He is an excellent tenant, and I want to keep him long term and happy.

To accomplish this, you need to save a report as an excel file, then tweak it.  

and rent the house by January 1st.Assuming your tenants pay AND leave the house in excellent condition, you may find yourself with a security deposit in your pocket you can bank for future repairs.On a final note, and you may know this but for the benefit of other new investors,  using the judicial system should be a last resort. 

On the single out of state home, we have an excellent PM.  

Excellent product and even better support and educational material

Again, thank you for the excellent information.  

Currently, I use Excel spread sheets SMS and GMail for tracking, and a folder structure in Windows for archiving documents along with DropBox for sharing, and QuickBooks for accounting.Ultimately, I selected Buildium as the best fit, with Rentec as a close 2nd and possible alternative if necessary.  

@Elizabeth Colegrove:"Where we are there have been a ton of short sales and foreclosures because of the circumstances in the area and bank".Excellent point, but the "economic"climate of an area affects both renters and buyers especially if they work in similar industries and have access to the same pool of jobs.

I'm completely novice to Excel/Spreadsheeting, so as step-by-step as you knowledgeable folks can get would be appreciated!

I don't have much equity in it right now anyway.Here is a link to my folder with the excel spread sheet.https://www.dropbox.com/s/nk2s5uxrlq4qnce/spring%20valley%204plex.xlsx