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Why You Need More than QuickBooks for Real Estate Accounting

Real Estate Accounting

How do you manage your accounting?

With QuickBooks, you can track income and expenses, pay agents, and other basic accounting functions. If you want to do more complex real estate accounting (like franchise reporting or agent billing), you have to track it in a spreadsheet. Maintaining so many spreadsheets can be time-consuming and lead to costly accounting errors.

To manage all brokerage accounting, you need more than QuickBooks. You need specialized real estate accounting software. 

Wondering what you can do in real-estate-specific accounting software that QuickBooks can’t do? Let’s take a look at the first reason you need more than QuickBooks – managing agent billing.

1. Agent billing

double exposure of businessman or salesman handing over a contract on wooden deskYou can pay agents with QuickBooks. But, you can’t bill them efficiently.

From desk fees, to lead generation, to overhead, or whatever else you may be charging, your brokerage needs to bill agents – or lose money. To track agent billing, your team has to use spreadsheets. And, manually input all billing data. Using spreadsheets for agent billing is time-consuming for your team. It’s also easy to forget to bill agents when managing everything with spreadsheets.

To manage agent billing smarter, you need a real estate accounting tool. The right real estate accounting software can automatically bill agents to a credit card on file. And, your team can track agent billing in one central place. This makes it easy for multiple staff members to manage it.

Agent billing management is one reason you need more than QuickBooks for real estate accounting.

2. Franchise reporting

business documents on office table with smart phone and laptop computer and graph business with social network diagram and two colleagues discussing data in the backgroundAlong with agent billing, you also need more than QuickBooks to manage franchise reporting.

With QuickBooks, your team can run general accounting reports. But, they can’t create franchise reports in QuickBooks. Instead, they have to transfer transaction and accounting data to a spreadsheet. Then, they can generate franchise reports. Your team has to regularly create these reports – which can be a massive time-suck.

Your team can get custom franchise reports done in no time with the right real estate accounting software. This software can automatically pull transaction and accounting data. It can also automatically aggregate the data into your custom franchise report. In only a few minutes, your team can generate a professional, error-free report that makes your brokerage look great.

With the right real estate accounting software, you can streamline franchise reporting.

3. Custom commission calculation

Beautiful woman doing accountancy at homeWhile it can help you pay agents, QuickBooks doesn’t help much with custom commission calculation.

Before your agents get paid, your team has to calculate your custom commission splits. If you only use QuickBooks, your staff have to manage commission calculation in spreadsheets. And, they have to manually adjust commission levels and renewal dates.

Manual commission calculation can be tedious and time-consuming. Plus, it’s easy to mix up a few numbers and pay agents incorrectly. Slow and inaccurate commissions can cause top agents to leave your brokerage.

To speed up commission calculation, you need real estate accounting software. The right real estate accounting solution can automatically calculate custom commission splits. Your team can calculate and pay commissions faster and more accurately with automated commission calculation – which is another reason you need more than QuickBooks.

4. Seamless data transfer

Data Integration on the Mechanism of Metal Gears.QuickBooks can export data to many real estate accounting solutions. However, QuickBooks can only pull limited transaction and commission data.

Your accounting system doesn’t work alone. It needs data from transactions, commissions, agent management, and more. With QuickBooks, your team has to manually pull transaction and commission data. For franchise reporting, your team also has to manually pull accounting data from QuickBooks. Manual data transfer slows your team down. And, it leads to costly errors.

Real estate accounting software can automate data transfer and entry. It can automatically pull data from QuickBooks to generate reports, calculations, and more. Plus, real estate accounting software can automatically move transaction data to accounting software – eliminating manual data entry and transfer.

Your brokerage needs more than QuickBooks to enable seamless data transfer to save time and reduce errors.

5. Flexibility

Flexibility direction sign with sky backgroundYou also need more than QuickBooks to get accounting flexibility.

QuickBooks does many basic accounting tasks for a variety of industries. But, it can’t do much other than the basics. If you want more advanced real estate accounting, you have to adopt additional software. Or, manually generate reports, manage agent billing, or any other real-estate-specific accounting task.

With the right real estate accounting software, you have the flexibility to keep using QuickBooks. Or, you can ditch QuickBooks and handle all accounting tasks in the real estate accounting software. This flexibility empowers you to create the right solution for your brokerage. The right solution can accelerate growth and help you reach your brokerage goals.

You need more than QuickBooks for real estate accounting to have the flexibility to create the right solution for your brokerage.

Wrapping it up

QuickBooks is a convenient way to track income and expenses, pay agents, and other basic accounting tasks. For more specific real estate accounting tasks (like agent billing or franchise reporting), QuickBooks falls short.

That’s why you need accounting software designed for real estate. With this software, you can manage agent billing, franchise reporting, and custom commission calculation. Real estate accounting software also enables seamless data transfer and provides flexibility to help your brokerage grow.

Looking for the best real estate accounting software? Consider Brokermint. With Brokermint, you can manage all accounting tasks (like agent payment/billing, franchise reporting, and commission calculation) in one place.

Brokermint’s five modules (transaction management, commission calculation, accounting, agent management, and reporting/analytics) also provide everything you need to streamline your entire back office – and unleash growth.

Book your Brokermint demo today to see how the best real estate accounting software can help you save time, reduce errors, and accelerate growth.