Does anyone use Stessa expense tracking for there properties?
Minneapolis, MN · Member since 2017 · 43 posts · 13 votes
Hello all. Has anyone actually used Stessa? It was advertised on the last episode of the BP podcast #295. I have 1 property as of now and have been doing little to nothing to track income and expenses. Need to remedy that quick. Stessa seems to be free if you only own a few properties. Just wondering how easy it is to use and how well it works? It sounds like most people use Quickbooks which I also have no idea how to use. Just looking for a better way to keep track of all the ins and outs of my property. Let me know what you all think.
Thanks
Scot
I don't like giving 3rd parties my login info to bank accounts. Same reason I don't use personal capital.
Hello All - I saw recently that Stessa released a Documents Organizer and was wondering if anyone uses this functionality rather than google drive, box, etc?
**This is mostly a copy from another forum post not specifically about Stessa"
I started using Stessa a week ago and it spoiled me with automatic data entry during setup. I started experimenting with others for the last few days but none were as easy to use. It's hard to believe that in 2021 Stessa was the only one that would connect and download my credit card transactions.
I tried buildium, it was clunky and dumb compared to the stessa property set up I experienced. I was excited to pay for a better product. it must sync with credit cards accounts but I couldn't see where to do it. Only a bank account. I couldn't get it to work and gave up and canceled the $160 middle plan I chose.
I tried rentec, I could never get it to sync with my bank account. it didn't look like there are options for syncing credit cards. I saw work arounds posted instead of software solutions.
It's property entry was "dumb" like buildium so although I haven't barely tried rentec I don't have high hopes.
So far I like stessa. It's not a complete solution, it's only the accounting, income, and expense financing. But it syncs with all of my credit cards and all of my bank accounts and Auto categorizes my expense and income items.
During setup It pulled my property tax information automatically along with all my property characteristics, square feet the number of bd/ba all automatically. I was impressed.
I also like the extra column (prorata) for expected expenses. Stessa tries to populate this column automatically where it can but doesn't fight you with manual changes.
Without a better solution I will need to pair stessa with other great services for rent collection and property management.
I guess I've been spoiled with mint.com and personal capital finance. They are so smart and allow you to view your finance data in so many ways. and like Stessa, those programs do all the heavy lifting with categorizing expenses. Stessa feels smart like personal capital finance but a limited version on viewing your data but far advanced for keeping income and expenses allocated to properties and tax preparation. You're limited on how to view the data and your dashboard. They don't want anything to do with personal finances, so it can't be a replacement for my mint and personal capital finance.
Stessa looks like it will natively do all the heavy lifting for my taxes, it creates 1099s and allows you to make very types of reports.
It is the best solution for accounting, income, and expense management I've seen.
Stessa could be great if they updated their dashboard and allowed more ways to view the data. The dashboard is boring after you've seen it the first 20 times. It's all the numbers that don't change very often.
The dashboard is missing the things I care most about.
Watching the rent received number rise is the funniest part of being a landlord.
A rent delinquency is high priority. I should be able see it and also drill down to see which unit from the dashboard.
I'd like to see my current monthly expenses as compared to last month at the same time and the total expected end of month expenses.
II really liked that stessa property setup automatically pulled data to populate the characteristics of the property. I liked how I could sync all of my expenses and income from all my accounts.
Please let me know if there's something I should try or try again.
Cozy is the other half of my rental management but is transitioning to apartments so if there's a better or complete solution I'm still interested in changing.
Scot,
I have been testing it and think it would be great for a few properties. Very simple to use.
When you get to more 8,9,10 or more properties it may not be the best fit at the current time. The support has been great and they seem to be planning enhancements to make it better for larger portfolios.
Rich
Rich- I am doing some research on quick books/stessa/ and rentastic as options to manage by income and expenses . The primary use is for rentals we have 11 and then we are working towards doing some flips, BRRR's, and possibly STR deals. You mentioned here that Stessa wouldn't be good for 10+ properties. would you mind expanding a little more on why that is?
I've been searching for negative reviews and most of them just center around the font size being small or not liking connecting bank accounts etc. I haven't seen anything about it scaling poorly but if that's the case id like to know that before I set it up. What was your experience?
Aaron