Best Real Estate Accounting Software Options

• Simple Start: $35 per month for one user
• Essentials: $65 per month for three users
• Plus: $99 per month for five users
• Advanced: $235 per month for 25 users

To help you decide which tier suits your needs, check out our comparison of QuickBooks Online plans. New subscribers can get either a 30-day free trial with no credit card or 50% off for three months.

Add-ons:

• QuickBooks Payroll: Starts at $50 plus $6 monthly per employee (read our QuickBooks Payroll review)
• QuickBooks Live: $500 for the first month, then starting at $300 monthly (read our QuickBooks Live Bookkeeping review)
• QuickBooks Time: $20 base fee + $8 monthly per employee (read our QuickBooks Time review)
• QuickBooks Bill Pay: $0 to $90 per month, depending on number of ACH payments (read our QuickBooks Bill Pay review)

QuickBooks Online is our top pick for the best real estate accounting software because of its excellent general accounting features. For instance, it offers time-saving automation tools to streamline accounts payable (A/P) and accounts receivable (A/R) processes, including the ability to pay bills directly from QuickBooks and streamline tenant payment collection with recurring and batch invoicing.

Another feature we like for real estate is the platform’s ability to track activity by class and location. This is particularly useful for companies managing many large buildings with multiple tenants within each.

QuickBooks Online aced our evaluation of accounting features, including the ability to customize your chart of accounts, generate regular and recurring invoices, and generate reports like A/R and A/P Aging, general ledger, P&L statement, and balance sheet. It also scored high in customer support because it offers a way to communicate via phone, live chat, or chatbot.

Though the platform is our best small business accounting software, it lacks rental property management features, such as managing lessee information and contracts. Our best recommendation is QuickBooks Online with STRATAFOLIO. The two software can integrate seamlessly, wherein QuickBooks Online will handle the accounting aspect, while STRATAFOLIO will handle rental property management.

• Essential: $150 per month for 5 units plus $2 per additional unit in excess of 5
• Professional: $175 per month for 5 units plus $4 per additional unit in excess of 5
• Enterprise: $210 per month for 5 units plus $6 per additional unit in excess of 10

These prices exclude a QuickBooks subscription, which you’ll need to purchase separately if you plan to use the integration.

We selected STRATAFOLIO as the best commercial property management software that integrates with QuickBooks because it offers a diverse set of features in the areas of financial management, operations management, asset management, and investor management. These features help in rental property management since they allow users to organize loans and cash flow and manage rental property assets, invoicing and lease agreements, and investments.

However, the platform lacks the accounting features needed for financial reporting and tax compliance. That’s why we recommend that you integrate STRATAFOLIO with QuickBooks for a more complete experience.

We evaluated STRATAFOLIO with the QuickBooks integration, and it earned a perfect score for both its accounting and real estate-specific features and its user reviews. It also received high marks for its ease of use.

However, for all of its attractive features, like a tenant portal and work order management, it can be expensive, which is the main reason why its pricing score is very low. Buildium is a suitable alternative because it is more affordable and doesn’t charge per additional unit.

Baselane’s service is completely free to use for both tenants and landlords. Each subscription comes with one user. While automated clearing house (ACH) payments are also free, it charges a 2.99% convenience fee for rent payments made by debit or credit card.

Baselane is an ideal solution for independent landlords seeking an easy way to track income and expenses from multiple rental units—and a bonus is that it is free to use for both landlords and tenants. It offers many useful features, such as property metrics, reporting analytics, and a tenant portal that simplifies the rent payment process.

Another feature we like is the ability to auto-categorize transactions by property and Schedule E categories. While Baselane may lack a mobile app and tenant screening tools, it more than makes up for it by offering live bank feeds, auto categorization of transactions, a business card that allows you to earn up to 5% cash back on purchases, and a business checking account. Read our Baselane business checking review to learn more about the account and cash back rewards.

