When adding tenants, do I use the Property Management Company or the actual tenant name?

JHerring

I have used Quicken for years, but I have decided that I wanted to start using it correctly. Ugh, may be too big for me - here we go!

I use a Property Management Company, but I still track all the finances in my Quicken. When I add a tenant do I put in the tenant (who I actually never have contact with) or would I put in the Property Management Company name?

jujujuju

Since you are trying to keep detail yourself, I would include names. Properties change tenants from time to time and it would be good to be able to run reports on specific tenants, not just properties. Other suggestions are to rely more on the property management company, but all landlords need to realize this: you need to manage the mangers! If you fire the manager, not much chance of you getting future reports out of them. And rummaging through old printed reports to piece together data is not my idea of fun. I keep things current, by tenant, every month. I am in total control of reports that way. You should store data to allow you to run reports by property, by unit, and by tenant name.

jacobs

You posted this as a Quicken Mac question, so I wanted to check whether you're actually using Quicken Mac, and not the Quicken Windows Home & Business product with rental property management features. 

If indeed Quicken Mac, then please provide some additional information about what you're wanting to track. Income and expenses broken down by each tenant/property/unit? Overall income and expenses through the management company? 

JHerring

Quicken Windows. My apologies...yikes.

jacobs

No problem. I've asked a moderator to move your question to a Windows category so people who can better answer your questions will see it. 

JHerring

Thank you

NotACPA

Curiosity question.  Why do you want to record the name of the tenants if you never have contact with them?

JHerring

I really don't want to...I was just wondering what is the norm. Just trying to do it correctly this time around.

NotACPA

If YOU really don't need the names of the tenants, since the Mgmt company has that, I'd be inclined to set up each property as a regular asset account and show all income and expenses as being paid to/from the Mgmt company  Really makes life much simpler.

Unknown

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jujujuju

Since you are trying to keep detail yourself, I would include names. Properties change tenants from time to time and it would be good to be able to run reports on specific tenants, not just properties. Other suggestions are to rely more on the property management company, but all landlords need to realize this: you need to manage the mangers! If you fire the manager, not much chance of you getting future reports out of them. And rummaging through old printed reports to piece together data is not my idea of fun. I keep things current, by tenant, every month. I am in total control of reports that way. You should store data to allow you to run reports by property, by unit, and by tenant name.

Landgoddess

I created separate Business Spending accounts for each property managed by a PM Co. One account for each PM/Property combo. i.e. ABC PM Co - 123 Main St. Then I recreate the monthly statements within each appropriate Bus Spending Account. I use actual names, categories & tags (no tags for tenants) for all of it. This will keep a running tab of all invoices & payments per property, as well as, per tenant. Makes it easy to watch for duplicate payments or even repeated repairs. As someone mentioned above, property owners must manage the managers.