Rental Property Investor · Hartford, CT · Member since 2017 · 168 posts · 163 votes
I’m at the stage where I need to get my finances more organized. Previously I had one property and one bank account but now I have three- one just finished a rehab and the third the rehab is underway.
Two use a PM but the third is rent by the room an a PM won’t take it.
So- now I need to organize my expenses and have looked at avail, rentredi, apartments.com, Rentastic and baselane. Does anyone have any experience with any of these platforms? It seems some do more bookkeeping/banking, and some are better for leases etc. Rentredi seems to do it all but the reviews for it say there are a lot of bugs and a lot of hidden fees.
Would appreciate honest feedback for the best way to get and stay organized!
Hi, @Heidi Kenefick. I'm a big fan of Avail.co. I've been using them for a few years now. From one platform, I can market my units, manage leases, collect payments, and manage property maintenance. It's great for managing at the property/unit level, but unfortunately, falls short on managing finances big picture once you add more property. For a while now, I had layered in Stessa.com for finances: expense management, tax prep, reporting, etc. The one gap I've found from using these two platforms is banking accounts--managing security deposits, transactions/expenses per units, etc.
In searching for a new solution, I came across baselane.com and it seems to solve for most of the functionalities offered by Stessa+Avail.co. Plus the banking feature which I think is SUPER helpful. Going to give it a try myself.
Happy to chat about Baselane! One quick point, you can create sub-virtual accounts for each unit / room by property which I imagine would be helpful if you're renting by the room for your third property.
Happy to chat about Baselane! One quick point, you can create sub-virtual accounts for each unit / room by property which I imagine would be helpful if you're renting by the room for your third property.
Hi - would love info about baselane! My husband is getting on me about knowing my monthly cashflow number and my excel spreedsheet is too cumbersome. I was googling programs and came across baselane and it sounds like exactly what i need. Somewhere easy to put my rent and expenses and spit out some numbers for me. I have a lot of properties.
I’m just get started and on my have 3 properties and am trying to figure out the best way to stay organized! How many do you have? Spreadsheet sounds like my own personal hell. I’m terrible with excel. 😂
I’m just get started and on my have 3 properties and am trying to figure out the best way to stay organized! How many do you have? Spreadsheet sounds like my own personal hell. I’m terrible with excel. 😂
Hey Heidi~! I've always done spreadsheets and its wayyyyy too cumbersome. I have a lot of bank accounts and credit cards and it seems impossible to keep track of everything. I'm at 30 properties, 48 doors total. More than half are under property management, the rest I do on my own. I really scaled up my number of doors the last couple of years and didn't bring any new processes to the table and it feels like a mess. I just started last night with baselane to input one property and it seems very user friendly and exactly what I need. Excited to jump in more and see if it will fit my needs.
I could not imagine managing 48 doors! That seems like a bit of a nightmare. I’m struggling with 3, in part because they are being rehabbed out of state and just keeping all the expenses organized is a lot of work.
Let me know how you like baselane. I think I’m going to try it.
What software do you use for leases? I’ve toyed around with avail and rentredi and apartments.com but haven’t settled on one yet.
Hi, @Heidi Kenefick. I'm a big fan of Avail.co. I've been using them for a few years now. From one platform, I can market my units, manage leases, collect payments, and manage property maintenance. It's great for managing at the property/unit level, but unfortunately, falls short on managing finances big picture once you add more property. For a while now, I had layered in Stessa.com for finances: expense management, tax prep, reporting, etc. The one gap I've found from using these two platforms is banking accounts--managing security deposits, transactions/expenses per units, etc.
In searching for a new solution, I came across baselane.com and it seems to solve for most of the functionalities offered by Stessa+Avail.co. Plus the banking feature which I think is SUPER helpful. Going to give it a try myself.
@Heidi Kenefick . I have been using Rentalhero. I just saw Rentastic last night and just took a quick look and it seems to me it's very similar to Rentalhero (looks like Rentastice is more user friendly thank Rentalhero). Both are for tracking income/expense and generate reports (P&L, cash flow, but not balance sheet) only, not for listing, screening, collecting rent. Let us know what you end up with using.
Someone on BO actually shared their spread sheet with me and it has been super helpful. I’m not an excel guru and could never have built a spreadsheet. The problem I was having with Stessa and Rentastic is that it only tracks what’s in the bank account not what I get from the PM, so the numbers are off and I have to go in and correct it all. Was a lot of double accounting which was cumbersome.
Someone on BO actually shared their spread sheet with me and it has been super helpful. I’m not an excel guru and could never have built a spreadsheet. The problem I was having with Stessa and Rentastic is that it only tracks what’s in the bank account not what I get from the PM, so the numbers are off and I have to go in and correct it all. Was a lot of double accounting which was cumbersome.
So how has the spreadsheet been working for you? I was about to start with Rentastic but i have the same issue with property management. I have to go back in and clean things up because the property management company numbers are different from what's in my account.
