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Landlords, let’s talk reports and which of them you should analyze regularly. Obviously you are familiar with the P&L Statement and the Balance Sheet but how about your Tenant Turnover, Rent-Ready Costs, and Revenue Growth Reports? These reports are your KPI Reports, Key Performance Indicators. How many of you can raise your hands to say that you are even tracking these things? It’s okay if not many of you raised your hands. You don’t know what you don’t know. I will explain a little about the 3 reports I mentioned above and talk a little about how your bookkeeper can help you begin tracking these vital pieces of information about your business. Let’s start with the Tenant Turnover Report. Tenant Turnover, for those of you who are new to landlording, is the process of getting a rental ready after a tenant has moved out. This report is vital because it can help you determine just how much it costs to fix any repairs in the unit, cleaning costs, and all the administrative costs associated with getting the unit occupied again. These costs include but is not limited to: • Marketing • Application Processing • Showing the Rental (your time is

The Coronavirus has really changed things in a DRASTIC way. Small businesses are forced to close as they are deemed nonessential and because of this, they are losing money, forced to lay off or fire loyal employees and are having difficulty paying their bills. This lack of control over their businesses causes high levels of uncertainty, stress, and that is just on the owner. Their employees are in fear of losing their homes, health insurance, and a host of other liberties that NO ONE should be in fear of losing. The Small Business Administration has several solutions to help small business owners protect their assets including their employees. The one I am going to talk about in this blog post is the Economic Injury Disaster Loan, referred to as the EIDL for the remainder of this post. The EIDL was put in place as a means for small businesses to offset the financial damages caused by disasters. Think Hurricane Katrina. This particular loan is only for those injuries of a financial nature. I recently reviewed a presentation on the EIDL; its requirements, what it can and cannot be used for, and who is and isn’t eligible to apply. The requirements

Parents with working dependents, this post is for you and your working dependent. Below is the link to an article I found giving some insight into the requirements to file with your working dependents and if they should file on their own as well. I am going to highlight the key points AND provide the link to the article as well. Happy reading! What can you claim on your return? For 2019, dependents who are not 65 or older or blind, who have earned income more than $12,200, must file their own return. Income levels required to file a return for those 65 and over or blind are higher. You do not include their earned income on your taxes. If they earned less than $12,200 in 2019, they do not have to file a return, but may wish to do so to recover any withheld income taxes. You can still claim them as a dependent on your return. Dependents who have unearned income, such as interest, dividends or capital gains, will generally have to file their own tax return if that income is more than $1,100 for 2019 (income levels are higher for dependents 65 or older or blind). A

The final installment in the efficiency series is on Tenant Exit Interviews. How will this make me efficient? When a tenant moves out (this is when you want to conduct an interview, not when they are evicted) he or she can give you valuable insights that can level up your rental business. You can ask questions like the following: What did you like about the application process? Was it easy to get through? Were you fully aware of what we expected from you and what you could expect from us? Would you rent from us again? What was the best thing about the entire process? What was the worst thing? What could we have done better? What do we need to keep doing? If you were renting from us again, what amenities would you like to have that weren’t present now? The key to growing your business is making your rentals stand out to your ideal prospects. What better way to do that than to interview those tenants that are moving on their own accord? Especially if they are caught up on rent, didn’t damage the place, and actually give you a notice BEFORE they move. It’s tenants like this

Now if you have been following my blog, you know that we have already covered employee onboarding and how that helps keep your business running efficiently. Onboarding a tenant also helps and that is what we are going to focusing on in part 5 of our Efficiency series. Onboarding starts at the very beginning when he or she is still a prospect. The purpose of taking you tenant through an onboarding process is so that he or she knows what their responsibilities are and what he or she can expect from you, the landlord. In the beginning this is the application and screening process. Establishing your screening process early on and having a scoring worksheet handy for tenant viewing will let every prospect know what is required from them to rent from you. This keeps you compliant with the Fair Housing laws. The beauty of making this worksheet available to view for your tenant is it will weed some of the prospects out before they even get to the application process. The next step in onboarding is your application process. How clear is this to your prospects? Do they know what kind of documentation you require when they are filling

Welcome to Part 4 of the Efficiency series. In this post we are going to talk about document preparation, retention, and filing for accounting and bookkeeping purposes. Paperwork, YIKES! It is a necessary pain for all business owners. Applications, consent to background and credit checks, lease agreements, income verification, and so much more.  Of all the document types there are, this post will focus on those needed for rental property owners in regards to their accounting. Let’s get into it. As a bookkeeper for rental property owners, I have developed a set of documents I require to accurately record transactional data for my clients. Depending upon your bookkeeper of the choice, the amount of work they do versus the amount of work you do, and the timeframe the work is completed in, this document set may be different. Bank Statements Credit Card Statements New Tenant Info – Name, Unit Number, Rent Amount, Amount of Security Deposit, and payment method Ex Tenant Info Itemized Deposit Return Letter Copy of Security Deposit Check Deposits Slips – Must have unit number, amount, and payment method of each tenant Copies of Checks written Any other document created from the resort of a transaction concerning