Real estate investments provide more tax benefits than almost any other
investment. But tax deductions for your real estate investments are only as
good as the records you keep to back them up. Any deduction you forget to
claim on your tax return, or lose after an IRS audit because you lack adequate
records, costs you dearly. For example a $100 in unclaimed deduction costs $25
in additional federal income taxes for an average midlevel-income investor who
falls in a 25% tax bracket.
You need just two types of records for tax purposes:
1. A record of your income and expenses.
2. Supporting documents for your income and expenses.
A record of income or expense typically includes a date, amount, a
description of what it is for and a category to differentiate between
mortgage payments, operating expenses, capital expenses, rental income, etc. This article focuses on
several record keeping methods that real estate investors and landlords can use along with their pros
and cons. You also need supporting documents to back up the records in your books. The IRS knows
very well that you can claim anything in your books and on your tax returns, because you create or
complete them yourself. Read this article on
maintaining supporting documents for your real estate tax deductions to
know more.
Manual bookkeeping
You can keep it simple by using ledger books or columnar pad which you
can find in your local stationery store. Manual bookkeeping is simple
but it takes a lot of time, erroneous and is not a scalable solution. It is a thing
of the past. Any further discussion of this approach is deliberately left out as there are simpler
and better solutions in today's world. If you're using this approach then you MUST read
ahead :)
Spreadsheets
You can create a spreadsheet of your own or download one of the hundreds of pre built spreadsheets
available online for free. You can manually enter transactions into it and if you downloaded the
right spreadsheet then you should have formulas prebuilt in it to calculate net cash flow, cash on
cash return, cap rate, etc. If you are transacting with cash, check or credit card then it will be
a challenge to manually enter all those transactions without causing errors especially when it comes
to itemizing a large expense paid out. If you use a program like Excel on your computer then you
have the risk of losing it if your computer crashes. An important metric you must track is the net
cash flow from your real estate investment (individual assets and the entire portfolio) over time to
determine whether your investment is making a profit every month or is it slowly eating up your cash
reserves. Spreadsheets have very limited ways of visualizing data making it hard to build a solution
for that. You would think spreadsheets are easy to use only to realize how hard it is to maintain
them over time even if you only have a few units to track.
Software
Personal financial softwares
With personal financial softwares like Quicken or Mint by Intuit you can automatically pull
transactions from different bank accounts but these softwares are built as generic solutions and
not tailor made for real estate investors or landlords and hence they don’t provide any of the real
estate performance metrics because real estate investors or landlords aren’t their target
audience.
Small business accounting
Programs such as QuickBooks by Intuit can do everything personal financial software can do and much
more, including create bills, reconcile bank accounts, generate sophisticated reports, create
budgets, track employee time, calculate payroll withholding, and generate and maintain fixed asset
records. These programs are more expensive, not tailor made for real estate investors or landlords
and is hard to learn. If you don’t want to use these advance features then there is no reason to use
one of these programs.
Property management softwares
Softwares designed specifically for rental property management including Buildium, Appfolio, Yardi,
Rentec etc have features specifically useful to property managers. They are hard to learn and
implement and it is useful only if you do complete property management and hold hundreds of units.
If you’re an investor and delegate property management to another person or company then these
softwares are too much to learn and implement. They have owner portals that give you access to
statements and invoices but they lack performance metrics like cash on cash return, net cash flow,
cap rate, etc. They also don’t have the complete picture of your income and expenses because in most
cases property managers don’t take care of paying your property taxes, insurance bills, utility bills,
etc.
Cashonplex - software for real estate investors and landlords
As a real estate investor your primary focus must be on finding cash flowing properties to grow
your portfolio. You also need to track your existing portfolio:
1. To not lose money on unclaimed deductions or to an IRS audit because you lack adequate
records
2. To know how much money you’re owed every month from your tenants
3. To know whether you are making a profit or loss on your investment and help you make sure your
bottom line is increasing over time
4. To know how much money you must hold in your cash reserves to be prepared for the worst case
scenario
Cashonplex.com is designed with every real
estate investor and landlord in mind no matter you own 3 or 4 units or hundreds of units. It is web
based so you can track your investments as long as you have access to the internet and a web browser,
it is simple to use because it has an on boarding tool with which you can start tracking your asset
in 3 easy steps, adding income & expenses is automatic as it can pull transactions from credit card
accounts, checking or savings accounts and mortgage accounts across most banks in US and Canada, it
is safe as it does not store your bank credentials because it is integrated with one of the leading
financial API providers that power popular consumer apps like
Venmo and
Robinhood and finally it also lets you import
transactions via CSV files which enables you to import transactions that your property manager gives
you from his/her software or from anywhere else.
Cashonplex.com is 100% free to use for 2 months
- no credit card required.
Sign up
now to start a free trial.