Rental Property Bookkeeping for Beginners with CPA Grace Wills

Grace Wills (00:00)
if you only have a few houses or even just one, and you go and hire

A bookkeeper to help you. And I’m not talking about hiring a bookkeeper that’s, you know, 50 bucks here and there, because that’s probably not going to get you very good service, just being honest. ⁓ if you are gonna go hire a bookkeeper that’s worth their salt, you’re gonna pay a minimum of $500 a month to have someone do your bookkeeping specifically for real estate investing.

Michelle Tack (02:00)
Welcome everybody to Real Estate Pros. I’m Michelle Tack, the lead podcaster for today’s session. I have Grace Wills from Oklahoma City with me today. And I’m thrilled to have Grace talk to us.

About some interesting things she’s doing from on the financial side of real estate as well as investing herself. Grace has ⁓ invested in multi-unit properties over the course of ⁓ some years, as well as provides ⁓ great bookkeeping services as well as courses, and also is a trained CPA. wanna unpack that a little bit, Grace. ⁓ welcome.

For people that may not know about sort of what you do on the bookkeeping side to start with, can you tell me what services you’re providing and and is that across the United States, what have you?

Grace Wills (02:55)
Yeah, sure. Well, first of all, thank you, Michelle, for having me on the podcast. I really appreciate being here. And so for on the bookkeeping side of my practice, yes, I am a CPA. I am a weird CPA in that I do not provide tax preparation services. However, I actually train business owners on how to do their own bookkeeping. And then I provide kind of like a CPA in your back pocket service to where I provide.

Ongoing services where my clients will do their own bookkeeping and then on a quarterly basis, I will go in and I will check their work. Sometimes I will ⁓ help them with certain like accounting adjustments and journal entries and kind of the nitty-gritty stuff that they might come in across. But that is what I do in my practice. And I also just created an online course called Bookkeeping for Real Estate Investors, which is exactly what it sounds like. It teaches real estate investors, new ones in particular.

How to do their own bookkeeping so that we can kind of bridge the gap. Cause when you first start out, you may not be able to afford to outsource your bookkeeping and you need to do it yourself, but you kind of need someone to show you how to do it, because it’s not exactly something they teach you how to do in school. So I bridge that gap and provide that knowledge for my students so that when the time comes, they have a system that they have built with my help, and they can hand that over to a bookkeeper.

On a silver platter.

Michelle Tack (04:23)
That’s awesome. How did when we were preparing for this conversation today, we talked about your real estate investments as well and that you and your husband are working together on that. How has your bookkeeping CPA background assisted you it with those investments? I know that you have three rentals today. Can you speak to, you know, that how that has helped you?

Grace Wills (04:45)
Yeah, sure. ⁓ so my husband is my acquisitions guy. He goes out and he finds the deals and he negotiates with wholesalers and sellers and whoever, and he does our property management. So he’s kind of like the people person. And then I’m the back office gal. So I make sure everything gets to close. I ⁓ I work on our banking relationships with our lenders.

And I make sure everything is insured and all the taxes are paid. And then also when my husband does find a deal, I look over his analysis and kind of kick the tires on it and poke as many holes as I can in it before we close on anything. So that’s that’s kind of my job in the investing side of things.

Michelle Tack (05:28)
appreciate

that. How do you operate efficiently when you have two different businesses? You’ve got your, you know, bookkeeping services as well as courses, which I believe you consider that sort of one business. They I mean they relate to bookkeeping or CPA. And then you’ve got the real estate investment. How do you make that operationally efficient when they are different businesses?

Grace Wills (06:41)
Right. So carefully we do a lot of time blocking. ⁓ so depending on the day, you know, you can never tell when a tenant is gonna need something. So ⁓ if if you know we tag team a lot, my husband and I both do work from home. So and I also homeschool our kids. So we’re at home all the time and we talk every day, all day.

And if something needs to be handled, we just communicate very clearly with one another. And then I do have my set hours that I work on my bookkeeping practice.

Michelle Tack (07:16)
Got it. ⁓ in terms of I asked this question for everyone, not just of you. ⁓ when people have some level of success, even if if if they’re not there yet, things can get complicated. ⁓ again, you’re doing two different businesses, but really think about it probably as one, but it’s two different ones, but it’s in your household. ⁓ you know, things can happen that are not in your control that affect things.

Operationally or your pocketbook. Can you talk about a time where a deal that you were working on or situation that you were working on started going south and you had to pivot very quickly to either rectify it or if you weren’t able to rectify it, it was a true learning lesson that you put into your kit and has changed you, you know, has added to your professionalism and

your ⁓ wisdom and execution.

