Not Any Kind Of Accountant Can Be Successful At Real Estate Accounting

by Joseph Marie General Accounting is accounting is accounting, right? Not exactly. If someone actually uses this phrase while talking to you about accounting practices and accountants, you would know that this is not the source for the most solid advice when it comes to running the business. Accounting as a general field doesn’t really exist beyond the basics of taxation and payroll. As soon as a business or organization is above the start-up or initial level, the accounting that needs to be done is beyond “simple” accounting; it becomes an art of its own. This is why real estate accounting, law firm accounting, international trade accounting, and tax accounting are hardly one and the same field - someone who knows how to do taxes doesn’t necessarily have many transferrable skills to do real estate accounting to any degree of success. This particular area, real estate, has many pitfalls and intricacies that cannot be ignored, and doing the day to day and long term accounting and bookkeeping for a real estate agent or company is no easy feat.  To be successful, you need someone with more than just a general accounting practice. You need a real professional.

Who can do the job?

While doing your research into potential options, be sure to find the accountant that has done real estate accounting in particular. Any references or remarks to the tune of being able to easily grasp any industry’s peculiarities in short order must be taken with many grains of salt. Just think of it this way - would you want your business or organization to be the trial test on which the accountant of your choice practices his or her skills? The stakes are too high in real estate accounting for any careless approaches. Serious errors of judgement, inconsistencies, and missed deadlines can be not simply detrimental, but catastrophic. An accounting company that has done real estate accounting in the past, however, will have the knowledge and the experience necessary to avoid the underwater rocks. After all, they have done it many times before.

The proof is in the details

The real estate accounting service provider of your choice should have many features standing out for them among the competition. Not only should they have many years of experience with the field, nut they should also have connections and perfect rapport with builders, developers, governments, and so on and so forth, so as to be able to give you up to date information about any situation that arises “from the horse’s mouth”, so to speak. The company you research would have a large but closely knit group of professionals working for them. These would include not only real estate accounting specialists, but also those for neighboring areas. This way, you will be able to focus on what you love to do instead of constantly having to babysit the bookkeeper. When doing your research, see if you can find the names of other clients the company has had over the years. If a company boasts to have many happy clients, they should be able to provide testimonials as well as some more detailed information on what their team was able to do for the particular client. The bottom line: do your research. It will pay off.

Miller Kaplan is a leading certified public accounting firm in the US and specializes in real estate accounting services along with business management, tax planning, 401k audit, trademark enforcement, licensing and royalty auditing services for high net worth individuals and industries. To know more on why you need real estate accounting, visit Biggerpockets.com.

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Created on Dec 31st 1969 18:00. Viewed 0 times.

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