Baselane aced pricing because it is free software. It received an average score for customer service and ease of use. Its accounting features are lacking, however, mainly because it isn’t a double-entry accounting system.

Although free and has minimal charges, it may not be the best choice for managing workflows and leases—plus it can only accept online payments and capture receipts. We recommend STRATAFOLIO because of its advanced real estate management features and investor management capabilities in its Enterprise plan. Besides the real estate features, its integration with QuickBooks Online fills the gap in the accounting aspect of real estate management.

• Starter: Free; includes one user and is sufficient for basic accounting
• Pro: $16 per month; includes unlimited users and additional features like bank connections and unlimited receipt scanning

There are several free real estate accounting software on the market, but we chose Wave as the best no-cost platform for property managers because its free plan offers decent accounting features. If you only need to send invoices, accept payments from your tenants, and organize your income and expenses for tax filing, then it is a great choice. While the free Starter plan doesn’t allow you to connect your bank accounts, you can upload transactions from your monthly bank and credit card statements, which is a big time-saver.

Wave’s accounting features are very basic, and it has no real estate accounting features except for accepting online payments. Users looking for advanced accounting features should choose QuickBooks Online instead. It is accounting software like Wave but can be configured for real estate accounting through its class and location features.

Realtyzam is $14 a month when billed monthly and $11.58 per month when billed annually. Each subscription comes with one user.

You can try it for free for 30 days—no credit card required. After 30 days, it will still be free until you sell two properties or generate $3,000 in income and expenses.

We selected Realtyzam as the best accounting software for real estate agents because it is easy to use and has a simple interface that includes only the features you need to monitor your sales activity. From the Sales Activity page, you can easily record all your existing deals, whether they’re closed or not. You can record a new transaction for a seller or buyer and then update the status until the deal is closed.

Additionally, you can purchase the customer relationship management (CRM) add-on if you need to store documents, manage lead and client information, and record notes, like deeds of sale, contracts, and tax declarations. It can even help with marketing by allowing you to create reports on lead sources.

Even though Realtyzam scored poorly overall for real estate companies, it is terrific software for independent real estate agents to track their commissions and related expenses. We found it especially useful for agents without accounting experience and those wanting to track expenses and commissions by listing.

If you think Realtyzam doesn’t fit your needs, we recommend Buildium, especially for real estate companies. It offers features such as property maintenance and tenant management, which aids real estate companies in managing their day-to-day operations.

Also, Realtyzam took a hit in our evaluation of customer support because it only provides access to support via an online support ticket. We recommend Zoho Books or QuickBooks for better support, as they offer telephone and live chat channels.

• Essential: From $58 per month for 20 units to $256 per month for 150 units
• Growth: From $183 per month for 50 units to $5,900 per month for 5,000 units
• Premium: From $375 per month for 150 units to $12,000 per month for 5,000 units

If you have more than 5,000 units, custom pricing applies.

You can test Buildium’s features by signing up for the free 14-day trial with no credit card required. The trial includes preloaded test data to show you how Buildium works.

We recommend Buildium for daily property management because it helps landlords and real estate professionals simplify various workflows, such as rental listings, tenant screenings, and online payments.

A popular feature is the maintenance management module, which allows landlords and managers to create work orders and attach documents and videos, and then send them to vendors. Once the orders are completed, you can pay your vendors directly from Buildium. Tenants can also submit maintenance work requests themselves from their smartphones using the mobile app.

On the accounting side, it enables you to collect rent, manage bills, and classify transactions transferred from your bank account. Additionally, it offers flexible options for paying rent. For instance, it integrates with PayNearMe to accept retail cash payments from renters, which are then transferred to landlord accounts.

Buildium scored high in both its accounting and real estate-specific features. These include the ability to receive online payments, separate profit and loss by property or sale, common area expense allocations, and a tenant portal.

Since Buildium’s pricing depends on the number of units, landlords with few rental properties might want to try Baselane instead. Its platform is free and only charges for card payments.