Grace Wills (08:12)
Hmm. That’s a good question. Okay. What comes to my mind first is a little over a year ago, ⁓ we went under contract on a new property that we were going to purchase and it was gonna we’re gonna fix it up and turn it into a rental. And it went through inspection, and we I wanna say this was going to be a wholesale deal. So we were working with a wholesaler and ⁓ and ⁓

We we do inspect all of our properties before we purchase them. That’s like if they’re not willing to have an inspection period, I’m not willing to buy it. So we did inspection and the inspection found some undesirable things with the foundation. And so we really weren’t going to be able to buy it at, you know, what we had agreed to buy it at because the foundation was a mess. But we did agree to buy it as is. So we went to the wholesaler and said, Hey, look.

We’re gonna have to walk if if this if we can’t rectify this and we can’t adjust the price. ⁓ and but the thing was kind of the catch here is we didn’t notice we didn’t notice the the biggest issue until like the day before closing. So and yeah, so we were kind of we wound up having to pull out of it and put the wholesaler in a tight spot.

And the reason it was so late that we discovered the issue is because I on top of the foundation issue, there really was actually a mathematical error in our original analysis that I didn’t find. Yes, yes, until the day before closing. And I felt horrible having to pull out, but you know, you cannot take on someone else’s problem. You you really just can’t do that. so since then, so we did pull out.

And that just was not a great feeling. And yeah, I don’t like being flaky or pulling out of contracts, but we had to. And so since then we have revised our system to where when my husband finds something and analyzes it, I always double check it. And it’s not that he’s bad at math. He’s actually very good at it. It just there happened to be an error and he missed it because when you only have one set of eyes looking at something, we are human. So

Yep. I am now, you know, we’re all hands on deck. If he finds something, I always double always, always double and triple check numbers and he looks at it again and we talk through it and we’re just very, very more we’re a lot more meticulous when we’re analyzing a deal than we were previously. So ’cause I don’t ever want to have to do that again. That was awful.

Michelle Tack (11:26)
It makes sense. We talked about some of your aspirations in terms of opportunities for you a year from now. Can you share ⁓ you know what that looks like for both your bookkeeping, you know, a business, your course as well as the real estate, what you would like to see happen in the next ⁓ twelve months.

Grace Wills (11:44)
Okay. I’m gonna shoot for the moon. Well, not yet. I I would love to have three more properties by this time next year. We are under contract on on a property right now, so we’re almost a third of the way there. Almost after we close here in a couple weeks. But ⁓ and then for and and really we’re in real estate, we’re kind of working towards slower growth. We just wanna we wanna be slow and steady. We don’t wanna, you know, go in too quickly and have our house of cards tumble.

So that’s how we’re going to handle our real estate business. And then for my bookkeeping practice, I would love to have as many new investors as possible get into my course and check it out and ⁓ really help as many people as possible there. Cause I know that that is just an area that needs a lot of help with new investors that they just don’t know what to do with their bookkeeping. And then it winds up costing tons of money once they do outsource because there’s a big cleanup and it’s just.

It’s just not desirable. So that’s that’s that’s what I’m hoping to accomplish within the next year. ⁓ I mean, ideally I’d love to have, you know, 10 to 20 people by my course a month. That’d be that’d be great. But I know that there may not be that many people getting into real estate investing that need help with bookkeeping by then. But maybe, maybe, I don’t know. So but but really my goal there is for people to to to get into the course.

Michelle Tack (13:02)
May you may be surprised.

Grace Wills (13:12)
And I would love feedback from people. That’s really what I am I am looking for. Cause I would like to make it better and better over time. Cause I’m always making changes in it and improving it as I go and as I get more people in there.

Michelle Tack (13:26)
So let’s stay on that, just I have one more question on that. Where does where do you fit in the gray area that’s not being serviced well, in your opinion, that you’re saying to some folks listening to this may be saying, Hey, yeah, that’s great bookkeeping, but then I have to do all the work, so why not just give it to a CPA or to a bookkeeper? Help me understand that hole that you are you are filling.

