Updated about 8 years ago on . Most recent reply
Rent collection automation software, has anyone used it?
Hello, I am fairly new to real estate investment. I have a few rental properties and looking to expand into a few more this year. I try to automate the more tedious tasks of my business and collecting rent is one of those tasks. I came across this FaceBook post http://rentpost.com/?utm_source=facebook&utm_medium=affiliate&utm_campaign=rg1102 and was wondering if anyone has used this software. They offer a 30-day free trial which seems a little short for a product like this, but they also seem to be more affordable then over companies. Any feedback would be greatly appreciated.
Most Popular Reply
That's a new company. Here's what people on BP use for collecting rent or property management. I've been collecting notes because our company develops real estate investing software (currently direct mail, rehab/contracts). Hope this helps:
Property Management / Accounting
Quickbooks pro “I'd love to use quickbooks pro but they won't allow me to import expense data, nor allow subdivision of income/expenses as I would like.” ~Brandon Schlichter
“We have been using quickbooks for 12 years. I can tell you what profit I made on each rental, new home construction, rehab, flip. What the money was spent on. A detail P & L per property. It is all you need.” Arlan Potter
“I would recommend QuickBooks Pro on-line version. We set up quickbooks to create invoices for tenants. You don't need to mail them, but you can or you can email them automatically. Then we apply the rent payments against these invoices - Very easy when you hook up QB to your bank account -happens mostly automatic every night. We also enter future bills for taxes and insurance and PM fees etc... The benefit that this can create for you (with a couple downloads to excel) is an ongoing cash flow forecasting tool and a comparison of what you thought your cash flow should be to what it actually was. Plus it alerts you of bills due so everything is getting paid on time and provides you a report of past due rents or past due bills you owe.
Their phone app connects directly to the cloud based software. You can take pictures of receipts (before they are lost) and upload into QB for permanent retention. This process also requires you to select what property the receipt is for, what bank or CC you used and what account it should charge this expense to. So, it is all posted and done at the same time. This is very simple, straight forward and takes only a few moments to do. No more spending hours manually entering into your PM software!
So, you can replace the majority of the features that a PM tool offers you with the added benefit of a great P&L, budget vs. actual and cashflow analysis.” Kevin Schulz
Pros: commonly used accounting software
Cons:2.5 star rating on AmazonCost: QuickBooks Pro 2017 web download 189.99, $45/month for online
Buildium – Property management software
“The current software I use is Buildium.com, the software is one of the more inexpensive softwares to get for your management systems at $40.00 a month up to 200 units and then the price bumps to $200.00 a month. This software has some hidden fees in ACH transfers, which are charged to the property manager for every ACH transfer a total of $.50 and could be more depending on the days it takes to transfer. If you have a lot of properties this can add up quickly!” Peter Mckernan
“I have been using buildium for 2 months now managing 14 units. It's great for costs, budgets and the money management. It allows all units or properties to stay separate or combine by owner. The online rent collection has saved me a ton of time and effort.” Blake Garcia
“I used Buildium and it's a great software for starting out. It just doesn't make sense to pay around $50 a month to manage two units. It wouldn't cost too much more to hire a property manager and they would do all the work for you.
There are services available for screening that won't cost you a dime or require any effort on your part. Free online payment options are available or you could have the tenant set up direct deposit into your account for free. All of these options take less time than it would to set up Buildium, they don't require upkeep, and they won't cost you anything.” Nathan G
Pros: mentioned often on BP so commonly used
Cons: Hidden fees that add up
Cost: Starting at $45 / month, additional fees for features like ePay, tenant screening, 1099 eFiling
Appfolio - Software used for property management
“The next software that is pretty expensive is out of the gate is Appfolio.com, which charges $200.00 fee. This service does not take any money for ACH transfers and the software does charge an extra amount for building a website for your company (this is optional).” Peter Mckernan
“I have to say, they have a lot of cool things, but their accounting system is awful. That alone was a deal breaker. They told me that I would have to manually enter every single charge I do on the credit card for the business manually. If you use quickbooks and download the transactions from your bank, you know how much time that saves you every month. They also force you into working in their molds and expect you to adapt to their software. Most of the time are small compromises, but still annoyances.” Rafael Floresta
“My PM uses Appfolio (which seems, on here, to have it's share of fans and detractors) so it's easier and quicker for me to login and review rent collections, expenses, invoices, etc. I can't speak to maintenance management or anything else like that but now that I've had a PM with a cloud solution that has an owner portal, I don't think I'd want to go back. At the very least it would save you and your partner time with owners who are similar to me calling you up with questions that they could get the answers to online.” Andrew Johnson
“I use Appfolio out of santa barbara, ca its definitely not free and my property mgmt company passes those costs down to me which I think is around 50-60 bucks a month based on number of units under the service.
I am able to see all reports from rent rolls, cash flow statements / trailing 12 month cash flow, tenant ledgers, maintenance requests, dialog between tenants and mgmt staff, resolutions to maintenance requests, move in pictures, move out pictures, or video, and many more features.
What I like is that it allows the vendors to be in a dialog/text/chat box so they are prepared (vendor) prior to job assignment with lockbox codes, scope of work and pictures before they even go to the site so we dont waste time figuring things out and run up a huge $$$ bill for lack of efficiency.” Albert Bui
Pros: mentioned often on BP
Cons: accounting module is very weak, expensive for small operations
Cost: $1 per unit, per month plus an onboarding fee (equal to two months of service). Note that there is a $200 minimum monthly fee. App Folio offers a 15 day free trial.
