Texas franchise tax help
Keep the entity-level margin-tax figures clean across your real estate LLCs.
Franchise tax helpTexas · Real Estate Accounting
Texas real estate accounting that keeps every entity straight.
Texas landlords, investors, brokers and property managers run on multiple entities, tenant deposits, owners’ money and a property-tax bill on every parcel. We keep per-property and per-entity books, carry security deposits as liabilities, run rent through clearing accounts, produce owner statements that tie to the bank, and track Texas property tax, 1031 documentation and agent commissions, by your TechBrot team, with every close reviewed by a Certified QuickBooks ProAdvisor. We keep the records; we never hold your client or escrow funds.
If your file needs our paid diagnostic first, its fee is credited in full against the cleanup. Either way, you get a fixed fee in writing before any work starts.
State rule
Texas rule: a landlord must keep accurate records of all security deposits and refund each within 30 days after the tenant surrenders the premises, itemizing any deductions in writing; each deposit is a QuickBooks liability by tenant and property. Source: Texas Property Code §92.106 and §92.103.
§ The short version
Texas real estate accounting from TechBrot keeps per-property and per-entity books, carries each security deposit as a liability, and produces owner statements that tie to the bank. Property Code §92.103 gives a landlord 30 days after the tenant surrenders the premises to refund a deposit; we keep the records and never hold client funds.
They took something that felt overwhelming to me as a first-year business owner and made it simple.
What stood out the most was TechBrot Inc’s attention to detail.
Intuit QuickBooks Certification Level 2 and QuickBooks Workforce Certification,
§ 01 · Why Texas real estate books break
Three places Texas real estate businesses lose the numbers.
Entities, trust records, and property tax are where it goes wrong. Knowing which one you’re in tells us where to start.
01Entities
Commingled, tangled entities
Investors and brokers accumulate LLCs and properties fast — and without clean per-entity ledgers, the books commingle and no single entity’s numbers can be trusted or filed cleanly.02Trust records
Trust-account records that don’t reconcile
Broker and property-management trust accounting under TREC requires accurate, reconciled records and owner statements — sloppy records are a compliance risk, even though the funds stay in your hands, not ours.03Property tax
Property tax across a portfolio
Texas levies property tax only locally, parcel by parcel — untracked and unaccrued across a portfolio, it distorts cash planning and the picture of which properties actually perform.§ 02 · What TechBrot handles
What we keep for Texas landlords and managers.
Every engagement is scoped to your entities and portfolio, delivered in your own QuickBooks file by your TechBrot team.
01
Per-entity ledgers
Separate, clean books for each LLC, property, or fund, with inter-company transactions tracked so each entity stands on its own.
QuickBooks accountant02
Trust-record keeping
Trust-account records and owner statements kept accurate and reconciled to support your TREC obligations — we keep records, never hold the funds.
Bookkeeping services03
Property-tax tracking
Texas property tax tracked and accrued per property across the portfolio so cash planning and filing aren’t a surprise.
Franchise & property tax04
1031 documentation
Like-kind exchange documentation and basis tracked cleanly so your CPA and qualified intermediary have what they need.
Monthly bookkeeping05
Agent commissions
Commission income and splits tracked accurately for brokerages — clean for both the agents and the broker’s books.
Bookkeeping services06
Portfolio reporting
Reporting that shows which properties and entities actually perform — CPA-ready and decision-ready.
Financial statements07
Security deposits under chapter 92
Each deposit carried as a liability by tenant and property, tied monthly to the deposit bank account and your rent roll; at move-out, deductions post against the itemized list and the refund clears within the 30 days §92.103 allows.
Rental property bookkeeping08
Rent clearing accounts
Rent collected through AppFolio, Buildium, DoorLoop or a payment processor posts to a clearing account by property and is matched to the bank deposit net of fees, so short deposits surface within days and nothing is counted twice.
Monthly bookkeeping09
Property-level P&L & owner statements
Income and expense by property each month, and for managers a ledger per owner with fees, reserves and distributions, rolled into an owner statement that agrees to the bank.
Property management bookkeeping§ 03 · Tools we work alongside
Connected to how you transact.
- AppFolio, Buildium, and property-management platforms
- QuickBooks Online or hosted Desktop — your file
- DoorLoop and rent-collection tools
- Gusto, ADP, and payroll providers
- Bill.com for owner and vendor disbursements
- Brokerage commission and transaction systems
We reconcile alongside the property-management and transaction systems you already run — the books read from how you transact. We never take custody of trust or escrow funds.
