I use a shoebox (actually a manilla envelope) to accumulate the small amount of items you need for tax accounting, since I have one rental property. Use Turbo Tax Premier to account at tax time. Turbo Tax remembers depreciation of the property and improvements, and annual printouts are there in case your computer dies between tax seasons.
I’ve used Excel to evaluate property, cash flow, etc. But it can be done by hand in about 5 minutes. Right now in San Diego the calculation is easy. Rental Property = Negative Cash Flow.
Unless you have multiple properties and/or are carrying over multiple 1031 exchange carryovers, Turbo Tax and Excel are enough.
Learn how to add, substract, multiply, divide and use the PMT function in Excel.