Grace Wills (13:51)
Okay, so in I’m gonna give you a personal example. In my own investing business, I do not buy houses to be a money pit. I buy them so that they can pay for themselves and eventually pay for my retirement. Or even better, if they cash flow, I can get some money now. If you are,

if you only have a few houses or even just one, and you go and hire

A bookkeeper to help you. And I’m not talking about hiring a bookkeeper that’s, you know, 50 bucks here and there, because that’s probably not going to get you very good service, just being honest. ⁓ if you are gonna go hire a bookkeeper that’s worth their salt, you’re gonna pay a minimum of $500 a month to have someone do your bookkeeping specifically for real estate investing. All right. If you only have one property,

Maybe you cash flow enough to afford a bookkeeper at $500 a month. I don’t know. I don’t. In the Oklahoma City market, I definitely don’t with one property. So this is where I’m trying to bridge the gap. Is when you first start, you can’t afford $500 a month for a bookkeeper who is going to take you all the way. You could afford to start with some cheapo bookkeeper that probably isn’t doing a very good job.

You can afford to go try and figure it out yourself by watching a bunch of YouTube videos, asking Chat GPT for advice and all of that. But we all know that Chat GPT hallucinates and may or may not be telling you the correct information. If you go watch stuff on YouTube, you may or may not get the right information for what you specifically need. And it’s going to be a very generic typically. So that is where I’m trying to serve fellow investors is get help you.

Build your own system that is tailored to what you need because every real estate investing business is a little bit different, depending on what you need. And it will be tailored so that you can build it and then hand it over to a bookkeeper when the time comes and you will be ready for it. And it’s not gonna cost you thousands and thousands of dollars in cleanup fees. I’ve seen it. So yeah.

Michelle Tack (16:45)
I I appreciate you doing that. Before we close, can you talk about the network that, you know, when we were preparing for this, you said the network is really special in Oklahoma City and the Oklahomans in general. Can you talk about how that’s helped you, ⁓ your network and ⁓ you know, how it’s contributed to your success?

Grace Wills (17:02)
Absolutely. So our network here is special, like you said. ⁓ everyone here is friendly and there’s enough pie for everyone. If there’s competition, it is typically friendly. Now, some I mean, just like with any community, there are some bad actors here and there, but usually people figure that out pretty quickly and just don’t work with them anymore. But ⁓ for the most part, our network is amazing. I go to network events every month and I can come in with any problem. I’m in a a Facebook

Chat group with 250 other investors in the area. And people are in there every day saying, Hey, I need a plumber, or hey, I need this. Hey, I need this. What do you got? And helping each other solve problems, like real ones. And some of them are kind of weird too. Like ⁓ if they’re trying to deal with a property in probate or have a tenant that’s got some weird thing going on. ⁓ and everyone is so helpful. And and I I love being in there because then I get to provide.

as much information because you know not a lot of people know a lot about bookkeeping and I do so I can help there as well. ⁓ but yeah it’s just very ⁓ I don’t know it’s just a very fun community to be to be in and that has helped us so much. ⁓ our our mentor is local and she has helped us tremendously in many different ways. I’ve been able to save money

On flips, I’ve been able to I’ve actually been able to help out some tenants of mine that needed to move just because they needed to relocate. And so I reached out to my community and said, Hey, they need to move to another part of town. They’re great tenants. Does anyone have any open on the other side of town? And we’ve been able to help out tenants. ⁓ so yeah, just also

Michelle Tack (18:44)
Well, you’ve been a great contributor. ⁓ you’re providing a service that’s really needed in real estate, number one. And ⁓ I’m I’m glad that you’re also continuing to invest, which is a great sign, as always. ⁓ so ⁓ Grace, before we leave and conclude for the day, can you give ⁓ how people contact information, how people can get in touch with you? ⁓ and if there’s a website, could you spell it out for us, please?

Grace Wills (19:11)
Yes, sure. Okay. So my email address is G Wills C P A. So [email protected] And then you can find me on Facebook or Instagram. My handle on both of those is G Wills CPA, just like my email. And then ⁓ for my course, if you would like to check that out, my course is at Reibookkeeping.thinkific

.com and goodness let’s see if i can spell that out okay that’s R- E-I-B-O-O-K K-E-E P I-N-G dot let’s see think if it is it one f or two f’s i think it’s one let me just just check it yes that would be T-H-I-N-K-I-F-I-C.com great a long URL

Michelle Tack (19:40)
Can you spell that out?

That’s

that’s okay. That’s why we asked to spell it out. Grace, you’ve been you’ve been great. ⁓ really appreciate ⁓ your your content. ⁓ and for those that are listening that are subscribers, if you felt that this was of value, this content, please keep on ⁓ tuning in to other types of content that are provided. For ⁓ people that are not subscribed as yet, please join us to take advantage of content that will help ⁓

operationalize the business even further. Again, Grace, thank you very much and good luck in the future. Thanks for

Grace Wills (20:39)
Thank you for having me.