down together in a simple, straightforward way.

Why Landlords Are Drawn to QuickBooks

QuickBooks has become a go-to tool for many landlords because it’s known, reliable, and relatively easy to learn. It covers the basics most people need, like tracking expenses, logging income, and getting reports ready for tax time. If you only have one or two properties, it can seem like a perfect fit. You can keep your rent payments and repair costs in one place and stay on top of your numbers without too much hassle. But here’s where things start to get complicated. QuickBooks wasn’t really designed for landlords. It’s built for general business accounting, so once your rental business starts to grow, you’ll probably find that it doesn’t cover everything you truly need.

Why QuickBooks Isn’t the Best Choice for Landlords

Good landlords use the right tools for the job. Managing rentals is about more than just counting money. You need something that helps you track rent payments, send late fee reminders, and create reports specific to each house or apartment. Sadly, QuickBooks doesn’t do most of that.

Here are a few big reasons QuickBooks might not be the best choice for your rental business:

1. Hard to Set Up: QuickBooks isn’t ready for landlords right out of the box. You have to build it all yourself, making up your own categories for rent, costs, and tenants. This can take a lot of time and be confusing if you don’t know much about accounting.

2. Difficult with More Properties: If you own more than one rental, things get messy fast. QuickBooks doesn’t automatically separate your properties, so you have to do it yourself. That means more work and a bigger chance of mixing up the numbers.

3. Not Made for Real Estate: QuickBooks has no features for talking to tenants, tracking leases, or managing maintenance requests. It’s built for businesses, not for the daily tasks of running rentals.

4. Slow Rent Payments: There’s no easy way to automatically collect rent or add late fees. You have to put payments in by hand and remind tenants yourself. It works, but it takes too much time.

5. Not Very Flexible: Every property owner is different, but QuickBooks doesn’t give you much room to change things. You can tweak a few settings, but you can’t really shape it to fit the way you manage your rentals.

When QuickBooks Still Might Work

QuickBooks can still be a decent option if you’re just starting out and only managing one or two rentals. If you already know how to use it, it can help you stay organized and keep clear records that your accountant will certainly appreciate. It’s also a good budget-friendly choice for new landlords who aren’t ready to spring for more advanced software. As your rental business takes off, you can always switch to something more specialized. Just remember: QuickBooks has its limits. It can track your money, but you’ll still need other tools or even simple spreadsheets to handle things like tenant management, rent reminders, and maintenance requests.

Better Options Built Just for Landlords

If you really want to save time and manage your properties with far less stress, you’re better off using software made only for landlords. Tools like Buildium, AppFolio, Avail, Rentec Direct or DoorLoop are designed for rental management from start to finish.

These platforms let you:

• Track rent payments automatically.
• Send rent reminders and apply late fees.
• Manage maintenance requests.
• Communicate with tenants easily.
• Generate reports for each property.

They handle the day-to-day work for you, so you can focus on growing your rental business instead of being buried in paperwork and numbers.

QuickBooks is a useful program for tracking money, but it’s not truly built for managing rental properties. It might be perfectly fine when you only have a couple of rentals, but as you grow, it becomes much harder to keep everything organized. If you want a tool that truly simplifies your work and helps you manage everything in one spot, use software designed for landlords. So, should you use QuickBooks for rentals? You could, but it’s not the best choice long-term. Using the right tool will help you stay on top of things, save time, and make managing your properties a whole lot less stressful.

If you want to manage your rentals with less stress and more confidence, get in touch with A-Line Realty. Our team is here to help you stay organized and make property management easier from start to finish.