Stessa

I have used QuickBooks for years but got tired of the barrage of come-ons and sticky marketing techniques they use on customers. It seemed every time I opened the program, there would be new hoops to jump through if I wanted to do any actual work.

Stessa is designed from the ground up for rental property owners. You enter income and expense items, that's it. All items fall under one of the carefully considered categories they provide. Multiple locations and units are also accounted for. You can add or sell buildings, add or replace tenants, run targeted reports including exporting the year end to your accountant and graphically view your performance which is generated by your data. Even more powerful, you can auto import entries from bank account, credit accounts, whatever. Once you're up and running, all your data is entered for you to edit or delete as needed. Saves a ton of time.

Oh, did I mention it's free??? Don't know what the long range plan is, but this software won't cost you a dime. It makes QB look tired and cumbersome, not to mention annoying, which it really has become over the years.

This is not a property management platform in the sense that you can schedule maintenance and track hours. However, you can capture and import invoices so your records are all in one place.

This is super easy to use and set up. The software walks you through property set up one question at a time. You don’t have to know a lot about accounting or accounting software, but it is evident the software is setting up a structure for you to monitor and track the transactions of your real estate investment(s) and be able to pull financial reports at the end of the year for your accountant. I use it once a month. It takes me less than 5 minutes to enter the transactions and I’m done!

There are no options for assigning HOA fees in the “money going out” category. I lump them under the Management fees section. It would be nice to be able to categorize HOA fees in their own world.