Anyone using Stessa for Airbnb properties?

Question

Does anyone out there use Stessa for Airbnb properties? I've been playing with it a bit, and it seems interesting and works good for my long term rentals, but I'm not getting Airbnb or any short term rental income to reconcile with it on my STRs. Does anyone else have more experience or is there something I'm missing?

Aloha,

Mike

Aloha,

Mike

Neil L. · Answer

Hey @Mike Neubauer -

I've played with Stessa a little bit. I've got STRs, long term (month to month) rentals and some syndicated deals that I've put in it to try it out. I'm sure you've seen, it's got some nice eye-candy and gives a good 1000 foot view, but I've found that I have too many "exceptions" to my holdings for it to work for me, at least right now. I agree it doesn't seem to really work well with STRs where you don't have a consistent monthly income amount - I pretty much just used my monthly average.

Another problem I ran into - when it imported my bank transactions it asked me to select a category for a transfer I make from my checking to my savings (I put money aside for taxes etc on a recurring basis using an auto bank transfer). It asked me to select either an income or an expense for this transaction - well, it's neither, but Stessa doesn't have a category for that.

So I opened a ticket with Stessa asking how they recommend I categorize this. Even though their trouble reporting system says they respond within "hours" - it took several emails  and almost a week to get a response. And the "solution" was, don't categorize this transaction, we'll try and come up with a better system in the future.

Hey, it's free, so no harm no foul - but it seems like they're probably not quite ready for prime time. I'm thinking I'll probably just close my account.

Mike Neubauer · Answer

I'll look at Cozy @Neil Lieb, Thanks!  Waveapps.com is the site.  It is essentially a free version of Quickbooks. While it is a little more limited in some regards, I like that it is easy to list all my LLCs in one place and switch between them or even transfer funds between them. I'm not sure its the best solution out there, but I really can't stand Quickbooks, so I think this is where I'll go for accounting stuff.

Aloha!

Neil L. · Answer

@Mike Neubauer - Wave? Haven't heard of it....I'll check it out.

I've also taken a look at Cozy but it seems pretty focused on rental marketing, new tenant apps and rent collection - not so much on the bigger "management" picture.

Mike Neubauer · Answer

@Neil Lieb Thanks man!  Yeah, those are some of the things I saw too. It was ok for long term stuff, but not so much for STRs. You’re right, it’s great that it’s free, but I don’t think it’s ready to be an end all solution.

I started using Wave, and while it’s not strictly for real estate investors, it does act like a free version of Quickbooks and does have some nice features. I think I’ll stick with that for now.

Aloha!