Long-Term Rentals04 · Bookkeeping & Reporting

Books you can stand behind at tax time, at renewal, and at sale.

A long-term rental produces a fraction of a short-term one's transactions, which makes keeping the books yourself viable far longer than most advice suggests. What it produces instead is obligation: deposits you hold rather than own, manager statements that must be decomposed, and turnover that touches everything. The work runs in five steps — separate, structure, record, reconcile, read — in the same order whoever keeps the books.

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Start here · The guide to read first

Separate Banking & Accounts

Every bookkeeping problem you can fix later starts with one you have to fix first: the rental's money has to be identifiable on its own. In a long-term rental that is usually a discipline, and where a security deposit is involved it is sometimes not optional at all.

Matt Nunn · 9 min read

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What it covers

Why the rental's money has to be identifiable on its own
A security deposit is money held, not money earned
Where state law has an opinion about which account it sits in
What every later stage inherits from this one

Reading order

The guides, in order.

Separation is the start-here guide because everything downstream inherits it. From there the order is the work itself: structure the accounts, record what happened, prove it against something outside the books, and read what comes out.

Structure, then record
The chart of accounts decides what the books can tell you. Recording decides whether what they tell you is true.
Prove it, then read it
A close that only balances the bank will balance perfectly while the rent roll drifts — because the expensive thing in a rental is often what did not happen.
When someone else keeps the records
A manager's statement is a monthly control, not a deposit notification. It has to be decomposed before it can be reconciled.
- ConceptReading & Reconciling a Property Manager StatementRead it, rebuild the gross components your books need, then prove those components explain the cash. Most owners read only the last line.

Decision guides

When there is a real choice.

Two decisions. One is who keeps the books, which comes before which software does. The other is whether each property needs its own set of books, a reporting question decided on different grounds from the LLC question it resembles.

A letter for people who run property as a business. One idea at a time on the financial side of ownership — what changed, what it means, and what an operator should do about it. Written for short-term and long-term rental owners alike.

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Books you can stand behind at tax time, at renewal, and at sale.

Separate Banking & Accounts

The guides, in order.

Structure, then record

Prove it, then read it

When someone else keeps the records

When there is a real choice.

DIY, Bookkeeper, and Software

Should Each Property Have Its Own Books?

Books you can stand behind at tax time, at renewal, and at sale.

Separate Banking & Accounts

The guides, in order.

Structure, then record

Prove it, then read it

When someone else keeps the records

When there is a real choice.

DIY, Bookkeeper, and Software

Should Each Property Have Its Own Books?

What this makes possible.

Deal Analysis

Entity Structure

Tax Strategy