Bookkeeper for Real Estate Transaction Coordinators

How do transaction coordinator fees come in?

Each deal you coordinate brings in a flat fee, usually between $350 and $450, and you get paid when the client pays you, the title company pays, or the brokerage pays at close. That timing can be at contract, at closing, or anything in between.

Because the fee is flat, the only thing that varies is when you actually see the money. So your bank deposits are not locked to the month you did the work, and that's why just looking at your bank account is not enough to run the business.

Why do you need to track each transaction separately?

If you add every deal's fee as it lands, you lose the ability to tell which client has not paid you and which kind of deal is profitable. You also lose track of how long cash has been out on the field.

For each deal, record the fee amount, the client's name, the property address, the contract date, and the date you actually received the fee. That gives you a per-deal record you can look at later.

How do you handle payments from different sources?

You will get paid by different people using different methods. Some deals you factor a check from a title company, some from the brokerage, and others you wait on Cash App. When money arrives with no note, you have to know which deal it belongs to.

The cleanest way is to issue an invoice for each deal and then assign the deposit to that invoice. That also gives you a list of open invoices you can actually count on.

What are the real expenses?

The month-to-month overhead is small: errors and omissions insurance, a software subscription, and in some states a license fee, so each should have its own line in your expenses.

Set up a separate category for those three, because they are the things that keep the calls coming in. They are also the ones owners miss and then pay for out of pocket, and that can lead to a surprise at tax time.

Which reports should you look at each month?

Three reports give you the view: a per-deal profit report, a list of unpaid invoices, and a cash flow look at the next 60 days. A plain profit and loss won't show you which type of deal actually pays you well, because it bundles everything together.

The per-deal profit report, which you can get in your bookkeeping setup, shows you one number per deal after you subtract any direct cost. That tells you if your fee pricing is right, and it lets you see if a two-sided deal is two times as good.

What bookkeeping mistakes do TCs actually make?

The most common is mixing personal and business money, and that leads to a mess. The second is not recognizing that a fee is still owed until it is received, so you think your income is smaller than it actually is.

A third is waiting until tax time to catch up. Because income can be very hot then cold, you can set aside just the amount you will owe, so it's worth doing for a quick 10 minutes a week.