Keeping Track of All Your Property Expenses

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Keeping track of your expenses and other information relating to your property portfolio is very important. It can be difficult, however, to stay on top of everything with a medium sized portfolio. There are numerous software solutions to this problem but they are largely unnecessary unless you have a very large portfolio. This article will consider utilising a simple Excel Spreadsheet system to keep accurate track of all of your expenses, notes, and requirements.

As a property owner you will receive PDFs with all of the expenses and costs included at the end of each month, but these are very inconvenient to plough through. There will be an individual sheet each month for each investment property and this can become very confusing when you need to find a particular figure in a plethora of files. For this reason it is sensible to collate this information in an Excel Spreadsheet. Additionally, it is sensible to migrate from lotus notes to outlook if you are not already using it because this will enable you to keep a better grasp on the email correspondence that you receive.

In order to record all of the necessary information, it is important to set up an email correspondence folder in your inbox and a comprehensive spreadsheet so that you know you are never missing any information. For each property in your portfolio you will need the following information:

• Period
• Expected Income from Rent
• Management Costs
• Repair and Replacement Costs
• Tennant Rent Received
• Net Income without Insurance
• Home Owner Insurance
• Home Owner Taxes
• Net Income Including Taxes and Insurance
• Notes
• To Do List

This set up will make it very easy to find out when the major repairs took place, at what points rent was only paid in part, and importantly what levels of income you are receiving. All of this looks very simple and serves merely to reorganise and better arrange the information that you will receive from the property manager into a single document. The real benefit of this system, however, comes from the penultimate and final columns. Including a notes column will allow you to record every conversation that you had with your property manager, any problems, and any notes with regards to the management and maintenance of the house. Recording all of this information is important because a property manager may otherwise claim that something was never discussed despite the fact that it was.

This information will not be regarded as proof of a conversation, of course, but it will allow you to properly document what happened and what was discussed if any issues do arise. There have, in fact, been cases where judges decided in favour of a landlord simply because of how well documented correspondences and communications were, so it is definitely worth being diligent about your recordings.

The final column will provide notes that need acting upon, like replacing the latch on a gate, so that you are always certain to make the repairs as and when they are needed. It is also important to note during which month taxes need to be paid so that you never forget. This method of recording is not a difficult process but it does require that you are diligent and attentive to every detail.