The accountant behind the desk
I'm Casey. I work in accounting for a property management company — we manage properties on behalf of outside owners, which means every day runs through someone else's rent rolls, someone else's owner statements, and a stack of software that has to actually talk to each other or the whole month grinds to a halt.
CEO and Janitor started as a running list of notes-to-self — which accounting and property management software actually held up across a portfolio we don't own, which tools earned their place after the free trial, which automations quietly saved real hours on owner reporting and rent collection. At some point I realized other people doing the books for managed properties might find the notes useful too, so I turned them into a site.
Why "CEO and Janitor"
On any given day I might be reconciling trust accounts and sending owner statements in the morning, then troubleshooting why a tenant's payment didn't sync from the property management system to the general ledger in the afternoon. That's the job on the accounting side of property management. Nobody hands you a chart of accounts that actually fits a multi-owner portfolio, or software that talks cleanly to the other software — you build the whole operation yourself, piece by piece, usually after something breaks or doesn't reconcile.
I started keeping notes on what actually worked: which property management and accounting software actually handled trust accounting and owner statements without a fight, which desk held up after a year of daily use, which "automate this" advice was real and which was a demo that never survived contact with an actual multi-property portfolio. This site is that notebook, cleaned up and shared.
I'm not trying to convince you to buy more stuff. I'm trying to save you the trial-and-error — and if a link here earns a small commission when you do decide to buy something, that's how the site stays free and ad-free. More on that below.
What I write about
Three categories, all tested before they're recommended.
Home Office Gear
Desks, monitors, chairs, and the small accessories nobody mentions — reviewed after months of actual daily use between spreadsheets and month-end closes, not a week-long loaner.
Accounting & PM Software
The accounting and property management software I rely on every day at work, why it earns its place in the stack, and the personal tools I've paid for myself that quietly make the job easier.
Systems & Automation
The workflows that quietly run in the background — rent collection, owner statements, lease paperwork — so I can spend my time on the work that actually matters.
How I pick what to recommend
I buy or subscribe to almost everything I write about with my own money, and I use it for at least a few weeks before forming an opinion. If something doesn't hold up, I say so — a "trade-off" section isn't a formality here, it's the point.
Some links on this site are affiliate links (mostly Amazon, and a handful of software referral programs). If you click one and make a purchase, I may earn a small commission at no extra cost to you. It doesn't change what I recommend — it's just how the site covers its own bills without ads or a paywall.