Three Apartment Tenants- One Accounts Receivable or Three Accounts?

Dec 17, 2005 2 Replies
T

Quicken 2005Pro



I am setting up Quicken to show the monthly apartment rent that comes in from my three tenants.



Are there any compelling reasons one way or the other to make one Accounts Receivable account for all three tenants or to make a seperate Accounts Receivable account for each of the three tenants?



I started by making one account for one tenant and I see that account shows up in the Business Center. After I make three, I suppose all three will show up there. Thats not bad, but over the years as tenants move out and new ones move in, would the list of these accounts that show up there keep growing, or would I never see more than three in any given year, or maybe four in a year where I had 4 tenants because one moved out and another in?



I was thinking of entering an invoice for each months rent and then recording when the payment was received in order to use accrual type accounting which I understand is a little more accurate and realistic than the cash method (just recording when rent is received.)



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J

experience with this version. However, I have tracked rental properties in the Basic and Deluxe versions.

Apt1, Apt2, Apt3. Append this class to the category; e.g., Rents Received/Apt1. I also used the class to track expense categories for each property. You can run various reports, subtotaled by class, to view status.

Can't comment specifically on this in relation to Accounts Receivable, but think the use of classes must be the way to go.

You can read up on Classes in the Help file.

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R

Hi, Tom.

Accountants typically have one account named Accounts Receivable (often abbreviate A/R). Within that one account, they have multiple sub-accounts, one for each debtor. In your 3-account situation, it might be feasible to have three A/R Accounts. But businesses with hundreds or thousands of customers outgrow this pretty quickly. (Before computers, some junior accountant had the duty to add all the individual accounts in a "Trial Balance" to be sure that the total agreed with the A/R balance. Even with computers, this function is still required, although it might happen automatically in a well-designed system.)

I second JM's recommendation. This sounds like a job for...Classes! Have a single A/R, but with a Class for each apartment. You could have a class for each tenant, but the only time you'll have two tenants for a single apartment is during the brief transition periods, and it shouldn't be hard to remember which one owes how much. By having a class for each apartment, you can use the came Classes to keep track of the expenses (repairs, utilities, advertising, etc.) for each apartment, too. (You'll probably want a 4th Class for the whole property, especially if all 3 apartments are under a single leaky roof.) With Classes, you can produce a separate report for each apartment, or a single report for all apartments.

RC

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