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Before
Buying Quicken Rental Property Manager 2011,
You Should Read This Review
Quicken Rental Property Manager hails from a well-known brand
but does it live up to the hype? Join us in our Quicken Property
Management software review as we put the latest version to the grind...
to see if
it does give you
the best bang for your buck.
What Quicken
Rental Property Manager Can Do for You
Old timers
to this program will know it is not a dedicated
property management software - Think of it as an accounting software
with add-on rental property features. In a nutshell, it allows you to
manage and keep tabs on your income,
expenses, savings, investments and taxes... all at once.
For this Quicken Rental Property Manager 2010 review (now updated to a
version 2011 review), we shall focus
on whether this software is able to grant you serious help in managing
tenants
and rental
properties.
When dealing with rental properties, you have money flowing all over
the
place - Rent income, mortgage payments, repair costs, utility bills and
even legal fees. This program helps you stay on
top of all these cash flow and fetches your profit and loss figures
with a click.
The program's "Rent Center" tab also allows
you to store information of all your tenants and whether they have
coughed up the rent this month. With Quicken, you can
also keep track of your rental property tax deductions automatically...
though it has to be paired with TurboTax (sold separately) before you
can complete tax preparations.
To give you a complete picture, our Quicken Rental Property Manager
review will be split into 2 pages:
The unique advantages that you can gain by switching to Quicken (just
scroll
below), and the more serious drawbacks and problems that plague it - Click here for Part 2 of our
Quicken Property Manager Review.
What
We Like about Quicken Rental Property Manager
Once
you fire up Quicken rental property software, the first thing that
you will notice is the clean layout of the program. Most buttons
and
functions are right where you expect them to be - This is not just easy
on the eyes, but also saves you time when searching for program
functions.
One
thing that makes Quicken stand out is how it is able to string all your
banking, loan, credit, investment accounts in one place. While this
gives a clear big-picture snapshot of your overall financial health,
entering and
updating all your (non real estate) financial details can be tedious.
With version 2011, this feature has been further improved so you can
now access all your online financial accounts with a single password.
However this feature is far from perfect - While it works seamlessly
with some sites and automatically updates your financial details (a
real time-saver), for others it refuses to work because Quicken does
not accept certain file formats.
The
"Rent Center" also scores points for being both useful and
well-designed. It allows you to check the status of your
rental
properties, tenants and rent payments all at one place. This is
especially handy for comparing different rental properties and
tenants.
If
any of your rental properties are vacant or a tenant is late with his
rent payment, a red warning icon will appear to
remind you. At the same time, you can also set up reminders for
your unpaid bills. A simple, yet clever feature.
Before
you spend a single cent on Quicken Rental Property Manager 2011, let's
dig up its drawbacks, flaws and other nasty surprises:
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