We know that in any industry accounting is a crucial component without which most of the industry would just collapse. If you are someone who is running a real state agency, you are familiar with the fact that it needs to manage hundreds of things. Real estate brokers and agents concentrate on finding perfect properties for their clients. They understand the importance of tracking commissions, calculating, managing taxes, and other details needed throughout the year. For this, they need the best real estate accounting software only.
As a real estate agent, you have to pay your agents their commission timely, collect rents, and manage lease payments, and incidental expenses. Managing these things manually without errors is very difficult for people. So, here comes the need of using real estate accounting software. Using software enables you to monitor performance, check performance data analysis, and track reporting as well as dashboards.
Instead of spending huge amounts of money on accounting firms, you can simply go for accounting software. You will be shocked to know that even brokerage firms also get benefitted from the accounting software. Real estate brokers and agents have to manage properties, clients, expenses, taxes, financial data, contracts, and a lot more. Good accounting software not only eases these burdens but also allows the agents to focus on success.
To save you time and effort, we reveal the best real estate accounting software for agents, brokers, or any individual working at a larger agency.
5 Best Real Estate Accounting Software (Choose From The Best)
Let’s look into the best real estate accounting software for businesses including real estate agents, property management companies, and landlords. We will talk about their pricing, and important features such as monitoring income/loss by the property, real estate-specific tools, and automatic monthly e-payments.
QuickBooks Online
This real estate bookkeeping software offers incredible real estate accounting-related tools. Also, it does not matter who you are, you can use this software flawlessly. QuickBooks Enterprise is capable of handling accounting operations for industries such as retail, real estate, distribution, construction, and more.
You can manage inventory workflows, transaction data, multiple users, locations, and more.
Key Features
- Estimates and proposals: Users can easily create and share the proposals, pricing estimates, bids, and quotes. Quickbooks also convert estimates into invoices after the estimates are accepted.
- Car mileage tracking: Quickbooks uses GPS tracking to track and record vehicle mileage details. This helps in tracking transport expenses
- Customizable invoices: Users can generate brand invoices with their company logos and personalized entry fields.
- Tax estimation: The software considers all financial parameters for calculating estimated tax payments. You also get a real-time QuickBooks rental property chart of accounts.
Quickbooks Pros and Cons
| Pros | Cons |
| Trusted F\fully by accounting professionals. | Needs continuous upgrades for more users. |
| Scalable. | Expensive subscription. |
| Integration with applications. | Syncing trouble while making payments via cards. |
| Mobile app | No industry-related features. |
| Cloud accounting. | Instability/system crashes. |
| Business accounting services. | Limited users. |
| Easy interface. | File size problems. |
| Great payroll support. | Limited transactions. |
| Contacts records also. | Less invoicing tools. |
| Cash flow pages. | Prone to errors. |
| Customizable reports. | Sometimes software lags. |
| Cloud-based. | Limited plans. |
Pricing of QuickBooks Online
- Simple Start: $25 monthly for a single user.
- Essentials: $50 monthly for up to three users.
- Plus: $80 monthly for up to users.
Also, new subscribers get the option of 30 days free trial without any credit card info and 50% off for the following three months.
Read More: 7 Best Accounting Software
Freshbooks
Freshbooks is a web-based real estate accounting software that offers numerous features to its users. It allows users time and expense tracking, invoicing, payments management, and more. Also, you get branding invoices, auto-payment reminders, and approving online payments.
The software combines simplicity with helpful automation as well as double-entry accounting functionality. Real estate entities that need contract management and payroll can add these from integrations. FreshBooks is a cost-effective option for real estate agents.
Key Features
- Mobile expense capture: Freshbooks can capture snaps of receipts on your mobile and bill expenses straight to the concerned customers.
- Automated recurring invoices: The software can also schedule invoices for repeat clients.
- Time tracking: It correctly captures all billable hours after that it pulls all into invoices.
- Reporting: you can access reports of business expenses with color-coding for a separate category. Along with that, you can also access reports of payment collection, sales tax summaries, and profit and loss.
Freshbooks Pros and Cons
| Pros | Cons |
| Convenient credit card payments. | The mobile app doesn’t permit reports access. |
| Auto-send invoices. | Not ideal for larger businesses. |
| Sends invoices link and informs when links get opened. | Lacks some features that competitors offer. |
| Comparatively less expensive. | No bank reconciliation. |
| Payment automating reminders. | Low dashboard deficits. |
| Accept auto-payments. | Mobile apps hide some site features. |
Pricing of Freshbooks
Freshbooks offers four plans and users have to pay separately for each plan. Let’s check out further costs.
Freshbooks Lite: For this plan, users have to pay $13.50 monthly. Up to five clients can be billed. Its features include:
- Unlimited customized invoices.
- Unlimited time tracking.
- Approve online ACH payments and credit cards as well.
- Unlimited expense entries.
- Tax time reports.
- Unlimited estimates.
- Automated bank import.
- Custom workflows with 200+ integration.
Freshbooks Plus: For this plan, users have to pay $22.50 monthly. Upto 50 clients can be billed. Its features include:
- Unlimited proposals.
- Client retainers.
- Automated recurring invoices.
- Reports related to double-entry accounting.
- Scheduled late fees.
- An automatic setting of late payment reminders.
