Expert QuickBooks Bookkeeping Services For Scaling Property Investors & Managers In Savannah
Savannah property managers run QuickBooks across a mix that most general ledgers were never built for: historic district rowhouses split into multiple units, SCAD student rentals with staggered nine-month leases, and short-term rental units that fall under the city's active STR permitting rules. QuickBooks has no trust accounting module and no native tenant ledger, so every one of those asset types needs its own hand-built class or location just to keep owner funds separated. We set up that structure correctly, or tell you plainly when the portfolio has outgrown it.
We work with accountant access inside your own QuickBooks instance, exactly as you would grant an internal hire.
Georgia rules that apply here
- Deposit return deadline
- statutory window
- Statute
- O.C.G.A. Title 44
Why QuickBooks Operators in Savannah Come to REA
A general ledger being asked to do a job it was not built for
Security deposits booked wrong
In a standard QuickBooks setup, security deposits get posted straight to income because there is no trust liability account built in by default. For Savannah's rowhouse conversions and SCAD leases alike, that miscoding shows up at tax time and makes an owner's true liability impossible to see without a manual audit.
Mortgage splits done by hand
QuickBooks records a mortgage payment as one expense unless someone manually splits principal from interest and escrow every month. On multi-unit rowhouse conversions with several mortgages running at once, that split gets skipped often enough that owner equity and interest expense both end up wrong on the P&L.
Class structures drift over time
Classes or locations are the only way to separate properties inside QuickBooks, and that structure has to be rebuilt by hand every time a unit is added, a SCAD rental turns over, or a short-term rental gets a new city permit. We keep the class list mapped to the current portfolio instead of letting it fall out of sync.
QuickBooks and Georgia Deposit Rules
O.C.G.A. Title 44
Georgia's O.C.G.A. Title 44 requires landlords to return a tenant's security deposit or send an itemized statement of deductions within the statutory window after move-out. QuickBooks has no trust ledger to track that obligation by tenant, so a deposit sitting in a regular bank account with no sub-ledger makes it easy to miss the deadline or spend funds that were never the property manager's to use. We build a dedicated liability account per property so that window is provable, not guessed at.
Georgia law under O.C.G.A. Title 44 requires deposits to be held in escrow and returned with itemized deductions inside the statutory window.
All Georgia requirementsHow we keep you inside it
- Deposit liabilities tracked per tenant in QuickBooks, so a statutory window deadline is answerable from the ledger
- Trust accounts reconciled three ways every month
- Deduction documentation recorded against the correct ledger
- Aging deposits flagged before the statutory window closes
QuickBooks Accounting & Bookkeeping Services
For Savannah Portfolios
- Process Review & Set Up
- Bank Reconciliations
- AP / AR
- Accurate NOI, Balance Sheets
- Recording HUD's & Accruals
- Owner Distributions
- Monthly Statements & Reports
- Management Fees
- Corporate Bookkeeping
- Tenant Chargebacks
Take the Whole Close, or One Function
Savannah operators use REA for the full monthly close or for the single function that has become a bottleneck. Each one is performed inside your QuickBooks instance.
Trust Accounting
Compliant, audit-ready trust funds
Learn moreBank Reconciliation Services
Three-way reconciliation, every account
Learn moreAccounts Payable & Receivable
Bills paid, rent collected, owners paid
Learn moreBookkeeping Cleanup & Catch-Up
Back books fixed and current
Learn moreCAM Reconciliation
Annual commercial true-ups
Learn moreExperts In All Property Types
- Single-Family
- Multifamily
- Student Housing
- Affordable Housing
- Community Associations
- Commercial
Experts In All Property Types
Residential, commercial and everything in between. The asset class changes what the books have to prove, and our teams are staffed accordingly.
- Single-Family
- Multifamily
- Student Housing
- Affordable Housing
- Community AssociationsSee the page
- CommercialSee the page
Check Out What Our Clients Have To Say About Us
Property Managers, Investors & Owner Operators
Following a series of erroneous financials from my previous bookkeeper, who lacked expertise in real estate, it's been truly remarkable to receive not only accurate financials on a consistent basis but also proactive advice without prompting. The REA team is a game-changer in real estate accounting!
As REA exclusively specializes in Real Estate, I rest easy knowing my financials are precise every month while saving money at the same time, an invaluable benefit.
I highly recommend Real Estate Accounting (REA) services from this group. They truly are great and have helped us tremendously at a time we needed it the most. I felt very comfortable giving up all my accounting responsibilities to this team and I'm still glad I made the decision to work with this group. Nothing less than an amazing experience!
Frequently Asked Questions
Does QuickBooks handle Georgia's security deposit law on its own?
No. O.C.G.A. Title 44 requires an itemized statement or full refund within the statutory window, but QuickBooks has no built-in trust or deposit tracking feature to enforce that. Left as a default setup, deposits often get coded straight to income, which both breaks the deposit's legal status as a liability and makes the itemized statement harder to produce accurately when a Savannah tenant moves out.
Why does QuickBooks need classes if it already has a chart of accounts?
The chart of accounts tracks money by category, not by property, and QuickBooks has no owner statement feature built for a rental portfolio. Classes or locations are the workaround: each property gets tagged so income and expenses can be filtered per owner. It works, but the tagging has to be applied consistently on every transaction or the reports silently miss units.
We manage a mix of long-term rowhouse units and short-term rentals. Can QuickBooks keep those separate?
Yes, with the right class structure, but it takes upkeep. Long-term rowhouse leases, SCAD's nine-month student cycle, and short-term rental units under city permitting each behave differently in the books, different deposit rules, different turnover timing, different revenue recognition. We map each asset type to its own class so the numbers stay separated as the portfolio shifts.
More in Georgia
Other Georgia markets, the platforms we work in, and the functions available on their own.
QuickBooks Bookkeeping for Savannah
Schedule a call and we will review your QuickBooks setup, your Georgia deposit handling, and what it takes to close clean every month.