How Much Does Bookkeeping Cost for a Rental Property?

What landlords pay in 2026

Price follows door count and how tangled the money is, not what the portfolio is worth. A single house on a twelve-month lease with one bank account is cheap to keep. Ten doors across three LLCs, with deposits, escrow and a property manager in the middle, is not. These are the published 2026 ranges, before any tax return.

What landlords report paying

Landlords posting real numbers in 2026 land inside those ranges, and show how wide the spread is at the same door count:

• $300 a month for two entities, one bookkeeper keeping both sets of books.
• $450 a month for a five-door portfolio.
• $800 a month for 19 doors, which works out at about $42 a door.
• $50 an hour for 25 units, billed for hours worked instead of a flat monthly fee.
• Roughly one hour a month of bookkeeping for each short-term rental, against about 40 minutes for each long-term rental. A furnished nightly let costs more to keep because the money arrives in pooled payouts net of fees, not as one rent cheque.

What moves you up the range

Five things explain most of the gap between a $250 quote and a $1,200 quote:

• Entity count. Each LLC files its own return and needs its own books, its own bank account and its own balance sheet. Two entities is more than twice the work of one, because transfers between them have to agree on both sides.
• Short-term versus long-term. Airbnb and Vrbo pay net of platform fees, hold occupancy tax, and settle several bookings in one deposit. Every payout has to be split back out.
• Deposits and other people's money. Security deposits are a liability, not income. Where a manager holds rent for an owner, that money is not revenue either.
• Mortgage detail. One payment is principal, interest and escrow. Booking the whole payment as an expense is the single most common error we clean up, and it overstates deductions.
• Backlog. Books that are months behind are priced as cleanup, not as monthly bookkeeping.

The return, the software and the bundles

Bookkeeping and filing are priced separately by most providers. Published 2026 preparation fees run $200 to $500 for a simple Schedule E, $800 to $1,500 for a complex one, $1,000 to $2,500 for a Form 1065 partnership return, and $1,200 to $2,500 for a Form 1120-S.

Landlord software is cheaper but files nothing: Stessa at $12 to $28 a month, REI Hub at $9 to $48, Baselane at $20, and Landlord Studio at $12 to $28. Buildium, aimed at managers, lists $62, $192 and $400 a month. Firms that bundle books and filing publish higher numbers: Bench Core plus Tax at $599 a month, and Ledgre CPA at $850 a month with returns as a separate add-on from $799.

Working with SF Business Solutions

Monthly bookkeeping starts at $250 a month, in your own QuickBooks Online or Xero, with each property reported separately so you can see which door earns. We keep the books, run payroll if you have staff, and prepare and file the tax return from the same records. We close your books between the 5th and 15th of the following month, depending on when your documents arrive, and our team includes a licensed CPA.

Cleanup starts at $250; the final price depends on how far behind the books are and how many entities are involved. We keep the records and prepare the return; we do not rule on whether a property qualifies for a particular tax treatment.