Bookkeeper for property investing

I've run a paperless office for years now - filing is basically about having a system which is quick and easy to follow - but more importantly - is consistent so that when you need to go back and find something, you're not spending hours looking for it.

This is especially true at tax time when your accountant asks you for additional documentation about some transaction - even more so if you actually get audited.

Due to the complexities of a couple of my properties (unit block with some shared services), I've had trouble in the past with my property manager making mistakes in their monthly reports (usually because of administrative errors by their front-office staff who simply don't understand the nuances of this property - because it is different). So I have to spend the time basically re-producing my own set of monthly reports to validate the information I'm getting from my property manager and check that everything is accurate.

I've also had really bad property managers who simply do things wrong. There's nothing I hate more than having to tell someone else how to do their own job.

 

Do it. Get a duplex sheet feeding scanner - will save you so much time and effort.

Personally I'm not a fan of multi-function devices (too much complexity and if one part breaks, you can find yourself needing to replace the entire unit - too costly to repair), but if space is at a premium, it might be the way to go.

Just make sure you have a good backup strategy (offsite/cloud preferably) for all your documents - all well and good going paperless, but you need to be confident you can survive a disaster such as hardware failure!

 

Depends on how the device works. Usually there is software that runs on the PC and lets you initiate scanning on the device. You then get prompted to choose a filename on the PC when you save the file (make sure you save it using some portable format like PDF).

Personally, I have an in-tray on my desk where all paperwork requiring scanning gets put. Then once every few weeks I'll go through and scan it all at once. All scanned files go into a "Scanning and filing" folder on my PC. All receipts and invoices I receive via email get converted to PDF and saved into the same folder with the filename usually in the form: "YYYYMMDD description.pdf" where YYYYMMDD is the date of the receipt/invoice - NOT the date it was scanned! This lets you sort things by date when sorted by name. Then once I've finished a batch of scanning, I'll just drag and drop all the scanned and saved files into the relevant folders for the type of file it is.

Bank and other statements which come monthly are usually just "YYYYMM description.pdf"

 

Have a look at Crashplan - depending on your NAS, you may be able to back up directly from your NAS.

Alternatively, if you have enough storage on your local computer - just store it all in Dropbox on your local machine, have it synced to any other machines you also need the documents on, and use Crashplan to back it up to the cloud as well.

 

NASI ?