§ 04 · How engagements work
From tangled entities to clean books.
Every Texas real estate engagement follows the same rhythm — books accurate first, portfolio visibility second, advisory third.
- Step 1
Free entity & records review
A QuickBooks ProAdvisor reviews your entity structure, trust records, and property-tax tracking — at no cost. - Step 2
Written fixed-fee scope
A written scope and fixed fee within 3 business days — setup, cleanup, or monthly. - Step 3
Separate & reconcile
Per-entity and per-property ledgers separated, security deposits set up as liabilities by tenant, rent clearing accounts opened, trust records reconciled, property tax and commissions tracked. - Step 4
Monthly portfolio close
A monthly close per entity and a portfolio view, CPA-ready — with trust records reconciled.
§ 05 · Beyond the books
Clean entity books are the start. Portfolio returns are the point.
When entities are clean and trust records reconcile, the decisions get real: which properties carry the portfolio, which entity to acquire in, when a 1031 makes sense, where property tax is eating the return — answered from numbers that tie.
That’s where fractional-CFO advisory picks up, on cleaned-up books, in coordination with your CPA and attorney.
Checked against Texas Property Code chapter 92.
§ 07 · Around this page
Around Texas.
Texas QuickBooks ProAdvisor & bookkeeping
The state page: services, industries, cities and the Texas tax terms in one place.Real Estate accounting, nationally
The national engagement this page is the Texas version of — same scope, same written fixed fee.Not sure where your file stands? Start with the free QuickBooks file review · how Texas compares: state-by-state tax quirks.
§ 08 · FAQ
Texas real estate accounting questions.
Do you hold or disburse my trust or escrow funds?
No — this is a firm boundary. The trust-account records and owner statements are kept accurate and reconciled so they support your TREC trust-accounting obligations, but we never take custody of, hold, or disburse client or escrow funds. Those funds stay in your trust accounts, under your control and your bank. We keep the books behind them clean; the custody and the compliance are yours.
How do you keep multiple entities straight?
We maintain separate, clean ledgers for each entity — each LLC, property, or fund — and track inter-company transactions so nothing commingles. That way each entity’s books stand on their own and your CPA can file each one correctly, and you get both per-entity and portfolio-level visibility.
How does Texas property tax factor into my books?
Texas has no state income tax and no state property tax; local taxing units levy property tax on each parcel, and the appraisal district sets the value it is figured on. We track and accrue it per property across your portfolio so cash planning is accurate and nothing is a year-end surprise. The valuation, any protest, and the filing stay with your CPA or a property-tax consultant; we keep the records straight.
Can you handle 1031 exchanges and basis tracking?
We keep the documentation and basis tracking clean so your CPA and qualified intermediary have accurate records for a like-kind exchange. We don’t act as the qualified intermediary or give tax or legal advice on the exchange — that’s your CPA, attorney, and QI; we make sure the books behind it are right.
Do you work in my own QuickBooks file?
Yes — your file, your data, in QuickBooks Online or hosted Desktop, with a senior bookkeeper assigned to your file, and every close reviewed by a Certified QuickBooks ProAdvisor before it reaches you, connected to your property-management and transaction systems rather than proprietary software.
How do you handle tenant security deposits in Texas?
As liabilities, never as rent income. Texas Property Code chapter 92 defines a security deposit as any advance of money, other than a rental application deposit or advance rent, intended mainly to secure a residential lease (§92.102). The landlord must keep accurate records of all security deposits (§92.106) and refund the deposit on or before the 30th day after the tenant surrenders the premises (§92.103), with a written description and itemized list of all deductions for anything kept (§92.104). A landlord who keeps a deposit in bad faith owes $100, three times the amount wrongfully withheld, and the tenant’s attorney’s fees (§92.109). In the books, each deposit sits in a liability account by tenant and property, reconciled every month to the bank account that holds it and to your rent roll, and each move-out posts its deductions against the itemized list and clears the refund inside the 30 days. Whether a deduction is allowed is a legal question for you and your attorney; we keep the record that shows what was done and when.
Do you prepare owner statements for Texas property managers?
Yes. For a management company collecting rent and holding deposits for owners, we record each owner’s rents, management fees, repairs, reserves and distributions as they happen, run collected rent through a clearing account matched to the bank, and produce a monthly owner statement that agrees to the management company’s bank account and to each property’s P&L. The funds stay in your accounts, under your control; we never take custody of them.
Texas real estate businesses start here