Hey YouTube what's happening it's Richard founder of Short Term Rental
University and Airbnb super host it's tax season you must be going through all
your paperwork and getting it to your accountant and CPA and here's my
methodology and process that have streamlined over the years to make this
process easy quick reliable and just good so let me take a step back in story
tell like way back in the day know many of you might be feeling the same sort of
anxiety now it's you know middle of March we have 30 days until we have to
file our taxes April 15th and so the way that I felt back then was overwhelmed
anxious nervous I just knew that I had expenses and I didn't know where the
receipts were and it was particularly challenging because I would have
properties that were remote and I would meet with the landscaper and he'd hand
me a piece of paper and I don't know where that paper went and then I'd have
things that were on credit cards and checks I wrote and so it was just you
know very unorganized all completely legitimate but then the burden of me
figuring it all out putting it all together going through like a shoebox
stack of receipts and figuring out which went to which property it just was an
absolute nightmare and it like weighed on me I didn't really enjoy it at all I
was always behind the 8-ball my accountant always wanted the paperwork
first and I'm sure that there were expenses that were perfectly valid and
legal that we should have expensed that just never quite made it on the tax
return and so I started to think about a better way of doing it and at work at
one of my financial firms we started to scan things and that was the aha moment
the transformative moment and I want to share that with you so before we get
started let's just go over some of the equipment and services that I use and
I'll include all of them in the link below but the first piece of equipment
which is an absolute lifesaver I swear by it I've owned many of these and I
continue to buy them is this bad boy the fujitsu scansnap it's amazing it detects
whether it's black or white it detects automatically whether it's single sided
or double sided and it's one button and it saves it to Dropbox so I use Dropbox
also the second thing I want to talk about is 0 you could use QuickBooks or
there's a ton of different software that's in the cloud but I go ahead and I
also upload the same document that I just saved into Xero which is my
bookkeeping and accounting software and then I enable my CPA to have access
to that also so now let's go through what actually happens in real time so if
I go and I meet with say my landscaper in Alabama and he hands me an invoice
and I cut him a check I take that piece of paper and I put it
in a folder and when I get back to New York I scan it immediately and when I
save that document I save it to my Alabama folder under either invoices or
landscaping you can figure out how you want to do it yourself I have the date
and time it's automatically recorded and so that's where it lives if I ever need
to find it at the same time when I go ahead and cut the check to my landscaper
and pay for it I upload that same document to zero so for every single
check I have the invoice associated with it right there as much as possible I try
and shy away from paper I just I really don't like it I can lose it I have
papers all over the place so I try and shy away from it so I encourage as many
bills and or services like landscapers to email me and then that saves me the
scansnap I already have a PDF and then I just save it to Dropbox and also zero so
why is this important well first off because every single
thing is happening in real time I have real time pnls that helps me stay on top
of my business but also my bookkeeper is asking me questions along the way so
that when he sees something that he's unaware of or he doesn't know exactly
how to categorize it he can ask me and since it's happening in real time I very
much remember the meeting that I just had with the landscaper not ten days ago
and I can tell them what it is but when it's 365 days forward hey last March
2017 what was this check you know was it for landscaping was it for a man
improvement was it for a repair you know if I didn't have the document and I
didn't have it done in real time it's really hard for me to recollect what
that was especially when you're running multiple properties so the concept is do
it all in real time while it's fresh in your memory have access to your
bookkeeper so he can ask you questions and then also your CPA so that they can
go ahead and start to prepare all their taxes in real time also and a side
benefit is I'm extremely organized in the cloud so when I go and apply for a
mortgage or a car loan or anything else that requires some
sort of documentation of my income I have all of my k1 scanned I have all of
my 10 40s I have all of my w-2s I have all the 1099s I have all everything that
they would ever ask already scanned ready to go and I can fill out any
application with all the supporting documentation like that
so look paying taxes is never fun the process itself but it doesn't have to be
as bad as it was I've improved mine a ton and the reason we decided to film
this video is twofold one it's tax time and two we just had a lawyer
Clint Kunz on our podcast which was amazing I will include that link below
too if you want more ideas and suggestions on how to structure your
business and tax related items listen to the podcast it was also really cool and
big shout out thanks to Clint he then participated on a Facebook live with our
paid members and answered their specific questions so great value added and
that's why we're in the studio right now filming a tax related tip for everyone
else on the YouTube channel I hope you like this video if you did give me the
thumbs up and please go ahead and subscribe to the YouTube channel
do it now and the podcast tons of great content happy hosting good luck with tax
season get it done and make it better for next year start now get that bad boy
you