software

[John K.]

I see other posts out there about software for rental properties. I can't seem to find any good solution that is designed more for a small portfolio rental property owner, and not for a property management company.

Features I think are necessary/not necessary:
-do not care about managing owners, designed for the owners who manage their own property
-tracks ROI per property - so you can easily see how each property is performing, not with thousands of metrics, but just shows the basic ones.
-tracks tenants, shows which tenants are behind on rent, lease management, etc.
-upload/attach documents such as insurance on properties, leases, repairs, etc.
-have a mobile application that is actually simple and easy to use, not overwhelming.

Is there anything out there like this? I have looked at countless property management software services, and I can't seem to find anything that is actually easy to use and just simple. I don't think many of us care about tons of wiz-bang features, we just need something to get the job done.

[Amy E.]

I am in your same boat.  The problem I've found is that most of the adequate and cheap accounting software does not keep particularly good track of my tenants.  And the cheap property management software is not to be used for accounting.  My ideal software would auto-download my banking transactions and be easy setup just like Quicken, keep track of them like Quickbooks, and have all the property management stuff of Buildium.   Actually, I do not know of any such software that exists, even expensive stuff.  Here's what I've tried so far:

1. Quicken Rental Property Manager - in general this is a good personal finance software that can do some things that make it almost like a true account software. It is easy to use, even though I'm not an accountant. If you get creative with the Reports feature, it can spit out total expenses vs. income, so you can calculate your ROI (not aware that it will actually spit out ROI for you). You can add attachments to your transactions (I don't use this feature, so I'm not sure how useful it is). The mobile app is fine if you're just looking up account balances and such and is pretty simple. For a personal business or very small business, the accounting features are probably pretty good. The rent/tenant features are mediocre at best. If you have tenants that always pay on time, you're fine. You can set up a property, loans associated with, tenants associated with it, etc. and track stuff pretty well. I even have a Section 8 renter, so I get rent from two different folks and it still track it just fine. The problem comes when my renters pay late. There is really no screen that shows you who is late, by how much, and what the TOTAL they owe you is. Or at least, not that I have found despite multiple posts on the Quicken message boards. Also, I get no website or tenant portal with this. If you don't already use Quicken it is probably cost prohibitive for you. I use Quicken for my personal stuff, and its only a $60 upgrade to get RPM.

2. Wave Accounting - as near as I can tell this is a true accounting software package similar to Quick Books but it is FREE. This is much more powerful accounting software than quicken and can track things like depreciation (which Quicken prefers to let TurboTax calculate for you, unless you get creative). I can account for each property and the rent owed much better. But it does not have a spot to keep track of my tenants, their leases, etc. Again you can get creative and set up your renter as if they're a "vendor" and track some things. You can upload receipts, so you could potentially upload leases, but there is not a good place to store them. Not sure about ROI, since I've just started with the software but it should be at least as good as Quicken. It also has some benefits like allowing folks to pay you through their website and payroll services. It does have an app but I have not used it yet.

3. Acurent - This is mostly a tenant portal website/property management website. It will create maintenance requests and such, too. You get a website, and can keep track of leases expirations, etc. There is an accounting tab that will let you track stuff, but you are stuck manually entering it since there is no bank connection. I am contemplating starting to use this feature to figure out if it will track payments and late fees easily enough for me. I also believe it does the ROI stuff you're looking for, but again, you're stuck entering in all your info manually. Plus it has an application feature so folks can apply over the website. I pay about $5.60/month for three properties. So the cost is great.

4. Williampaid.com - No management or anything, just a way for tenants to pay you electronically.  I've used it, it works fine, but to me its not really any different than if I let them direct deposit into my account.  It's free and without the "holding" hassle of paypal.

5. Buildium - excellent at property management, but it is not an accounting software.  At a minimum you'd need this plus Quicken or Wave.  Since its at least $20/month or so, I could not justify the cost for three properties.  To me, its cost prohibitive.

6. Propetyware - another excellent property management software, but once again is lacking on the business accounting side.  Also not free, and is cost prohibitive for owning only a few properties.

Here's what I"m doing.  I'm using Quicken Rental Property Manager for the bookkeeping and Acurent for the website (may switch this, since the tenants don't use the maintenance request feature).  I am probably about to add either an excel spreadsheet or Acurent accounting to this to track my crappy tenant who likes to pay rent.  The others pay on time, so I'm not worried about them.  I am working on learning Wave, but because I have little accounting background I'm finding that it has a large learning curve for me.  I think ultimately I will probably end up switching from Quicken to Wave, but I am not sure yet.

What I'd recommend for you if you're starting from scratch and don't already use accounting software: Use Wave for your accounting since its free.  Pay the extra $10/month for a few months to get help setting everything up (you can always cancel once you're setup), and check out Small Business Accounting from the Library.  That'll setup your accounting side.  Then, use Acurent for your website/tenant portal/application stuff.  The only thing I'm not sure of is your need for an App, depending on what you want an App for, this may not work.  If you want it to check on bank accounts and transactions, Wave has that.