QuickBooks for Real Estate Agents Part II

Real Estate agents have very unique financial needs than the more stable hourly, salary employees. Many agents are paid as 1099 independent contractors. This means keeping track of your finances is not only useful for your personal needs, but very important for tax purposes. 

Now, many individuals will jump into Quicken Home and Business, and that isn't really a bad choice. It is a good program. It can manage your business, track investments, handle portfolios  and report on your personal finances; however, every time I see Quicken Home and Business, I think: A jack of all trades, a master at none.

If you are using Quicken Home and Business and it's working for you, then continue. If you are still looking for a solution to track your finances, then continue reading.

People go with Quicken for business needs because of the idea that Quicken would be faster and easier to learn then QuickBooks. Let me say this. Both have moderate learning curves, and you will always learn of new things to do in each one. My suggestion is to go with QuickBooks first. Spend the time to learn how to use QuickBooks (or have me help you) and your accountant will thank you later. 

The reason to use QuickBooks Pro instead of Quicken is simple. QuickBooks is designed for a businesses. When you are a 1099 independent contractor you can write off expenses and other tax maneuvers that will help reduce your year end taxes. QuickBooks Pro can track fixed assets  vehicle mileage, even do cost accounting. 

Image being able to see which client generates the most income? Do sale of condos offer higher profits than single family homes? Is it worth the expenses and time to sell multi-family dwellings? QuickBooks Pro is designed to help answer theses questions using jobs, items, and billing features. Expenses can be assigned tax codes to make tax season a breeze. 

To further help you make your choice, think of this: Are you paid as an employee? Then use Quicken or YNAB. If you are paid as a 1099 contractor, then QuickBooks Pro  is the way to go and also think about starting a LLC. 

QuickBooks For Doctors

Doctors juggle multiple responsibilities, from being an advocate for their patients, a consoling family members,  to being a business owner. It is very easy to put off seemingly less important tasks like bookkeeping or use sub-par methods to track finances. 

This post will give an overview how a doctor or a small medical practice would use QuickBooks Pro 2013 to manage the finances and employees.

QuickBooks Premier professional services might sound like the right choice for your practice, and you may need it later down the road if you would like in-depth reports specifically geared toward businesses that offer professional services; however, many practices will do just fine using Pro for their financial software. 

Let me point out one many thing, do not use QuickBooks for insurance billing. Most doctors have specialized software that will handle the codes and the billing, it might sound odd having two programs that are able to track receivables, but QuickBooks just isn't the right solution for medical billing.

What you would use QuickBooks for is to record the deposit, checks that are written, manage payroll, and run financial reports at the end of the year for tax purposes. You could uses QuickBooks to track individuals who pay with cash for services (which might benefit the doctor office and the patient). 

If you have a small payroll, you could easily get started with Basic payroll for $20 per month and $2 per employee. The $2 fee cover direct deposit, so there is no need to write manual payroll checks. Basic payroll means you still have to pay and file your own taxes at the end of the year, but QuickBooks has plenty of reports that will help you.

If you decide to not go that route, I would suggest full service payroll. It cost $79 per month and $2 per employee. With his service you only need to enter the hours in QuickBooks. Intuit will handle calculating the taxes and paying the payroll taxes. All you need to do is make sure there is an account for them to withdraw the funds. If there are any problems with your filing, Intuit speaks on your behalf. If there are any penalties because of errors, Intuit pays them, not you.

There are numerous benefits using QuickBooks to manage your company's financial information and I hope this post shows some of the reasons why any medical office should use QuickBooks.

If you have any questions, please leave a comment!

QuickBooks For Etsy Sellers

You are great at crafting, you found your niche, your item was listed in the 'Handpicked' gallery on the front page of etsy, and now the sales are coming in. Or, you just started and want to build a good foundation before your store takes off. Let me tell you something, you own a business. Even if you sell only a couple of times a month, you are a business owner, and you should be damn proud of yourself. 

Managing your business finances important to your business success, but when do you need a dedicated accounting program? When is excel no longer an efficient way to manage your business finances? And, most importantly, how can you manage your finances without spending a lot of money?

QuickBooks is the defacto accounting program for small to mid sized companies. Many of you probably know about QuickBooks or have a friend or family member that uses it, and you may wonder if QuickBooks would be 'too much' for your business.

In my opinion, you should only use QuickBooks if you gross over $5,000 per year. The reason is that at this point it would be advantageous to track your expenses and income so you can improve your business processes and handle your taxes. 

The QuickBooks you should look into is Pro which is the cheapest desktop version of QuickBooks and is perfect for a crafting business. Pro will keep your taxes in line and will help you at the end of the year for filing taxes.

