It’s that time of the year again – end of financial year. We know how accounting for your rental property businesses is complex and can give you plenty of headaches. While we recommend hiring professionals to do your accounts, it isn’t always necessary or viable. If you’ve just got started or your margin is too low to justify it, let us help you keep on top of your accounting records.

In any case, you must comply with all tax reporting regulations and laws.

Claim All Allowable Expenses

You may not be aware of everything you may claim. Therefore, it’s important to hire an accountant in some cases – they can save you more money than you might expect. Otherwise, spend plenty of time looking up your allowable expenses. Government websites will generally show what you can claim but you must go looking for this information. Also, pay attention to proportions for things like utilities.

Always Keep Your Finances Up to Date

This is more a point for the next financial year than for this one. If you get into the habit of adding expenses the moment they are invoiced or charged, you won’t get the end of year stress that goes with trying to track down every receipt or work out what they were for. You are also far less likely to miss important expenses; when that happens, you end up paying more tax than you needed to.

Keep Personal Finances Separate

Mixing up personal costs with business expenses is easy – many do it, and it leads to headaches when trying to separate them out. Ideally, use a different account and credit card for your business expenses. That way you will never mix them up and won’t need to go over the statements with a fine-tooth comb. You’ll tell yourself “I’ll remember what that is” but inevitably, you won’t remember.

Digitise Everything

In most cases, you will still get a physical receipt or invoice. However, some businesses offer to send digital receipts to your phone or email address. Where possible, take them up on their offer. Having a ready-made PDF makes it easy to keep track of all your expenses. You’ll never again need to keep boxes of receipts. The risk of losing them is low too.

Keep it on The Cloud

Whatever you do, create backups of your files. If you decide to scan everything to keep on your devices and discard paperwork, store it somewhere where it may be access through several devices. The best way to do this is Cloud Storage. If one device breaks down at a critical time, you can access through other devices. Don’t run the risk of losing your only digital copies.