Stessa as a Property Managment Site

[Marc S.]

Can someone confirm my understanding of using Stessa and what I plan on doing or give some advice.

I plan on using Stessa to manage my 1st property, I know most of you said it's not needed, but it's free and keeps everything simple for me. It is making me sign up for their banking account in order to send my tenant the ability to make payments through their site.

But what I think I am realizing is that I can have my tenant make payment through Zelle which is connected to my Chase Business Account. I then have my Chase Business Account linked to Stessa so it will import the payments and still run all the features that I like (Tracking Rental Income, P/L statements, Tax form simple print outs) because it will sync with my Chase Business account.

Would love some advice from previous owners and users of Stessa.

[Artur B.]

Stessa's accounting is great and their interface is user friendly, including their app! I found it to be very helpful in tracking the expenses but being able to upload just 5 receipts per month on the free tier was an issue so had to upgrade to paid. I also like being able to store documents with them, that's very useful. Their service, just like any other, is not without drawbacks. 

(1) I'm not a big fan of their rent collection b/c they make you deposit it into their account and I'm not overly comfortable with an unregulated entity having any say over my money. 
They do not have a banking license, just like a bunch of other fintechs they contract a bank to hold money. Then, they have low ACH limits, you can ask them to increase them though. I like Baselane's rent collection much better. It's fast, free, works flawlessly and they deposit into any bank. Baselane's customer service is better but their accounting platform is still being built out and pretty basic at this point, imo. I wouldn't use Zelle b/c you don't want to accept partial payments, which delay filing for eviction in case of a non-payment by tenant (at least in my state).

(2) Stessa's "bank" transaction interface is cumbersome b/c they try to leverage their real estate income/revenue interface for it.

(3) Stessa's customer service leaves a lot of be desired. If you have any question, it may take days to get a message back and sometimes at all. There is no phone to call them.

(4) They use Yodlee for connecting to external banks and mortgage servicers. That aggregator is not as reliable as Plaid so transaction importing is not very smooth and often involves having to reinput password, etc.

Overall, for a small investor like me, I think Stessa is a good choice.