Azibo vs. QuickBooks for Rental Property Management

Managing rental properties can often feel like navigating a complex maze of financial transactions, maintenance coordination, and tenant relations.

Property managers and landlords tackle numerous tasks daily, including tracking rent payments, resolving maintenance issues, and ensuring regulatory compliance. Choosing the right management tool is not just about convenience; it's about finding a solution to these persistent challenges that can make or break the success of a rental business.

In their pursuit of efficiency, many professionals gravitate towards established software solutions like QuickBooks, valued for their robust accounting capabilities. Yet, the unique demands of rental property management often require more specialized tools. These tools must handle the day-to-day financial tasks and address the broader scope of rental management, including tenant communication and property upkeep.

This article takes a look into a comparative analysis of Azibo and QuickBooks. By understanding their functionalities, strengths, and limitations, we aim to help you determine which software best aligns with your rental property business's unique challenges and objectives.

Comparing Quickbooks and Azibo

Let's begin by exploring each tool in depth, examining the features, capabilities, and specific advantages they offer:

What is QuickBooks?

QuickBooks is an accounting tool that allows users to track business income, expenses, and tax obligations. Business owners find this software useful because it helps them organize their finances and minimizes the time it takes to document property-related tasks.

QuickBooks also has internal features that help rental owners access and track rental data in real time. Additionally, property managers can schedule mortgage payments and send rent payment reminders to tenants as needed. 

What is Azibo?

Azibo is a property management tool that helps rental owners with 2-50 properties effectively manage their rentals. The platform comes with several features that streamline tasks, such as rent collection, lease generation, and tenant screening.

Rental owners can use Azibo’s built-in online banking and accounting features to make regular bill payments, track rental income, organize expenses, and generate financial reports. Azibo also provides users with renters insurance options that protect both landlords and tenants during unexpected events. 

Optimizing your business: Choosing the right software

Now we have covered the basis of each tool, how exactly can they be used to manage rental properties?

A deep dive into QuickBooks

Although the the QuickBooks online interface isn’t designed specifically for rental accounting, it can be used for a variety of real estate transactions. Here’s how you can set it up:

1. Create a company file titled the name of your rental property company.
2. Link your business checking and credit accounts.
3. Set up your chart of accounts according to IRS Form 1040 Schedule E.

Once you’ve set up bank account for your property management business on the platform, this is how you should document subsequent rental activity:

• Set up each rental property as an individual class.
• Label tenants/rental units as customers and contractors as vendors.
• Record security deposits as short-term liabilities.
• Document all forms of rental income (rent, late fees, pet fees) as products.
• Organize property expenses as invoices for each rental unit, separately. 

A deep dive into Azibo

Azibo's dashboard is designed for instant clarity and ease of use in rental business management. Right from the moment you log in, it presents a comprehensive snapshot of your rental operations. You're greeted with real-time updates on critical metrics like monthly rent collection, outstanding payments, impending lease renewals, and current occupancy rates.

The platform streamlines the management process by eliminating the need for creating complex company files or organizing numerous labels. Instead, it neatly categorizes each aspect of property management into clearly defined sections. This organization simplifies navigation, allowing you to effortlessly access any specific task or information with just a click. With Azibo, managing the finer details of your rental properties becomes a more intuitive and efficient experience.

Pros of using QuickBooks

Aside from keeping property management accounting transactions in one place, QuickBooks also makes it easy for property owners to interact with accounting software, customize tabs as needed, and integrate QuickBooks with other property-related software. 

User-friendly

Using QuickBooks for rental property management is relatively easy. The user-friendly interface allows rental owners without an accounting background to accurately document and automate multiple real estate transactions. 

Customizable

QuickBooks comes with a variety of templates that can be customized with information specific to your rental property business. This makes sense for real estate investors, since they’re not operating a traditional business where services and products are being exchanged for a fee.

At least some level of customization is needed to keep information clear and organized.

Integrations

As useful as QuickBooks is, it doesn’t meet all of a rental owner’s document needs. As a result, it’s often necessary to integrate QuickBooks with other software, such as your banking and tax software. Luckily, integrating these systems within QuickBooks is possible and fairly easy to do. 

Limitations of using QuickBooks for rental property accounting

While QuickBooks is a useful tool for documenting and organizing rental finances, it falls short of complete property management. QuickBooks makes it difficult for property managers to simultaneously monitor business activity and property activity.

It’s also difficult to service maintenance requests from beginning to end on software that doesn’t allow for real-time communication between contractors and tenants. QuickBooks is also not designed for rental businesses at scale, making it difficult to document rent payments as your rental portfolio grows. 

Rental business activity and property activity are difficult to separate

One of the main challenges to using QuickBooks for property management is the inability to separate overall rental business activity from specific property activity. While property managers need to account for expenses related to running a rental business, such as payroll, utilities, and taxes, they also need to account for expenses related to properties, such as rent collection and maintenance fees. 

