I am looking for a bookkeeper for my small park portfolio and would really appreciate any recommendations. Thanks
I’ve heard many real estate investors are having success with virtual bookkeeping through services like Upwork and Fiverr. Low cost but highly competent service. You can probably post on some other large real estate forums and also get some direct referrals. It’s something I’m going to start looking into.
I’ve had great luck with Upwork.
We found a bookkeeper on Upwork to focus on bank reconciliations, auditing tenant ledgers, preparing tenant statements, and accounts payable. Service has been good so far about 6 months into it.
Would you mind explaining in detail how you make the arrangement in Upwork, such as how you pay?, How do they access records etc
Stev, the Upwork part is quite simple. You search for candidates, screen, and hire one. You choose pay. We go by the hour with a 5 hour weekly maximum. The person we have from Upwork is dedicated to only 2 roles currently - bank reconciliation and accounts payable.
For bank reconciliation, we assign read only access to each bank account. She logs into the bank and our management system and reconciles. Any issues are brought to our attention.
For payables, we take contractor invoices by mail and email. Mail is scanned to a “Invoices to be Processed” folder at our office and emailed invoices are saved there too. Invoices can be computer generated or hand written and photographed depending on the sophistication of our contractor. Ultimately, all invoices are in that same folder which is synced to the bookkeeper’s computer using Sugarsync. She prepares checks in our business system weekly and moves the invoice to the “Invoices Ready for Payment” folder when complete. This syncs back to the corporate PC. We then print and mail checks from the corporate office and archive the invoice.
1 Like