Property Management

4 Top-Rated Real Estate Accounting Software for Real Estate Agents

Dec 10, 2023

Real estate accounting software enables professionals to track income and expenses from real estate transactions.

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Shephalii KapoorWriter
4 Top-Rated Real Estate Accounting Software for Real Estate Agents

What we'll cover

Intricate real estate dealings often involve multiple parties and financial components, such as property taxes and commissions. With accounting software for real estate, real estate managers can better manage diverse revenue streams, including sales commission and rental income, track agents’ commissions, and manage expenses associated with multiple properties.

While the tool promises better results than traditional accounting, you should evaluate all the available accounting tools on the market to pick the best that aligns with your real estate needs.

This article highlights four top-rated real estate accounting software for real estate agents, in alphabetical order, based on verified software reviews. Read how we shortlisted these products at the end of this article.

We’ve categorized these products into two groups—dedicated accounting tools and property management solutions with accounting capabilities for real estate. Irrespective of the category, some of the common features across all products include reporting and tax filing.

GA_122023_TopRatedRealEstateAccountingforAgents-comparisontable

1. Buildium

Buildium is an online property management solution with accounting capabilities. It offers a customizable chart of accounts that can be used by real estate agents handling multiple properties to organize each financial transaction into accounting categories—assets, liabilities, expenses, income, and equity. The chart of accounts helps agents understand their real estate business’s financial health and generate accurate financial reports. 

Product features of interest*:

  • Leasing agent report: View all leases with the help of a lease report that includes the activation date, which is the date the lease was converted from a draft to an active lease, along with the rent amount and signature date. The feature helps agents track commissions on executed leases. Utilize the lease report to view details of all leases, including their respective activation date [1], rent amount, and signature date. The feature helps agents track commissions on executed leases.

  • Online payments: Send and receive electronic payments and gain insights into your payment activities. Some payment options available in Buildium include credit and debit card payments, automated clearing house (ACH), and payments via electronic checks.

  • 1099 e-filing: Generate 1099 forms for property owners and vendors. The software allows real estate brokers and property managers to review the forms for accuracy before filing them directly through the platform.

Customer support options: Phone calls, chat, and knowledge base.

Starting price: $55 per month

Billing cycle: Monthly

Who should consider Buildium?

Real estate agents looking for a tool to monitor the performance of individual properties in their portfolio via a customizable chart of accounts can consider Buildium. With a chart of accounts, the software allows users to keep tabs on all transactions for each property. Moreover, each property has its coding system that helps categorize financial transactions and maintain clarity in financial record keeping.

*Analysis performed November 2023

2. QuickBooks Online

QuickBooks Online is an accounting solution that helps realtors manage accounting and tax data, create and send goods and services tax (GST) invoices, and determine tax liability. The software offers a receipt capture feature that enables realtors to upload expense receipts in seconds. Users can simply snap or email receipts, and the software extracts the information to match it to a transaction and categorize it. It automatically sorts receipt photos into tax categories, such as property, federal, sales, and state taxes, to ensure that expenses are sorted, organized, and used during tax filing.

Product features of interest*:

  • Automatic tax calculations: Automatically estimates your federal income and calculates your self-employment tax quarterly, helping you set aside money for taxation. 

  • Bookkeeping automation: Automate your day-to-day bookkeeping tasks, such as categorizing expenses and handling recurring bank and credit card transactions. The software allows users to connect bank and credit card accounts from over 24,000 financial institutions for income and expense tracking.

  • Estimate template: Create personalized estimates for clients using the platform’s free estimate template. Users can utilize the template feature to summarize discounts, services, and payment terms for clients and convert these estimates into professional invoices upon approval.

Customer support options: Phone calls, chat, and online community.

Starting price: $30 per month

Billing cycle: Monthly

Who should consider QuickBooks Online?

