i am a new park owner and i am looking for a software program to do the accounting for the park and keep track of expenses and income. i don’t know whether to use quikbooks premier, peachtree, or the quicken rental management software. has anyone had any experiences good or bad with any of these programs and which one is the easiest and most efficient to use. any input would be greatly appreciated.
matt
Post Edited (04-14-11 22:24)
We use QuickBooks for everything. It gives us all the information we want or need, and the disk easily goes to the CPA for taxes. You don’t have to print out anything if you don’t want to.
We actually print out statements and send to our residents monthly. This has seemed to help them remember that they must pay rent…yes, we still receive some late, but we have generated a sheet that tells them EXACTLY how much they owe on each day of the month. It is taped to the window in the office, beside the drop box.
It does take some time to get everything set up correctly in the beginning, and that is the key to having it done the right way. It now only takes me a few hours a month to have everything done in all four companies that we have in this park.
Ellen Brenn
Hello Matt,
You have many options for accounting software as stated previously.
It all depends on the number of tenants, how automated you want the system to be, and most important, your time commitment.
Quicken Property Manager, was design for owners with less than 10 units, very limiting.
Excel and Word are excellent programs that YOU would have to design templates to manage your properties. You probably have the software on your computer right now and depending on you expertise, this may be just fine.
Out of the box property management programs will give you the most flexibility and simplify your life too. Prices range from tens of thousands of dollars down to a few hundred. Yardi, Timberline, MRI (Intuit) are enterprise class solutions with prices to match as well. In the more reasonable price category are names like Tenant Pro, Tenant File and Rent Manager. All have their strengths and weaknesses. For me Rent Manager XP won because they have a long history, great technical support and the application continues to grow with me. For most on this forum it would be important to know that Rent Manager was initially designed as a mobile home park management application, an added bonus for us all.
Check out each company
wow, thanks for all of the help, this helps out a lot.
matt