If you need a mobile solutions, QuickBooks Online Simple Start for $12.95 per month. 

In the next couple of post I'll be creating a chart of accounts for a crafting business, and business practices to help keep your business finances in line. 

Accounting for Real Estate Agents

As a Realtor  your paychecks completely depend on your abilities to sell a house. Unlike others types of employees who receive steady paychecks, Realtor paychecks fluctuate wildly from each sale. For this reason, managing your finances is a paramount importance. 

The major question you may ask is what financial software should you use? This should be your second question, your first question to ask is if you are a independent contractor or employee. 

If you are an employee for your brokerage, then you can use any time of personal finance software to manage your money. I would suggest YNAB for its budgeting capabilities read more here, however, if you need to track expenses for tax purposes then using Quicken Premier/Deluxe would be best. 

Independent contractors should aim use QuickBooks Pro or QuickBooks Online Essentials. These programs help make tax season a breeze and will reduce the number of times your accountant rolls their eyes when you come in to have your taxes done. While Quicken does handle businesses, QuickBooks will place your taxes in a format that your account would be familiar with, namely using P/L statements, Balance sheets, and other business reports that accountants use for tax filing. 

QuickBooks has a robust tax line mapping compared to Quicken, and it is solely a business accounting program unlike Quicken home and business. If cost is something you are worried about and you also need a mobile solution. QuickBooks Online Essentials will give your the tax reports, mobility, and excellent money management for less than $30 dollars per month.

If you have any questions about setting up your QuickBooks company file or deciding which program to use, leave a comment!

How To Fix an Unbalanced Balance Sheet in QuickBooks

This problem does happen every once in a while. You enter transactions, you go through the motions, and then you run a month end report just to see that your balance sheet is unbalanced.

What causes this issue? Majority of the time it is because you have a corrupted transaction.  While this might sound intimidating, the solutions are easy to follow.

The first thing you should do is rebuild the file. Open your QuickBooks program. Click on File>Utilities>Rebuild Data. This should fix the problem.

If it doesn't work the next solution is to try to search for the amount that you are off. This isn't the most likely solution, but it doesn't hurt to try.

If there are multiple issues causing the problem, you'll need to dig deeper into your accounts by following theses steps:

1. Pull your Balance Sheet report for All Dates then select month for Columns.
2. Find the first month that the report does not balance.
3. Change the dates to that month and select Day for Columns to find out what day does not balance.
4. Create a Custom Transaction Detail report for that day.
5. Total the report by Account.
6. Identify the issue.
7. Delete the transaction, then re-enter it.
8. You're done!

How to setup QuickBooks for a Car Dealership

Setting up QuickBooks to sync with your company function is an important step. Many times, people focus on their Chart of Accounts, however, the item list is the major part of proper accounting. A well thought out chart of accounts is useless if your item list is woefully lacking the same amount of thoughtfulness.

I am using for example how to set up an item list for a used car dealership.

1. Work with your accountant to set up a chart of accounts, or you can select Automotive Sales or Repairs as the industry when setting up a new company file.
2. Open your item list and create an inventory item for the cars you are selling.
4. Use the last four digits of the VIN.
5. Create a non-inventory or other charge item for your cost. Make sure these are mapped to the COGS accounts you’ve set up.
6. Create a Customer:Job. You can name it by car or make a general customer named _Auto Sales. Each car you buy would go under the customer as a job. You would use the name or VIN as the job name.
7. When you purchase a vehicle, use a PO. Enter the vendor then enter inventory item (make sure the VIN you created matches the car you are buying). Enter purchase price. Save and close. Then Receive the item into inventory.
   1. You can do the same process using the write a check feature in QuickBooks or entering a credit card charge. Make sure you place the VIN on the item tab.
8. When you sell a car. Go to the job under the customer you created and create the invoice. Make sure you use the same item!
9. Add your fees to the invoice. (DMV, Environmental Fees, etc...)
10. Your Finished!

How to Use the Collection Center in QuickBooks

Managing A/R can become an overwhelming experience. The difficulty is further compounded when a company’s A/R is tracked manually or through spreadsheets. The process of tracking printed invoices, updating aging reports, tracking down customer contact information, and the managing call logs and emailings, waste time and increases labor cost.

QuickBooks Enterprise offers a simple and effective solution to this problem. The solution is often overlooked Collection Center. To access this helpful resource, click on the customer center, then click on the Collection Center icon.Once the new window opens you’ll see the company’s outstanding A/R accounts appear in a table. The columns can be sorted (except for the contact column). All overdue invoices are grouped by customer.