Freshbooks Premium: For this plan, users have to pay $45 monthly. Up to 500 clients can be billed. Its features include:
- Users get the FreshBooks Premium account.
- For an additional $20 monthly, users can utilize FreshBooks Payments Advanced.
Freshbooks Select: You can pay custom pricing for this plan and can bill up to 500 clients.
Xero
Xero is one of the best real estate accounting software for brokerages and real estate agents. The software excels at integrations, as it offers 700+ integrations making it robust software for users. It offers crucial accounting tools as well as nd payroll management. Also, this property management accounting software is not only affordable but convenient to use.
Key Features
- Payment processing: Users can use customized invoices as well as payment options such as Stripe and PayPal.
- Document storage and sharing: Xero allows users to store crucial financial documents in a single place and granting permission to accountants and bookkeepers to access and work in real-time.
- Multicurrency accounting: You can send invoices and approve all payments in 160+ currencies. Also, you can assign the currencies to particular customers.
Pros and Cons of Xero
| Pros | Cons |
| Additional business views. | No call or chat help. |
| Excellent dashboard. | Stamped icons are needed for all fresh invoices. |
| Project tracking. | Unsatisfied mobile apps. |
| Better setup process. | Separate mobile apps manage expenses. |
| Interactive quotes. | No, reorder level. |
| Smart Lists. | Limited expense claims |
| Satisfactory online support. | No ‘Debtor Chasing’ |
| Reconciliation tools. | Poor customer service |
| Integrates with Gusto. | Slow performance |
Pricing of Xero
Users get three subscription choices from Xero with different prices. These are:
- Payroll service: Early – $9 monthly.
- Growing – $30 monthly.
- Established – $60 month.
- Also, Gusto offers a payroll option at additionally $30 monthly along with $6 more per employee or user.
- Moreover, Xero offers a 30-day free trial along with 40% promotional off for three starting months.
Wave
Wave is another best real estate accounting software that is affordable as well as full of features. It offers powerful double-entry accounting that helps new agents a lot. Also, users can add Payroll at an affordable monthly cost.
However, you indeed have some additional configurations for tracking commissions. With Wave software you can easily complete accounting, billing, invoicing, payment tracking, finance management, payroll management, receipt scanning, and credit card processing.
Key Features
- Receipt scanning: With Wave, you can scan receipts on your mobile and share them with the clients for the process of billing.
- Expense management: You can monitor the daily expenses of your businesses to remain on budget.
- Recurring billing: Wave allows you to automatically bill, get and process all payments from the customers that are repeated without adding billing information.
Pros and Cons of Wave
| Pros | Cons |
| Free accounting, receipt scanning, and invoices. | Fewer integrations with various third-party apps. |
| Run multiple businesses using one account. | Expensive ACH as well as credit card payments. |
| No limits on transactions as well as billings. | Limited database. |
| Unlimited users. | No inventory management. |
| Mobile app. | Limited features. |
Pricing of Wave
Although Wave software is free but as per standard procedure, you have to pay for credit card processing and payroll services, and credit card processing. But that is affordable.
- 2.4% – Processing fee (Credit card).
- $0.40 – For Visa, Discover, and Mastercard.
- 3.6% extra $0.50 – For American Express.
- For bank payments: 1% per single transaction.
- $35 Payroll monthly, an extra $6 per employee, also a $6 fee for a single independent contractor.
You might like: Xero vs Quickbooks vs Wave: Choosing The Best (Guide For Detailed Comparison)
Zoho Books
This is a cloud-based real estate accounting software developed to assist users in designed automating the workflow of the business. Through Zoho Books you can track bills, expenses and organize them automatically. It is an ideal choice for users who want scalability.
It involves features such as inventory management, human Resource System, Customer Relationship Management, etc.
Key Features
- Multicurrency expenses: With Zoho Books, you get automatic approval expenses flows; handles multicurrency expenses.
- Automated expense generation: Zoho Books also helps users’ expense generation automatically for recurring expenses to handle expenses in bulk more conveniently and minimize manual entries.
- Autoscan: You can also attach bills, credit notes, and receipts to your expenses after scanning the documents.
Pros and Cons of Zoho Books
| Pros | Cons |
| Client portal. | No Payroll Services. |
| Tax compliance & Audit reports. | Plan restrictions. |
| Reports and schedules. | Limited Integration Options. |
| Detailed invoicing. | Functions are hard to get. |
| Sales orders. | Expensive. |
| Reconcile bank transactions. | Complex features. |
| Accounting end to end. | Software lags. |
| Auto tax calculations. | Difficult interface. |
| Export of sales tax reports as well as 1099 forms. | Not user-friendly. |
Pricing of Zoho Books
- Basic Plan: $9 per month (It is for 2 users, upto 50 contacts).
- Standard Plan: $19 per month (It is for 3 users, upto 500 contacts).
- Professional Plan: $39 per month (It is for 10 users, upto 500 contacts).
Final Words
Since, real estate agents, as well as brokers, have to manage tons of things, having good accounting software is not a need but a necessity. Finding real estate accounting software for your business can be challenging but our post is a good place to begin with.
We have listed the best five accounting software to manage your real estate business. You can pick the most appropriate one by reading the features, pros, cons, integrations, and pricing.
All in all, we hope that you were able to find the ideal software for your company’s growth. Feel free to tell us your decision below.