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Most small landlords think about taxes in February. By then, the year is already over — and so are most of the opportunities to do anything about any potential benefits that one would need to take advantage of during the tax year.
If you own one to three rental properties and you’re self-managing them, summer is actually one of the best times to get your financial house in order. You still have several months left in the tax year. That means if you discover you’re behind on tracking expenses, or you realize you could benefit from a repair versus improvement strategy, or you see that one of your properties isn’t performing the way you thought — you still have time to act.
Kevin and I have been self-managing our own rentals for years, and one of the tools that genuinely changed how we run our business is QuickBooks. We use it to invoice tenants for rent and fees directly, and when they pay, the deposit is automatically deposited into our bank account AND income is automatically coded and drops into the right place in our financials. Which means no manual entry, no reconciling at the end of the month, no wondering if something got missed. It keeps our books clean in real time, which means we’re never starting from scratch when tax season arrives.
QuickBooks is one of the most widely used small business accounting platforms available, and for landlords who want to run their rentals like a real business, it removes a lot of the friction that keeps people stuck in spreadsheet chaos or shoebox accounting. Here are three specific ways it can help you get organized now — while it still matters.
1. Get Your Expense Tracking Current Before You Forget What Everything Was For
If you’ve been meaning to log your receipts and categorize your rental expenses “later,” later has a way of becoming January — when you’re staring at six or twelve months of unrecognized charges and then trying to remember whether that Home Depot run was for your primary residence or the rental.
QuickBooks lets you connect your bank accounts and credit cards, so transactions import automatically. You then categorize them by type (repairs, utilities, insurance, property management, etc.) and assign them to the correct property. You can also snap photos of receipts directly from the mobile app and attach them to transactions, so everything lives in one place.
Getting your financials current now — in summer — means two things: First, the expenses are still fresh enough that you actually remember what they were. Second, you get a clear mid-year picture of where you stand, which sets up the next two points perfectly.
The tax-timing advantage: Legitimate rental expenses are generally deductible in the year they’re paid. If you’re not tracking them as they happen, you may be underreporting deductions without realizing it. Getting organized now means nothing falls through the cracks before December 31st.
Note: Always consult a qualified tax professional about what is deductible for your specific situation.
2. Run a Mid-Year Profit & Loss Report and Actually Understand Your Numbers
Once your expenses are current, QuickBooks makes it easy to run a Profit & Loss report — and this is where things get genuinely useful for a small landlord.
A P&L report shows you your rental income versus your expenses for any time period you choose. For a landlord with one to three properties, this answers questions like:
- Is this property actually making money after all expenses, or just generating gross rent?
- How much have I spent on repairs this year compared to last year?
- Am I on track with what I expected this property to net annually?
Most small landlords either don’t run these reports at all or only see them when their CPA puts together their tax return — which is too late to make decisions.
The tax-timing advantage: If your mid-year P&L shows you’re more profitable than expected, you may want to pull forward some planned expenses (like that HVAC service you’ve been putting off, or a fence repair) into this tax year rather than next. Conversely, if you’re showing a loss, understanding why gives you and your accountant something concrete to work with before year-end. Summer gives you a runway to make those calls — January does not.
Note: Tax strategy decisions should always be made in consultation with a licensed CPA or tax advisor.
3. Build a Clean Record Now So Year-End Isn’t a Crisis
For most small landlords, the weeks between Thanksgiving and New Year’s are not when they want to be digging through bank statements. But that’s exactly what happens when financial records aren’t kept up during the year.
QuickBooks creates an ongoing, organized record of your rental finances that your accountant can access directly — many CPAs work directly inside QuickBooks or accept QuickBooks files, which can significantly reduce the time (and cost) of tax preparation. When your books are clean and current, your tax professional can focus on strategy rather than data entry.
More importantly, having organized records now means you can have a meaningful conversation with your CPA in the fall — when there’s still time to implement any recommendations before the tax year closes.
The tax-timing advantage: Year-end tax planning meetings with accountants tend to be more productive — and more actionable — when the client walks in with organized financials. If you wait until January or February, you’re doing a post-mortem. If you show up in October or November with clean QuickBooks records, you’re doing planning.
Don’t Wait Until the Holidays to Start Organizing Last Year’s Mess
The landlords who feel most on top of their rental business aren’t necessarily the ones with the most properties or the most experience. They’re often just the ones who built simple, consistent systems for tracking their finances throughout the year.
Summer is the ideal time to build that habit — or catch up if you’ve fallen behind. QuickBooks makes it accessible even if accounting isn’t your strength, and the payoff at tax time — and throughout the year — is real.
Click HERE to learn more about how Quickbooks can help you with your rental property accounting needs.
AFFILIATE DISCLOSURE: This post contains affiliate links. If you purchase QuickBooks through a link on this page, Your Landlord Resource may earn a commission at no additional cost to you. We only recommend tools we believe in.
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