Branch and Ledger works with real estate agent teams, brokerages, and investors where commission splits, multi-entity structures, and the line between repairs and improvements shape every P&L. Two audiences, two different sets of books, one common thread: the QuickBooks default template does not cover it.
Agent teams and brokerages call us for one set of reasons. Real estate investors call us for another. Both live in a place where standard bookkeeping setups fall apart quickly, and both need someone who understands the mechanics before day one.
Splits happen in a back-office system, or a spreadsheet, or someone's head. Reconciling what actually paid out to team members against what the books say is a monthly manual exercise. Sometimes it is skipped.
Some team members are agents on 1099. Others are employees on W-2. The books do not clearly separate them, and payroll taxes, benefits, and 1099s all land in the same pile at year-end.
Listings, agent branding, team branding, brokerage overhead — all in one bucket. No one can tell what a listing actually costs or which agent's spend is producing.
Agent mileage, showings, mixed personal-and-business vehicle use — handled after the fact, if at all. The tax exposure is not clear until March.
Properties held in separate entities, but the books are consolidated (or worse, are not). Intercompany transfers are not tracked. Distributions and capital contributions get miscategorized. Basis is a mystery.
Roof replacement, HVAC, flooring, minor fixes — all thrown into "Repairs and Maintenance." The tax exposure is real, and it compounds year over year.
Whether you are running an agent team or a rental portfolio, the industry-specific mechanics are the same handful of things. Handled properly, they turn the file into something that answers real questions about the business.
A cleanup rebuilds the structure so the file supports real decisions about the business. Ongoing bookkeeping is what keeps that structure intact month after month.
Splits done in a spreadsheet. Entities commingled. Repairs and improvements mixed. No basis tracking. A CPA who wants documentation the file cannot produce.
Scoped, fixed-fee cleanup. Entities cleanly separated (or consolidated on purpose, not by accident). Splits reconciled. Basis reconstructed. Categorization corrected. Written summary of every material change.
Which agents are producing. Which properties are performing. What a listing costs. What basis is on a property held five years. Numbers you can actually use.
Monthly bookkeeping. Splits reconciled. New properties added properly. Depreciation schedules coordinated. Year-end packets ready without a scramble.
Cleanup pricing depends on how deep the structural problems actually go. Before we quote cleanup, we run a paid diagnostic — a scoped, fixed-fee review of the current state of the books and the gap between where they are and where they need to be. The diagnostic produces a written finding: what is broken, what a rebuild would cost, and whether we are the right shop for the work.
Bring your questions. We will tell you honestly what your books look like, what a diagnostic would take, and whether we are the right fit. If we are not, we will point you toward someone who is.
Book a discovery call