Real estate agents who need to travel a lot for property management and calculate mileage for expense tracking can benefit from QuickBooks Online. The software’s built-in mileage tracking feature allows users to calculate mileage using the global positioning system (GPS) [2] on their mobile devices. Real estate agents can use this feature to record their business-related travel and deduct the calculated mileage as a legitimate business expense while filing taxes. The software also helps them maintain mileage logs, providing documentation in case of an audit. 

*Analysis performed November 2023

Pro tip

Consider a tool with multi-currency support to ensure accurate financial tracking in international real estate transactions. The software should allow users to input transactions in multiple currencies, convert the amount based on prevailing exchange rates, and remain compliant with international accounting standards.

3. TopNotepad

TopNotepad is an accounting management solution that offers expense management, payment management, and cryptocurrency-based invoicing, enabling users to invoice clients in multiple cryptocurrency options, including Bitcoin (BTC), Litecoin (LTC), and Ethereum (ETH). However, this currency can be managed at an account level only, which means once you change a currency at a business account level, it will automatically reflect all invoices under that account.

Product features of interest*:

  • Expense dashboard: Get a bird’s eye view of all your expenses, including total expenses, average expense amount, and expense distribution via an online dashboard. The dashboard showcases all expense data as a pie chart for easy analysis. 

  • Expense logging: Record a new expense against an invoice or link an existing expense against specific invoices. The feature helps users track invoice-level profitability by linking invoices to expenses. 

  • Tax report: Track tax collected on invoices and paid on purchases and expenses using the tool’s tax reports. The software allows users to create reports for different periods using the date range filter.

Customer support options: Emails, knowledge base, and online FAQs.

Starting price: Available upon request from vendor

Who should consider TopNotepad?

Real estate professionals dealing with properties in multiple countries and looking for a faster way to transfer funds internationally can benefit from TopNotepad. With support for cryptocurrency, the software facilitates cross-border payments for realtors. As cryptocurrencies operate on a 24/7 basis, the tool can be beneficial for agents dealing with clients in different time zones. Cryptocurrency invoicing also allows for transparent and traceable financial transactions, ensuring accurate financial reporting.

*Analysis performed November 2023

4. Xero

Xero is another accounting tool that can help realtors manage their finances. The software offers multi-currency support for over 160 currencies, including the US dollar, Australian Dollar, and Euro. This feature assists real estate agents in sending invoices to clients and viewing reports (such as profit and loss statements, balance sheets, and budget variance reports) in a foreign currency. They can also assign a default foreign currency to a specific contact for individual financial transactions.

Product features of interest*:

  • Bank reconciliation: Keep your account balances and financials up to date with the bank reconciliation feature in Xero. The feature helps users identify discrepancies between their financial records and bank transactions, contributing to the overall accuracy of the accounting data. 

  • Accounting reports: Track your finances with accounting reports, including balance sheets, profit and loss sheets, and cash summaries. The software also enables users to search for accounting reports by title, date, and other filters and set lock dates to prevent transaction changes during report preparation.

  • Tax management: Create tax forms, including individual tax returns, partnership tax returns, and 1099 forms, and submit returns online using Xero’s tax module. You can also lodge your business activity statements (BAS) using the platform.

Customer support options: Phone calls, emails, and knowledge base.

Starting price: $15 per month

Billing cycle: Monthly

Who should consider Xero?

Real estate agents handling international property investments and dealing with multiple currencies can benefit from Xero’s multi-currency support. The software enables real estate agents to accurately record and manage financial transactions in multiple currencies and convert international transactions into their local currency for accurate reporting. It also helps agents account for currency fluctuations and understand how they affect their cash flow.

*Analysis performed November 2023

Pro tip

Shortlist a real estate accounting platform that supports tax compliance. The tool should help real estate agents track property depreciation, manage tax deductions, and generate reports for tax filings.

How much does real estate accounting software for real estate cost?

Accounting software for real estate agents can cost as low as $10 per month or all the way up to $900+ per month, depending on various factors—features, user licenses, integration capabilities, and customization options. Most real estate accounting software typically offer the following pricing plans:

  • Free trial: No-cost trial plans of up to 30 days, giving users access to either all or limited features of the software.