Rent Manager – PM software
“Rent Manager has a pretty solid maintenance feature. I can create workorders and assign them individually to specific vendors or handymen. Those guys can then view their individual workorder lists from their mobile devices. When they have completed each workorder they can close them out and add comments detailing their scope of work. I am able to add/remove/edit/reassign workorders anytime.
All closed workorders are saved and can be cross referenced by tenant, property, or unit at any time from anywhere. Very handy.” – Ryan Murdock
“We have been using Rent Manager for years and its works very well for us. It can do as much or as little as you need, it is very affordable, and if you pick the cloud version (what we use) it is very convenient. Owners love having a portal to access their property information and performance in real time. “ Ante Vujic
TenantCloud “I do all of that with TenantCloud and have closed my paid account with AF. I only have 22 properties (all homes), but it works great. I do applications, listings to zillow and others, website, payments, accounting, maintenance, reports and its all free. I am still waiting for the got ya as they are free, but they claim they will always be free for up to 75 units. At SXSW I saw one of their people and they said they will have the ability to get bids on jobs like cleaning, painting and such soon - I assume this is how they make money. “ Ben Travis
Pros: they are new and offer free operations for landlords and tenants
Cons: new company, not mentioned on BP much
Cost: “We get paid by service providers - like insurance companies, plumbing companies, screening companies, A/C and heating, moving companies..... oh you get the idea. TenantCloud is free, but if you decided to use any of the service providers products then you can buy in TenantCloud, which only makes life even more convenient.”
Receipts By Wave – tracking expenses
“I use an application (via both phone and web browser) called 'Receipts by Wave'. It's free and very simple to use. You can setup categories, create users with different permissions, etc.
When you start a flip you
1: setup a new account
2: create categories (ie, kitchen, bath, plumbing, landscaping, etc, etc)
3: as you make purchases take pictures of the receipts via the phone app and choose the category
4: via the web browser (computer) portal you the administrator can go through and verify all the incoming receipts
5: then you can create reports showing who's spending how much on what very easily”
Rafael Norat said, “App folio, buildium, and rentec. Those seem to be the 3 top management apps used.
I own and manage close to 40 and have used buildium for over a year now. Very easy to learn, great customer support, can easily setup ACH payments, coordinate repairs with contractors, generate invoices, reports, and such. Only complaint is that you can't text notify directly a contractor when generating a request. Can only send them an email.
App folio seems to be used by the larger management companies and seems to cost a bit more. Rentec wound up costing a bit more for me when I looked at it and didn't seem to add more value than what I am getting with buildium.”
Payment Systems
Problem with Cozy:
Alex Reiz said:
We have been using Cozy for our rental properties in regards to rent collection. Initially, their system was great and would not allow a Tenant to make partial payments; it would only allow a Tenant to pay all or none of the Rent, which was great and was one of the reasons we started using their service. However recently they have changed their system which now allows Tenants to make partial payments, which we do not like at all. There is no option on the receiving side in order to only allow only full payments, we find this to be a waiting nightmare if an eviction ever came up. We are especially unhappy with the service now, considering that was one of their highly touted features when they first started offering it.
Does anyone know of any other online payment service which only allows for full payments or at least allows the Landlord to chose between full and partial payments?
ERentPayment
Clay Owens said: I just set up ERentPayment last week and they give you an option to accept partial payments or not.
“I am playing around with tenant cloud. I like erentpayment and the fees are cheap.” Jim Adrian
Rentecdirect
Drew Bonnor said, “rentecdirect.com. This software is so affordable and has features like: automatic payments from your tenants bank account, tenant screening, publishing vacancies to sites such as realtor, zillow, Craigslist, etc., and keeps individual spreadsheets for each of your properties. Give it a look!”
Guy Varble said, “I use a property management software called R E N T E C D I R E C T and I just click the "syndicate" button and my property gets blasted out everywhere. Since I've been uning this for the past couple of years I have never put up a sign or ad or anything. It costs about $15.00 a month and is what I use to manage all aspects of my rentals.”
Daniel Dietz said, “We have been using Rentec Direct for about 6 months and love it so far.
So far we have used it mostly for Tenant Management, and still use a tenant screening component that the our local landlords association offers, and do accounting in Sage/Peachtree which is what we use for our 'day job' business for over 20 years.
Things we like are: price for the number of units, quick view of rents due/paid, great 'to do' section tied to each property/renter (for each unit of a multi), etc.... You are correct that we do NOT use there 'accounting' part yet, but are planning to as far as the individual renter/units go.
We are just digging into that part, and are not sure how thorough the report will be as far as what's needed at tax time etc... One of our goals of switching over to it from Peachtree is that we only have a 'single license' for that. We do use their 'property manager' version - mainly because we hold our properties in 4 different entities, so we need to keep each one separate. By treating each entity as a 'client' in the PM version it works great.
The other thing we like is that being web based, we can all easily see everything at any time, such as 'what kind of stove is that we put in at such and such address when we are looking for parts at the store etc....”
Unitdash – “Unitdash is a free to use property management platform for landlords and property managers. We pride ourselves on our users being able to sign up and hit the ground running. There is no required setup or setup fees. We have all of the features you expect and many nice to haves like custom online rental applications, in-app text messaging, integrated postal mail services and more.
Our online tenant portal allows your tenants to pay rent online and submit maintenance requests for free.” According to Anthony Ascuitto the developer
Cons: it’s new and not established.
Their claim: “We make money on online payments, background checks, and other integrated services by charging a small markup. We are not a beta product, we are just able to deliver a similar solution at a much cheaper price!”