Quick Start

This guide walks you through the essentials so you can start tracking your real estate finances right away. Most investors are up and running within 5 minutes.

Step 1: Create Your Account

Go to app.realbooks.io and sign up with your email. No credit card is required — the Free plan lets you manage one entity and one property so you can explore the platform before committing.

If your team or CPA has already created a workspace, ask them to send you an invite link instead of creating a new account.

Step 2: Create Your First Entity

In RealBooks, an entity is the legal structure that owns your properties. This could be:

• An LLC (the most common setup for rental investors)
• A trust or land trust
• An S-Corp or C-Corp
• Your personal name (if you hold properties individually)

To create one:

1. Go to Settings > Entities
2. Click Add Entity
3. Enter the entity name (e.g., “123 Main Street LLC”) and select the entity type
4. Add the EIN/tax ID if you have it — this is used when generating tax schedules

Why this matters: Every property, expense, and tax report in RealBooks is organized by entity. This keeps your books clean and makes it easy to hand your CPA exactly what they need at tax time.

Tip

If you hold properties across multiple LLCs, create each one as a separate entity. RealBooks will track them independently and let you view consolidated portfolio metrics across all of them.

Step 3: Add Your First Property

With your entity created, add a property to it:

1. Navigate to Assets > Add Asset
2. Enter the property address
3. Fill in the key financials:
   • Purchase price and purchase date
   • Property type (single-family, multifamily, commercial, land, etc.)
   • Current value (or leave blank and update later)
4. Assign the property to the entity you just created

RealBooks will automatically start calculating equity, NOI, and cap rate based on the data you provide. As you add expenses, loan payments, and income, these numbers update in real time.

Tip

Don’t worry about getting every detail perfect right now. You can always edit property information later from the asset detail page.

Step 4: Connect Your Bank Account

Linking your bank account lets RealBooks automatically import transactions and match them to the right property and expense category.

1. Go to Settings > Bank Linking
2. Search for your bank or credit union
3. Log in through the secure connection (powered by a bank-grade encryption provider)
4. Select which accounts to sync

Transactions typically start appearing within a few minutes. RealBooks will auto-categorize most of them, and PennyAI learns from your corrections to improve over time.

What gets imported:

• Checking and savings account transactions
• Credit card charges
• Mortgage and loan payments

What doesn’t get imported:

• Cash transactions (you can add these manually)
• Transactions from before the account was linked (you can upload historical statements)

Note

Bank linking is optional. You can always add expenses manually or upload receipts and let PennyAI process them.

Step 5: Review Your Dashboard

Head back to the main Dashboard to see your portfolio at a glance:

• Total portfolio value across all entities
• Equity position based on property values minus outstanding loans
• Net operating income (NOI) as income and expenses flow in
• Recent transactions waiting for review or categorization

From here, you can drill into any property for detailed financials or jump to the expense manager to review imported transactions.

You’re All Set

That’s the basics. RealBooks is now tracking your property, and if you connected your bank, transactions will start flowing in automatically.

Here’s where to go next depending on what you need:

• Account Setup — Invite team members, add more entities, and configure custom attributes.
• Tracking Expenses — Learn how to categorize expenses and use PennyAI for receipt processing.
• Adding More Properties — A detailed walkthrough for configuring properties with loans, budgets, and custom fields.
• Generating Tax Reports — Pull IRS-ready schedules for your CPA.