Hi
@$200k,
I made a near identical topic in this forum a few weeks ago. I'm in a similar place as yourself, I've got two 4-plexes and I researched a few different options like TenantCloud, Stessa, Cozy (now merged with apartments.com), QuickBooks, etc.
I ended up taking the DIY route with Google Sheets + Google Drive for a few reasons:
1. There's a lot of PM software that's advertised as 'free', but these companies tend to be in their growth stages and can start charging at any moment down the road. I didn't want all my data, records, and receipts to be subject to this. I don't want all my stuff is locked into a software where I have zero control over the future software costs. I'm anticipating holding my rentals for 20+ years, and these records matter in the long run because of property valuation and taxes. Not to mention the data being collected and used to try to sell more things to you.
2. I couldn't manage to find the 'perfect' PM software for my needs. They either do too much, or too little. I want ONE cloud-based place to track income/expenses that are categorized on Schedule E. And in that same location I want the ability to upload and store digital receipts (because the IRS accepts digital receipts in audit situations).
3. I didn't want to pay $80 or more annually for software. And I didn't want the hassle of learning new software from scratch, constantly having to log into something to micromanage transactions, etc.
Here's my final process and result:
1. I built a Google Sheet template which can be opened in G Sheets or Excel .xls. It tracks income and expenses. Each property has its own spreadsheet, but realistically I could put both properties in one sheet, in separate tabs. Every expense is categorized according to Schedule E. I may take it a step further and set up a few formulas to generate a monthly P/L report down to the penny. But for now, it tracks everything I need come tax time. And it's clean for DIY accounting or handing to an accountant.
2. I use an app called ScannerPro. I paid $3.99 for a lifetime license. It turns your smartphone into a scanner. It also connects directly with Google Drive which means those receipts do not have to take up space on my phone. I have 1 folder for each property, and subfolders for each tax year. Every receipt is stored in Google Drive now, which can be accessed from my computer or phone. For the last 5 years between 2 properties, I'm using around 1 GB of storage - still plenty of free storage to go. ScannerPro is useful outside of digital receipts as well. For example, I scanned our driver's licenses, passports, marriage licenses, health insurance cards, etc. and put them in a shared folder my wife and I can get to whenever we need it.
3. For any receipts or documents that aren't physical, where ScannerPro is not needed, I just save them to the appropriate Google Drive folder, input them on my spreadsheet, and move on. If I can't input them in my spreadsheet at that moment, I simply put them in a folder marked 'Input later'. I also discard physical receipts immediately upon scanning them and saving them to Google Drive. I don't want to rifle through receipts around tax time wondering what's been scanned or not. It's all digital now.
4. I recently made an account on apartments.com for setting up rent collection for tenants. I was using Venmo in the past which has obvious limitations for record keeping. Tenants are now able to set up auto pay and set up bank accounts directly. I've used it on the tenant side before, so I can confirm it works well enough to use for our own tenants.
5. I also created a Google Form which is a basic 2 item automation. One - which property folder do you want to upload your attachment? Two - which file do you want to upload? But I haven't used it much since ScannerPro connects to Google Drive already, plus I can just drag and drop digital stuff to Google Drive directly. It's cool, but probably unnecessary.
One thing my 'process' doesn't have is connection to bank accounts, credit cards, etc. for pulling in expenses. I can see how this is necessary if you have lots of properties, but for a small landlord with only a few transactions per month, I don't need this feature. Nor do I want to pay for it.
If you want a copy of my template, PM me and I can share it with you. I'll upload a few pictures in this thread to show a basic idea how it works.
