Accounting Software for Portfolio

Hi is there any recommendations for good accounting software for record keeping of a portfolio with investment properties, Australian and foreign shares and managed funds.

 

We use Xero - easy to use and it runs a solid balance sheet and profit and loss.

It starts off simple and then can become quite sophisticated. There are lots of add-ons later on if you get big and fancy.

Excel is not an accounting package.

 

Thanks Ross. I'll take a look. I am spending lot of time going through paper work and custom Excel sheets.

 

For rental income and expenses Xero is close to useless.

Most accounting software these days ties to a bank account and it learns repetitive entries so people dont have to enter them. Property investors with property and especially multiple properties dont operate a single bank account and so the accounting process for property becomes complex - very complex. Then multiple loans, split loans, offsets and a range of factors incl joint or different ownership all impact on results.

I have a software product I developed with a major provider that I wanted to issue free of charge - It costs me $4 a month and I would wear that for all clients. Trials indicated its was way too complex unless automated entries could be achieved.

Xero also will not accomodate the tax entries associated with managed funds, ETFs and similiar issues. Many of these also affect the costbase. For this reason good broker information can be a simple low cost alternative. For example a wrap style report can provided a consolidated tax report and avoid numerous entries and complex tax matters.

For SMSFs we have automated software that does all this and takes all data on a daily data feed from all sources so inputs are eliminated and basically ties to almost any investment other than foreign listed shares etc. These mst be manually catered for. We are about to roll it out as a free inclusion for all SMSF clients to assist with fee reductions ina competitive market. We consider we can compete with low cost providers but provide a full service offer instead.

 

Cheers mate.

If you want to find somebody to help make sure they are a Xero Certified Advisor and they preferably should work with a Xero Gold or Xero Platinum business.

If you do that you will get somebody who has done a deep dive into the software. The other benefit of these major programs (like quickbooks or Myob) is that the are well known - so if you want to transition advisors or bookkeepers it is easy.

This is a good add-on for Xero if you have a big portfolio

http://www.realestateinvestar.com.au

 

I have found mypropertytracker really good