This dual-accounting structure isn’t always possible in QuickBooks, given that users have to create and cross-reference multiple independent accounts. As a result, managing a rental portfolio on QuickBooks presents similar challenges to managing a rental portfolio on an Excel spreadsheet. 

Property management company activities are hard to streamline

As a property manager, you know that completing one task on your to-do list often requires a series of smaller tasks. Take, for instance, fixing a leaky faucet. The tenant will have to first submit a request. You’ll then have to find a contractor capable of fixing the leak.

Next, you’ll have to coordinate a time between the tenant and contractor to get the faucet serviced. Lastly, you’ll have to either deduct this expense from your maintenance account or invoice the tenant if they’re responsible for the damage incurred. 

Ideally, you’ll be using a tool that integrates the accounting aspect of property management with the communication aspect. Unfortunately, QuickBooks doesn’t have a feature where all parties can interact. This can lead to faulty documentation and poor tenant-landlord relationships. 

It’s not scalable

QuickBooks works fairly well with small property management companies. However, as you start to scale your rental business, you’ll need to account for more tenants, units, and invoices that can easily be confused. QuickBooks will require you to label both properties and tenants as customers, which can complicate profitability and expense reports. 

To ensure accuracy, QuickBooks users will need to manually delete and reorganize tabs according to the specific report they’d like to generate. This creates more work than necessary and is inefficient.

How does Azibo address QuickBooks's cons?

QuickBooks helps property owners categorize property expenses, rental income, and other financial activity. However, it falls short of providing property owners with a birds-eye view of their rental businesses. This type of disjointed property management system slows down the decision-making process and ultimately stifles profits.

The key difference between QuickBooks and Azibo is that the latter has the ability to provide an all-in-one property management platform where rental owners can clearly monitor all aspects of their rental business.

Azibo allows for seamless integration of property management tasks such as rent collection, bill payment, and lease generation — all in one place. Property owners can even collect offline rent payments via check and document them alongside online rental payments made via ACH or direct deposit. 

Azibo’s quick payment processing feature completes transactions in as little as 2-3 business days, allowing you to maintain up-to-date financial records for easy reporting. Additionally, Azibo helps rental owners plan for taxes and compare insurance options, saving them time and money across their entire property portfolio. 

How does Azibo help property owners scale their businesses?

As you grow your real estate portfolio, you’ll need an all-in-one property management tool that can house all of your property information in one place. Whether you manage one or dozens of rentals, Azibo’s property management tools can help you scale your rental business by organizing your rental accounting, automating rent collection, and deriving valuable business insights at the click of a button.

Users can easily track rental income, document property expenses, generate tax documents, and set up recurring bill payments in a single platform. Real-time reporting features and a built-in partnership with real estate CPAs help simplify tax preparations and generate up-to-date financial reports. 

Designed with landlords in mind, Azibo’s all-in-one property management tool allows property owners to easily categorize real estate transactions by property and document tax information according to Schedule E. You’ll also be able to collect rental applications, screen tenants, and monitor property activity, bringing together all of your property management needs. 

Discover the full potential of your rental property management with Azibo. Try it out today and experience firsthand how it can transform your business operations. Sign up now and elevate your property management game!

Quickbook alternatives for rental property accounting

While QuickBooks allows property managers to document real estate transactions on a user-friendly platform, it fails to provide an all-in-one property management service. Its fragmented interface is unable to keep up with the demands of a growing rental portfolio and complicates the documentation of business and property-related expenses. It also lacks the integrated features required to streamline property management tasks efficiently.

Azibo's property management software, on the other hand, provides users with a comprehensive platform that seamlessly combines rental accounting and property management tools into one integrated software.

Rental owners can easily track income, record transactions, document expenses, and generate tax documents while also automating business processes and managing tenant interactions. Azibo offers a holistic approach to managing rentals that sets it apart from the competition.

Azibo vs Quickbooks FAQS

Is QuickBooks any good for landlords?

QuickBooks is a beneficial tool for landlords, particularly for managing financial aspects such as tracking rent income, expenses, and preparing tax documents. Its strong accounting capabilities make it suitable for landlords who need robust financial record-keeping. However, for more specialized rental property management tasks like tenant screening or maintenance tracking, landlords might find a platform like Azibo more comprehensive.

Can tenants pay rent with QuickBooks?

Yes, tenants can pay rent via QuickBooks using its integrated payment system, QuickBooks Payments. This feature allows for efficient online rent collection, automatically updating the landlord's financial records. However, for landlords seeking more dedicated rental management features, including various rent payment options, a platform like Azibo might offer more tailored functionalities.

What is the better to use than QuickBooks?

While QuickBooks is excellent for financial management, landlords seeking a more holistic property management tool might consider Azibo. Azibo is specifically designed for rental property management, offering features that include rent collection, tenant screening, and maintenance management, alongside financial tracking. This makes it a potentially better fit for landlords who need a comprehensive solution that addresses all aspects of rental property management beyond just accounting.