Real estate agents & brokerages
Bookkeeping for real estate agents and brokerages
Commission income arrives in lumps, months after the work. Books built for a steady paycheck will not survive a real estate year.
An agent's income is irregular by design: nothing for six weeks, then three closings in a fortnight. That pattern makes the monthly profit and loss almost meaningless on its own, and makes a rolling view — quarterly, or trailing twelve months — the one worth reading.
Underneath, the costs are steady and easy to lose track of: brokerage fees, desk fees, MLS and association dues, signage, photography, staging, mileage and marketing. Tracked per transaction, they answer a question most agents cannot: what did that closing actually leave you with.
Where the books go wrong
What we look at first
Gross commission recorded as income
The closing statement figure is not what reached your account. Brokerage splits, referral fees and transaction fees come off first, and each belongs on its own line.Personal and business spending intertwined
A car, a phone and a laptop used for both. Without a clean separation recorded as it happens, year end becomes an exercise in memory.Marketing spend nobody totals
Photography, staging, print, portal advertising and closing gifts, each small, together often an agent's largest controllable cost.Nothing set aside from a big closing
A strong month is not spendable income. Books that show what is committed rather than what is banked make that visible before it is spent.
What we do each month
- Commission income recorded gross, with splits, referral and transaction fees shown separately
- Costs tracked by transaction where they belong to one, and by category where they do not
- Brokerage, MLS, association and licensing dues recorded consistently
- Mileage and vehicle records kept in a form your tax preparer can use
- Business and personal spending separated, with owner draws recorded as draws
- Bank and credit card accounts reconciled monthly, however uneven the month was
Setting up QuickBooks for it
Each transaction is set up as a sub-customer or project in QuickBooks Online, so commission in and costs out meet in one place.
A chart of accounts built around how agents actually spend — brokerage fees, dues and licensing, marketing, photography and staging, client care, vehicle — makes the year-end handoff to your tax preparer much shorter.
Bank feed rules handle the recurring dues and subscriptions automatically; the per-transaction tagging is the part worth doing by hand.
Carey is a QuickBooks Online Advanced ProAdvisor, so a file can be set up, cleaned up or migrated as part of the same engagement — see QuickBooks services.
Reporting
The numbers worth watching
Net commission per closing
What each transaction left after splits, fees and the costs that belonged to it.Cost per lead source
Marketing spend grouped by where the business actually came from.Trailing twelve month income
The only honest way to read an income stream that arrives in lumps.
Questions we are asked
I am a solo agent under a brokerage. Is this overkill?
Not usually. A solo agent has irregular income, meaningful deductible-by-nature costs and no payroll department, which is exactly the situation where clean monthly books save the most trouble. The scope is smaller than a team's, and the engagement is priced to match.
Can you tell me how much to set aside for taxes?
No — that is tax planning, and it belongs with your CPA or tax preparer. What we can do is keep the books current enough that your adviser has accurate numbers to work from at any point in the year, rather than reconstructing them in March.
Start with a conversation
Let's look at your books together
Tell us about your church or business and where your bookkeeping stands. Carey will follow up to arrange a consultation, and you'll receive a written scope before any work begins.