Bill Management

Hi guys,

With quite a few investment properties, usual life and some minor expenses I find myself really struggling with bills, due dates and when I should be paying them.

I wonder if I am isolated in this problem - and thought that this forum would be where I'd find people in a similar situation.

So I ask, those with 5+ properties - how do you keep on top of all the bills?
I've gotten to this point where I am googling a Bill Manager type app, something where I can scan bills into - have them managed and possibly giving me some insights into my bill expenditure.

Any thoughts here?

 

Are you struggling to find the money to pay your bills? Or just forgetting to pay them on time even though you have the money?

Direct debits may help. Have a good filing system, stick to it, and set aside a time every week to check whats due in the next week, and pay them.

 

The property manager should be paying most of them, why have them just collecting the rent for little effort each month?

 

Call me nosy @Scott No Mates - but I like to be across the bills and ensure I know how much they are prior to paying them.. am I unique in that sense ?

 

Why are paying the bills and not the PMs?

Easiest way is to set up direct debits. You can have multiple accounts (one per property) to keep an eye on individual properties’ cash flow.

For any bills that can’t be set up on direct debit such as council rates and land tax etc., I pay them as a I receive them to avoid having to keep track of due dates.

 

You can still put an auto-forward on the invoices to the PMs, then you're still getting the bills but have the PM doing your processing and reporting.

Edit: or you can be selective in which ones you forward for payment.

 

Just use BPay, you dont need to do it every week, once a month spend 10 minutes to schedule all payments when due , or for start of billing cycle of credit card cycle for 2 months free interest and some free travel from rewards, some wont matter if they are paid a week after due date. You can see costs by clicking on manage payments and biller to see all funds to that account for the time period you select. I also get consolidated bills for some properties for Insurance, water and council rates. Cuts papperwork with the same biller, lot less papper work, for me about 80%, for things like water use you still get individual meter expenses so can pick up anomalies like water leaks. A property manager wont pick this up if paying the bills. Your accountant should have AI software that saves him time and you money that can give financial reports for each property. Even things like insurance it is better to get one bill from your broker who may change and use multiple and different companies, if you get your managers to pay you will have NFI of whats going on or know if you are getting the best deal and the manager wont care either. You will probably miss out on large discounts, personal service and insights.

 

Early on in my investment journey I found this time consuming.
In the past I prepaid all ip bills in advance in lump sums. It saved so much time and was a once a year exercise. I used bpay which stores the bills reference numbers etc.

I used to use a loc, but now use surplus cash from an offset account. I could use a credit card but find there are extra charges for this. Perhaps I haven’t investigated properly!

I prefer to do the payments myself as I can track everything carefully.

 

Thanks for all the replies.

This is an idea I'm considering - but I am looking to build some sort of Bill Mgmt tool which might have a low fixed monthly costs but can be the GDrive specifically for bills.
It'll also have some insights and be able to OCR over your bills so once you take the photo it can confirm the costs and be able to categorize them for you..

I know it's something I'd happily pay a few dollars a month for.