It’s actually working really well and has been very helpful. Wish I had the skills to build a spread sheet but computers aren’t my strength. I’m much better with pen and paper 😂
I have been on Baselane for a couple months now. Let me just lead with EXCELLENT customer service. Good transaction accounting. I like that you can setup different virtual accounts for security deposit let's say, or to separately ledger cash collected through a rent to own contract. Although Baselane is hard at work to deliver them, a few key features are still lacking, among them outbound wires from your account. May not sound like a big deal but i tried to create the account under my biz and purchase a sub-to through the account, and lack of outbound wire was a killer for me. Rental collection seems easy. Tenant portal. Can keep track of different tenants. But doesn't have any property advertising, prospective tenant applications/screening, or any of that side of the business. All in all, so far, I'd give them a 4 out of 5 for the features they DO support. Hope this helps somebody else.
here is an article I found helpful when deciding which direction to turn. I am unaffiliated in anyway with Baselane. Blue Ridge Bank, or thecollegeinvestor.com.
I started using RentRedi this year and found it super helpful after transitioning from spreadsheets and Google drive docs and using docusign for leasing re-ups. There have been a few things that I feel like they could clean up, but it seems like they work hard at updating it to provide a lot of value.
I signed up for Baselane today after switching from Mercury for my business account (LLC). I am a little concerned that they are newer, and also the wire thing someone mentioned. But from what I have seen it has a lot of useful accounting tools that should make my life significantly easier, and ultimately that's what my intent is. If you shoot me a message in a couple months I don't mind posting an update.
I currently own 5 properties, but am looking to pick up another 2-3 this year, so scalability is important for me.
Yes I signed up for baselane and it seems to be working ok. It does have a lot of features and navigating around the website is a bit cumbersome because things are not where I expect them to be. Even getting to the accounts is a lot of clicks and one day I couldn’t find the accounts at all. So that’s a bit annoying. But it does categorize everything which is helpful. I’m not sure if it has a pay bill feature, or checks. I need to explore that.
I also started using avail, which I like. However when it publishes to websites for marketing it isn’t obvious that I’m renting rooms not an entire house so I get a lot of dead leads. And one of my tenants can’t figure it out the pay rent feature. 😂
I have been on Baselane for a couple months now. Let me just lead with EXCELLENT customer service. Good transaction accounting. I like that you can setup different virtual accounts for security deposit let's say, or to separately ledger cash collected through a rent to own contract. Although Baselane is hard at work to deliver them, a few key features are still lacking, among them outbound wires from your account. May not sound like a big deal but i tried to create the account under my biz and purchase a sub-to through the account, and lack of outbound wire was a killer for me. Rental collection seems easy. Tenant portal. Can keep track of different tenants. But doesn't have any property advertising, prospective tenant applications/screening, or any of that side of the business. All in all, so far, I'd give them a 4 out of 5 for the features they DO support. Hope this helps somebody else.
I have been on Baselane for a couple months now. Let me just lead with EXCELLENT customer service. Good transaction accounting. I like that you can setup different virtual accounts for security deposit let's say, or to separately ledger cash collected through a rent to own contract. Although Baselane is hard at work to deliver them, a few key features are still lacking, among them outbound wires from your account. May not sound like a big deal but i tried to create the account under my biz and purchase a sub-to through the account, and lack of outbound wire was a killer for me. Rental collection seems easy. Tenant portal. Can keep track of different tenants. But doesn't have any property advertising, prospective tenant applications/screening, or any of that side of the business. All in all, so far, I'd give them a 4 out of 5 for the features they DO support. Hope this helps somebody else.
Hi Bo, How is it going with Baseline?
It's going pretty well. They continue to add features which has been helpful and welcome. Overall I'm pretty happy with it, for the niche it fills. Looking at tax season coming up, I feel it has helped me keep expenses and income organized and categorized, and for once I'm ready!
Hi. I've been using Rentastic for a little under a year now and I love it! The UI is very easy to use. Linking bank accounts is simple, though sometimes I have to manually refresh to get some of my bank transactions into the platform (maybe once a quarter). Initially, categorizing your transactions is a bit tedious. I had to spend a few days backlogging two months' worth of data, that's until I set up the automated rules. Once that was set, all reoccurring transactions were automatically categorized. Add properties provides you with some really good data. Basic stuff like LTV, NOI, cap rate, etc...There are a few report types missing and you can't split expenses yet. I've been in communication with their support team and they are working on getting a good number of requested features up and running in the next few months. They generally have really good communication with users and are willing to do backend work to help you. I recently wanted to change the bank names and currently, they don't support it, but the support team was willing to help me by changing it manually.
If you're specifically looking for an accounting software, Rentastic is a good choice.
I'm using Avail.co for leases + rent collection but the accounting features really lack and my CPA is asking for more specifics on everything. Time to get serious with the books. Was curious if anyone had a final solution to help on the accounting side of everything.
I use QBO for my other company (marketing agency) but hate it and it's not built for RE. I'm thinking I'll try out stressa and baselane for a week together and pick one. Is there any other solution I'm missing?
Regarding Baselane, does anyone know when they will have an app for landlords and tenants? I'm considering Baselane for banking and accounting. I'm thinking apartments.com for marketing, leasing and maintenance requests. Has anyone used a similar setup? Would love to hear about experiences with apartments.com and Baselane. TIA