Fargo Real Estate Investing & Real Estate Financial Planning™ Podcast · James Orr

Secrets of Bookkeeping

·57 min·3 clips

James Orr says losing signed partnership agreements or tax returns is a reason to keep files in Dropbox.

1. Fargo Real Estate Investing & Real Estate Financial Planning™ Podcast covers bookkeeping and accounting for real estate investors in Fargo, North Dakota. 2. James Orr hosts the module and says he is teaching from the Real Estate Investing Secrets course because he has used several bookkeeping systems in his own business. 3. The episode asks which bookkeeping setup fits a real estate investor's size, budget, and style, from self-tracking to outsourced accounting. 4. Orr contrasts rental-property bookkeeping with real estate entrepreneurship bookkeeping, saying active deal acquisition needs different tracking than holding rentals. 5. He says the simplest outsourced setup is a bookkeeper plus an accountant or CPA, with expenses handed off for tax filing. 6. He also describes the do-it-yourself path with Excel, Google Sheets, or a downloaded spreadsheet from realestatefinancialplanner.com. 7. Orr says a generic budgeting app can work, and he names Monarch Money after Mint went out of business. 8. He says Stessa is a rental-property-specific option and notes that QuickBooks is a broader business tool that he considers overkill for rental bookkeeping. 9. He says property management software can handle rental bookkeeping when a property manager already tracks the units. 10. Orr explains that he has personally used yellow legal pads, file folders, QuickBooks for a brokerage business, and outsourced bookkeeping at different stages. 11. He says he currently uses monarchmoney.com and pays about $100 per year while a CPA handles his tax work. 12. He strongly recommends Dropbox for storing partnership agreements, tax returns, leases, deeds of trust, and tenant communications. 13. He warns that hard drive failure and overwritten files can make old documents hard to recover if version history is not available. 14. He describes Dropbox sharing controls that can give a CPA, lender, attorney, or property manager access to only specific folders or files. 15. He gives pricing examples for Dropbox, including a free tier up to 2 gigabytes and paid plans for personal and business users. 16. Orr then turns to folder structure and says his current system is dusty because he is no longer actively doing acquisitions. 17. He explains a real estate entrepreneurship structure from his earlier work, including blank resources, initial callback, research, make offer, offer-made follow-up, under contract to buy, bought, and dead inactive. 18. He says each seller or property gets its own file, whether physical in a hanging green folder or digital in Dropbox with a template copied forward. 19. Listeners who want practical bookkeeping systems for rental properties or deal-flow organization will get the most value from this episode. 20. Listeners who want a fast entertainment-first episode or advanced tax strategy may skip it.

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