The red numbers represent the total amount past due. The overdue shows the days the invoice is behind, contact would have the point-of-contacts name, and finally notes and warnings. How QuickBooks calculates how the past due days depends on your company’s preferences under the reminders list. QuickBooks will notify you of invoices that are 5 days past the due date, and 15 days before the due date. Invoices that are below 5 days will not show up in this list, but under the almost due (it will be positive number, negative numbers are bills not yet do).


At this screen the bulk of your collection activities will revolve around using notes/warnings. Warnings is a envelope with an exclamation mark. What this represents is that the current customer does not have any email address in the system. QuickBooks uses email to send statements, collection letters, and invoices to customers. Once you fill in an email, this mark will go away. You then get an option to select and send email. At this point you are able to draft up a unique email for the customer, along with the invoices that are past due.


The final aspect of the collection center is the notes. This is just a timestamped notepad that records every time you open the notes. This is a great way to track conversations, promises, insults, or any other useful information. Whenever you speak with a customer, you should always focus on writing everything down.


The collection center is a great way to track outstanding A/R balances. Proper use and solid company policies will keep cash flow up and overdue balances low. The collection center, however, will not remind you to contact people with overdue balances. You have to check this every few times a week to maintain on top of A/R.

How To Track Equipment Rentals In Quickbooks

Some companies expand their revenue streams by renting out equipment to others. As some business owners may have found out, tracking of rentals and properly accounting for the money they generate is a tedious task. The goal is to show you two ways to track rentals using QuickBooks and QuickBooks Point of Sale.

QuickBooks Only Method

QuickBooks does not have a specific area or tool that allows you to track rentals; however, do not let this stop you.

1. Identify all the equipment you will rent out.
2. Enter the equipment as non-inventory items in QuickBooks
3. Setup the individual equipment names as Other Names
4. Use timesheets to track the rental/reservations
5. Mark the time entries as billable and then create an invoice for billable expenses.

QuickBooks Point of Sale Method

Using QuickBooks POS to track rentals is a lot easier than using QuickBooks. QuickBooks Point of Sale is able to use deposits and set up specific items and fees that can be adjusted on the fly instead of QuickBooks.

1. Identify the equipment you will rent out.
2. Create an inventory item for the equipment.
3. Set the cost to zero, the price to zero, and the quantity to the number of units you have to rent out.
4. Create a non-inventory item named Deposit on Equipment make the price zero
5. Repeat the process above but name the item Rental Fee.
6. When a customer rents the item, create a receipt with the inventory item on the first line of the sales receipt.
7. On the same receipt, Deposit on Equipment item will be the next item you add. The inventory item (the rental) will be 0 dollars, while the Deposit on Equipment will have the amount you are charging for the deposit.
8. Record the receipt, take the payment using standard payment methods.
9. Track the equipment using either a spreadsheet or another process.
10. When the item is returned, locate the receipt and reverse it. This will create a refund for the customer. If the deposit was done using a credit card, the card will be automatically refunded. This process places the rented item back into inventory.
11. Create a new receipt using the non-inventory item Rental Fee and enter the amount for the rental charge.

It may be wise to track rental equipment as a fixed asset in QuickBooks so you can depreciate it for tax purposes. Please speak with your accountant about this.

How to Use QuickBooks to Track Real Estate Properties

Accurate record keeping helps you to see how well your company is doing, but also is a way to bring in more investors or get loans from banks. How do you track real estate in QuickBooks? Specifically, how do you track properties that are being leased out to tenants?

Using classes to track expenses and income for properties is a great way to manage your business. Here is how you could setup your classes.

Tracking invoices, bills, even line items using classes will help generate specific reports that can help an investor. Classes allow a user to see P/L (Premier can show balance sheet for classes) for each class, this can be invaluable for the investor who would like to see which property is profitable and which isn’t. This is a great way to track property if you are a property manager or you manage property for others. Follow this template to see how to setup your class list:

Name of Owner of Property:

Address of Property:

Unit 1 (2nd floor etc...)

Unit 2

OR

Address of Property:

Unit 1

Unit 2

Setting up your customer list also allows you to pull additional reports and helps during tax time. If you rent properties out, you can structure your customer list like this:

Name Of Tenant:

Address of Property

OR

Name of Owner:

Address Of Property:

Name of Tenant and Unit/Floor #

Vacant and Unit/Floor #

Address of Property:

Name of Tenant

Vacant (this tracks what is spent to maintain house when vacant)

It all depends on your personal preference. Please consult with your accountant to determine what tax information you need to record and track. Using Jobs and Classes are sure fire ways to improve accounting and managing of your company’s finances.