Can Quicken H&B 2005 be used to manage Rental Properties?

I've already read all kinds of feedback on Quicken Rental Property Mgr and am not impressed - I currently track all of my personal expenses and my small home business on various Excel Spreadsheets and am now getting into Real Estate and thinking I might need better software - hopefully a software package that can handle my personal, business and real estate accounts/investments.

I understand a bunch of you use Quicken H&B for tracking Rental Properties as a "business" - do you find it easy to use? Ready to go right out of the box, or do you recommend my purchasing a book while I'm at it?

Anyone have any Raves or Rants about 2005 to sway my conversion?

And while I'm thinking about it, does Quicken spit out graphs & charts? (I'm one of those visual data-processing individuals) and I've not been able to find any screenshots of graphs/charts...

Thanks in advance for your responses. They are very much appreciated.

Reply to
syoong
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I've already read all kinds of feedback on Quicken Rental Property Mgr and am not impressed - I currently track all of my personal expenses and my small home business on various Excel Spreadsheets and am now getting into Real Estate and thinking I might need better software - hopefully a software package that can handle my personal, business and real estate accounts/investments.

I understand a bunch of you use Quicken H&B for tracking Rental Properties as a "business" - do you find it easy to use? Ready to go right out of the box, or do you recommend my purchasing a book while I'm at it?

Anyone have any Raves or Rants about 2005 to sway my conversion?

And while I'm thinking about it, does Quicken spit out graphs & charts? (I'm one of those visual data-processing individuals) and I've not been able to find any screenshots of graphs/charts...

Thanks in advance for your responses. They are very much appreciated.

Reply to
SM-Quicken Wannabe

Are these all your own rentals or are you a property manager (managing properties for clients)? Is your business incorporated? Do you have employees? Inventory?

Yes. Well, mine doesn't actually spit; not in my office anyway.

Reply to
Rick Hess

just my own, and there is only 1 for now...

I plan to create an LLC for it. - other small home biz not incorporated, but might have that taken care of at the same time I deal with having the LLC created for the rental.

No add'l employees- just myself. The home biz carries a small inventory, but I have it on consigment.

So, what's the word on the graphs/charts? Nice, clear, easy to understand?

Reply to
SM-Quicken Wannabe

"SM-Quicken Wannabe" wrote

Quicken can do everything I think you need it to do. Since you've not tried it, there isn't much point to try to tell you how to do it. Get it and play with it. Read up on how to use Classes. Post back with specific questions.

Your questions are very broad. Yes, the reports are clear and easy to understand. "Nice" might be pushing it. "Mostly adequate" is a better description. But what do you want to do?

For your Creditors, Q will create net worth Vs time graphs; cash flows; P&L; Balance Sheet -- the basics. For the rentals you can do various reports to see what your individual P&L's are; which properties are making the most money; where your money is going (I'll answer that one right now: Interest and Insurance!); comparisons from year-to-year; graph rent Vs time, total or individually; who pays late; etc. -- most of what you can imagine that you might want.

With my leases to the Coast Guard, I am responsible for paying utilities. The CG gives me a fixed amount per month, along with the rent. If that amount is low, I need to request reimbursement and/or an adjustment. There's a procedure they have for doing this and one must attach substantiating data. Q makes this easy. I can even give them a bargraph to show trends. That's handy when the officer says there was a malfunction with an appliance or something, since excessive utility consumption comes out of their pay.

I'm not familiar with H&B (I use 2002 Deluxe) and I'm not familiar with the property mgmt. version (I think it has a ridiculous limit of 10 rentals??) but there are things I can't do, that I sometimes need. For example, a few hours ago a Creditor requested a chart of all rentals with columns for addresses, Creditor, loan #, loan bal., P&I, mo expenses, rent, net rent. Although all this info is in Q, I can't create the report I need with Q. I keep this info in Excel, as that is an often-requested financial statement.

Q will usually create the reports you need, but you might have to compromise a bit. Although Qs reports are "adequate", many in this NG wish Q was a bit more flexible and sophisticated with reports.

My personal wish for Q is this: Since Q doesn't do everything I need (indeed, I wouldn't want it to be anymore bloated than it already is!) I wish it supported OLE or some way of linking certain data into my other programs, such as Access, Word, Excel, etc. Ohh, life would be a bit better if that were possible. Then we could move on to conquering pestilence, famine, world peace (or the lack of it), landlord recognition holidays, etc.

Reply to
Rick Hess

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