Security deposits are not income — how to book them right
A tenant's deposit is money you owe back, not money you earned. The liability setup, the move-out entries, and the state-rule wrinkle that decides where the cash has to sit.
Investor education
Bookkeeping insights for real estate operators
Browse practical posts by topic and jump to the guidance most relevant to your current stage of growth.
How do you switch banks without wrecking your books?
Bank changes — voluntary or from an acquisition — break feeds, orphan auto-payments, and blur reconciliations. The overlap-period playbook that keeps the books clean through the move.
What do you do when a loan has no paperwork?
Payments going out every month, no note, no amortization schedule, no statements — how a bookkeeper reconstructs an undocumented loan and gets the balance sheet telling the truth.
Short-term rental bookkeeping — what's actually different about STRs?
Airbnb payouts aren't income, occupancy taxes aren't yours, and furnishings aren't repairs — the bookkeeping differences that decide whether STR numbers can be trusted.
What is DSCR and how do you track it per property from your books?
Debt service coverage ratio decides your next refinance — here's what lenders compute, why per-property books make it automatic, and the mistakes that quietly sink the number.
Class-per-property in QuickBooks — the right way to track every property
Why one class per property is the backbone of investor bookkeeping, how to set it up cleanly, and the rules that keep per-property reports true.
How do you account for seller-financed notes in QuickBooks?
Seller-financed deals need a note on the balance sheet and every payment split between principal and interest — here's the setup for both sides of the deal.
How should a real estate investor keep books across multiple LLCs?
One ledger per entity, no commingling, clean intercompany entries — the structure that keeps multi-LLC books lender-ready and tax-season simple.
Catch-up vs. cleanup vs. monthly bookkeeping — which do you actually need?
The three kinds of bookkeeping engagements explained — how to tell whether your books need to be built, fixed, or simply kept — and why the answer changes the price.
How do you catch up years of bookkeeping for a real estate investor?
The exact sequence a bookkeeping firm uses to take a real estate investor from years behind to lender-ready — what it involves, how long it takes, and what to have ready.
Build a predictable monthly bookkeeping rhythm
Money On The Mend explains a repeatable monthly bookkeeping cadence that keeps investors lender-ready without month-end chaos.
What do lender-ready books look like for a refinance?
What underwriters actually check in a multi-entity operator's books — the reconciliation standard, the entity separation, and the paper trail that shortens a refinance by weeks.