Hello, I would like to use QuickBooks in a property
Quickbooks for Property Management
Answers
QB or Xero or for that matter any system would be hard pressed to perform the function of property management (issue rent bills, record deposits, etc.) easily, "out of the box".
Note the word easily. You can make any system do want you want, but the time it would take the tame the beast could be better spent (and with probably fewer errors) by implementing a 3rd party system built exactly for your segment.
This is why products like QB or Xero have a wide assortment of 3rd party programs the bolt right into the main product. Yes it is costing you more per month, but again, the results and time savings are well worth the effort to find the right software.
I'd start with finding the right property management software and they find what back-end systems it pairs with (not the other way around).
1
Marlon
Building on Wayne's response, start with what your company needs to do: define your functional requirements for the key business processes that your company performs. Then look at software.
Don't discredit what you term "without the use of a third party software" - you may find that a best of breed approach (i.e. more than one app) is what you ultimately need. Of course that means system integration becomes a factor, so make sure you investigate the way the apps can easily share data (e.g. using web services or API's).
I know a lot of companies use
If you're going to track service calls, work orders, tenant move in and move out dates, these are likely a better fit.
However, if you're going to use QuickBooks for the
Where I am we use AppFolio on the property management side and Sage 300 CRE to record the accounting transactions and pay bills. It's a huge pain to do because the systems don't talk to one other.
I would not recommend Quickbooks but would use an industry specific software available on the cloud called Propertyware
No experience in that field, but I knew folks om the property management industry who used Great Plains for years.
Microsoft bought 'em back in 2001, and now known as Microsoft Dynamics GP
General use packages like QB have a hard time managing rental functions out-of-the-box. I've even seen bigger packages (MS Dynamics family, Sage family, etc) struggle to make it easy to manage. People got very frustrated. It would save you a lot of time repeatedly in the future if you could find a rental-specific piece of software that could integrate or send data to an accounting package. Find something that can do the functionality you need (not all rental companies handle the same scenarios) and then see what accounting software integration exists for it. The accounting choices will likely be pretty common. The rental functionality will be the part to pay attention to.
Definitely get references for the rental software from companies that do something very similar in functionality to what you want to do. Some industries are more complex than others for rentals.
Filed Under:
Technology