I thought I would write a post about a business venture that I have just helped get off the ground.

The name is Rental Coach – www.rentalcoach.co.nz. It is an on-line course focused on giving landlords the skills and confidence to equip them to tackle the numbers with their rental property. Through the course, landlords can learn to do their own tax returns for their rental property and learn to understand the numbers.

The idea is that this will save the landlord in accounting fees each year – they buy the course in the first year and then save in future years. Even if the landlord wants to retain their current accountant, they should be able to reduce the amount of fees charged by being able to do some of the preparation for themselves.

The course is also a resource for tax related questions, but also landlord related issues such as Tenancy Agreements, Disputes, and other situations like having boarders and flatmates, and what you should do when looking for new tenants. There are many additional resources that landlords can access.

For Example: a common issue with rental properties in that of Repairs and Maintenance – When can I put it as an expense and when is it an improvement? We go through this topic without any jargon and give some good walkthroughs and some flowcharts you can print out and stick on your wall!

On the technical side – the course is hosted at talentlms.com (rentalcoach.talentlms.com). To build the course, we used a program called Articulate Storyline which doesn’t require any programming knowledge to put together a training course. It outputs the learning package as a Flash or HTML5 presentation to upload into the LMS (Learning Management System). I have used variables to keep track of unit completion so on each menu a green tick will appear if a unit has been completed. The course works through any web browser – we have designed it to work on tablets & desktop computers.

If any Geekzone member thinks that this is something for them, PM me and I can send you a discount code. Any technical feedback would be most appreciated!