Income and Expense Tracking for Real Estate and Personal Budgeting

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Income and Expense Tracking for Real Estate and Personal Budgeting

Alexandra Reeves
Member since 2024 · 12 posts · 5 votes

Hello all, I currently use Stessa both for banking and expense tracking with my 2 rental properties, but we recently had a very bad experience with their customer service, so I am looking to switch.  Before I jump all into Relay or Baselane, the two options I am considering, does anyone use this type of software for their personal household budgeting also?  I'd like to incorporate that into 1 platform as my spouse and I have goals to save a certain amount of our W2 income this year for an additional downpayment.  I'm curious if anyone has found a good solution for this.  

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Josh St LaurentBusiness Member
Financial Advisor · Stateline, NV · Member since 2023 · 131 posts · 122 votes
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Monarch money is a good expense tracking software. Relay is the bank we use for business banking and links into monarch. 

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  • Josh St LaurentBusiness Member
    Financial Advisor · Stateline, NV · Member since 2023 · 131 posts · 122 votes
    1y

    Monarch money is a good expense tracking software. Relay is the bank we use for business banking and links into monarch. 

    [email protected]415-915-5948
    Wealth In Yourself57 Reviews
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  • Jose Remor
    Rental Property Investor · Greenville, SC · Member since 2024 · 15 posts · 8 votes
    1y
    I use You need a budget - YNAB. It does a great job. Just need to look for expenses nota realized in tour bank account from time to time.
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  • Mike Levene
    Member since 2023 · 30 posts · 25 votes
    1y

    Relay is a solid option for personal or general bookkeeping, but doesn't help much when it comes to rental properties. For your rentals, I'd encourage you to strive to separate your personal finances from your business (rental) finances. Not only will this help build financial accountability and make tax season much simpler, but you should treat your rentals like what they are...a business.

    When it comes to Baselane vs. Stessa, Baselane seems to offer a lot more functionality without the monthly subscription. It has everything you'd expect from a modern day tool including automated rent collection and late fees, tenants screening, bookkeeping, reporting, and tax prep. On top of that, they have top tier banking features specifically for landlords. I love being able to create new virtual accounts with a single click to separate security deposits for each of my tenants. 

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  • Bonnie LowPro Member
    Lender · Asheville, NC · Member since 2016 · 1k+ posts · 1k+ votes
    1y

    I've been using Baselane for my banking and bookkeeping for my rental portfolio for more than a year now. It was easy to set up and easy to use. I have LTRs, MTRs and one STR and it's great for managing all of these property types. I'm not aware of anyone using it for personal financing but that's not to say you can't. It's really been a time saver for me.

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  • Bill B.
    Investor · Las Vegas, NV · Member since 2013 · 8k+ posts · 10k+ votes
    1y

    Until you have more than 20 rentals Quicken (quickbooks little brother.) is cheap, easy, and overkill. It will auto download your bank and credit card transactions. You can get reports based on date range, property, category, account, personal/business, or any combination.  

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  • Denise SuppleeBusiness Member
    Realtor · Willow Grove, PA · Member since 2017 · 1k+ posts · 661 votes
    1y

    I have used Quickbooks for many, many years. And then was introduced to XERO, which is way cheaper but has many of the same features. Great for businesses and rentals. It also has the same feature as Quickbooks where it connects to your accounts and downloads. So far I am really loving it!

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  • Leena Trivedi
    Las Vegas Nevada, United States · Member since 2023 · 3 posts · 2 votes
    1y

    Relay is good for general bookkeeping / household budgeting but Baselane is great for rental properties. They serve different purposes. You could use Baselane for personal as well, but a lot of the categories are rental/landlord specific so you might have a hard time categorizing your personal expenses if you want to them to be very specific. You need to decide which is of MOST importance to you - personal or rental property expense tracking. If it's the latter, I'd go with Baselane.

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  • Alexis Sadler
    Accountant · San Pedro, CA · Member since 2025 · 11 posts · 6 votes
    1y

    We use Relay for our business bank & recommend it to all of our clients, however they don't have personal banking. They follow the profit first model where you can set up automatic transfers based on income to divvy it out to your various checking accounts, etc. and have budgeting limits you can set up on their physical & virtual cards which is great. However, it's not built to be used to track expenses or create budgets, if that's what you're looking for. 

    I have a rental & use QuickBooks Online to track my income/expenses & prepare my schedule C + that's what I recommend to all of our clients. As mentioned above, QuickBooks, like Xero, can sync up to Relay & bring in your transactions so that then you can categorize them. There's also a version of QuickBooks where you could use class codes to track your personal & business expenses together in one file, but still review them individually-- just needs to be setup & managed from the get go to be effective!

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  • Max Emory
    Accountant · 100% Remote · Member since 2019 · 497 posts · 216 votes
    1y

    @Alexandra Reeves, I understand the appeal of Relay and Baselane since they're banking solutions that provide cash flow reports.

    I like QuickBooks Online for both business and personal (separately).

    We use QuickBooks Online exclusively for all of our REI Clients. We've found it has superior reporting features, integration features, and is overall more efficient to work within than other REI-specific software.

    The downside is QBO is not set up for REI, so you'll need to do that or work with an expert to ensure it is set up for your business appropriately. That's the key component that is usually missing when I hear other entrepreneurs/investors say they don't like QBO.

    If you want to discuss any of this further, I'm happy to answer questions and help walk you through it.

    Best of luck!

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