TenantCloud offers a choice of four subscription plans. All of these allow for unlimited properties, units, and listings. Only the Business plan allows multiple users.

• Starter: $17 per month for rent payments, listings and applications, maintenance, tax reports, e-signature, and leads tracking CRM
• Growth: $32 per month for everything in Starter, plus a lease builder, landlord forms, property message board, and rent balance tracking
• Pro: $55 per month for everything in Growth, plus premium leads, QuickBooks Online and Google Calendar sync, individual owner portal, property manager tools, management fees, listing website and logo
• Business: Custom pricing for everything in the Pro plan, plus amortization and depreciation trackers, listings auto-refresh, team management tools, task management, team calendar, and team member tracking

We like TenantCloud as a way for landlords with small to medium rental portfolios to manage their properties while on the go. The program is very easy to use both on the web and in the mobile app, which has all the functions available on the web—with the exception of viewing and downloading reports. We also rated Zoho Books strong for its mobile app, and its bookkeeping features are much stronger than TenantCloud’s.

TenantCloud isn’t a complete double-entry bookkeeping system, but for landlords who report their rental income on Schedule E of their individual returns, it will suffice. It allows the landlord to track bills, send invoices, and print net income reports by property.

While the platform doesn’t have the most advanced accounting features, it is possible to integrate the software with QuickBooks Online via one-way sync if you want more comprehensive accounting software. However, this option is only available to Pro and Business plan subscribers. We also chose TenantCloud as one of the best property management software for small businesses because of its mobile app.

TenantCloud scored about average amongst the software we reviewed for this guide. It has a very good mark for Ease of Use thanks to its user-friendly layout and the ability to create any transaction with only a couple of clicks. It also scored well in customer service and real estate features. The main real estate feature we would have liked to see is the ability to allocate common area expenses. It will track general expenses separately from unit expenses but doesn’t have a way to make an automatic allocation.

Its pricing score was severely penalized for requiring the Business plan in order to have multiple users while not providing any upfront pricing for that plan. We only recommend TenantCloud for property managers requiring a single user.

The platform also took a hit in accounting features because it’s not a complete double-entry bookkeeping system. However, it is sufficient for accumulating income and expense for Schedule E reporting—which is who we recommend it for.

• Free: $0 for businesses that make less than $50,000 in annual revenue; supports one user
• Standard: $20 per organization, per month; supports up to three users
• Professional: $50 per organization, per month; supports up to five users
• Premium: $70 per organization, per month; supports up to 10 users
• Elite: $150 per organization, per month; supports up to 10 users
• Ultimate: $275 per organization, per month; supports up to 15 users

You can sign up for Zoho Books’ 14-day free trial of any of the paid tiers.

Add-ons:

• Advanced auto-scans: $10 for 50 scans per month in all plans
• Snail mails: $2 per credit in all plans
• Additional users: $3 per user, per month

Zoho Books has a fantastic mobile app that helps you stay on top of your bills, receipts, invoices, and tenant payments when you are on the go. For example, the app lets you take a photo of your receipt and record it in Zoho Books with the essential expense details.

You can also send invoices and accept tenant payments directly from the app, as well as track mileage without quarterly tax estimates or year-end preparation. Zoho Books tops our list of the best mobile accounting apps, especially because of its outstanding iOS integration.

The provider is also great for scalability, as it’s a member of the Zoho suite. Zoho offers additional apps and modules that benefit real estate professionals, including payroll, time tracking, fixed asset accounting, CRM, and project management.

Zoho Books aced our rubric in accounting features and also scored high for customer service and ease of use. Though we said that it doesn’t integrate with real estate accounting apps, we recommend that you get Zoho Creator to create a custom real property management app.

Zoho Creator is a low-code application development platform that lets you customize apps for your business by combining smaller app functions available in its app library. If you can’t create a custom app, we suggest looking into STRATAFOLIO, which has real estate-specific features.