  • Free version: Free software plans offer basic features and limited premium features access. These are ideal for real estate agents with a limited budget.

  • Entry-level: Starts at $10 per month and offers limited features such as sales tax reporting and invoicing. This is a good option for real estate professionals with basic accounting needs.

  • Mid-tier: Mid-range pricing for real estate accounting tools ranges from $35 per month to $350 per month. It is ideal for professionals looking for advanced features such as timesheets and billing, recurring bills, purchase order management, time approval for billing, and a client portal.

  • High-end: Advanced plans go up to $900 per month and support unlimited users, multiple billable rates, automatic invoice reminders, invoice templates, and more. These are ideal for real estate teams managing the real estate management process at a large scale.

Hidden costs associated with real estate accounting software for real estate

Besides the software license itself, there may be additional costs associated with accounting software for real estate agents. These may include:

  • Customization fees: Real estate accounting software may involve hidden customization charges for custom reports, workflow adjustments, and data field customization that must be considered. 

  • Integration costs: The tool may include an additional fee for integrating the software with existing system or third-party applications, such as customer relationship management (CRM), document management, and expense management solutions.

  • Support and maintenance fees: Users might need to incur additional charges towards technical support, system updates, and software maintenance.

Frequently asked questions when selecting real estate accounting software for real estate

Before you finalize any one real estate accounting software, consider asking your vendor these questions to ensure you pick the right tool for your needs.

  • Does the tool offer lease management features?

Several real estate accounting tools come with lease management features that help real estate agents record and track lease details, including lease tenure, renewals, expiration, rent escalations, and tenant information. The feature contributes significantly to expense reconciliation, enhancing operations and financial reporting transparency.

  • What are the different reports generated by the tool?

An ideal real estate accounting software should be able to generate specialized reports tailored to the unique financial aspects of the real estate industry. These reports may include property financial statements, cash flow statements, depreciation schedules, and portfolio performance reports. 

  • Does the tool integrate with eCommerce platforms?

The best accounting software for real estate agents should integrate with eCommerce platforms for seamless processing of online transactions related to property sales, rentals, or other real estate services. The integration also enables automated payment processing for rental transactions, improving operational efficiency.

Methodology

To be considered for this list, products had to:

  1. Have at least 20 unique product reviews within the past two years, with an average rating of 3.0 or higher, as of November 20, 2023.

  2. Cater to real estate agents and include the core features of real estate accounting software—commission management and financial reporting.

  3. Meet our real estate accounting software market definition: “Real estate accounting software tracks income and expenses from real estate transactions. This includes commission management, contract management, and financial reporting to brokerages, realtors, real estate investors, property managers, and other real estate professionals.”

We select and rank products based on an objective methodology developed by our research team. While some vendors may pay us when they receive web traffic or leads, this has no influence on our methodology.

*Our research team identified these features from vendor websites (as of November 20, 2023) based on their analysis of what users find valuable in or expect from recruiting software. This list is not exhaustive. For additional features, refer to the vendor's website.

To present the most up-to-date information, the product cards show the latest real-time ratings, which may differ from the ratings values at the time this report's analysis was conducted, since new reviews may have been left in the meantime.

Products evaluated for the pricing calculation were taken from GetApp’s real estate accounting software directory. The pricing ranges exclude freemium versions of the products. The features highlighted were identified based on their relevance and the percentage of products in GetApp’s directory that offer them.

Definitions 

[1] Activation date: Activation date is when the lease for a property was converted from a draft to an active lease.

[2] GPS: Global Positioning System (GPS) is a satellite-based navigation system that provides precise location and time information to users anywhere on or near the Earth's surface.

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About the author

Shephalii Kapoor

Writer
Shephalii Kapoor is a writer at GetApp. She helps small businesses identify the right software for their needs by analyzing user reviews for top-rated software products. Prior to Gartner, she worked as an assistant content manager at InfoEdge India Ltd. She has also worked in company law, aviation, and real estate. She is a published author and has contributed to various magazines and websites. During her free time, she enjoys reading.
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