I use Rent Manager by Quicken, but I find it to be really light. Are there any good ones that are not over the top with too many bells and whistles. Rent Manager by Quicken is a little too basic.
Thanks, Jag
jagster,
Quite honestly, I’m not sure what the advantage is to using property management software. When I first started, I used the Carleton Sheets Toolkit which had all the basic property management stuff. I would input all the tenant information, rental unit information, lease information, rent roll, etc. Looking back, I’m not quite sure what benefit that was.
Now, I input all the income and expense data in Quickbooks pro, and all the information about the tenants is in their file (paper). I must have paper leases, Section 8 paperwork, lead paint disclosures, etc, for real world landlording purposes. I don’t know what benefit there is to duplicating that in the computer. I have a paper rent roll that I complete each month as I collect the rents. What else is there?
I could easily be swayed to go back to a computer program if I could find a benefit to doing so. Give me a reason.
Mike
I agree with MIKE. I have researched almost every type of program and I’m not sure if they are worth it.
One of the best is rentmanager.com.
I have used quickbooks, and it gets the job done. Microsoft just came out with a new Accounting program, I am using that now.
Go to google and search for programs.
Have to agree with the others.
I use Quickbooks Pro to do the acounting for Real Estate and other businesses. It was converted over from Quicken when my wife handled things, but she refuses to understand debits and credits. Though I’m on a cash accounting basis, I still use the Accounts Receivable feature to create statements, track tenant payments, and track deposits.
I’ve looked into software that is a “Property Management” front end interfacing with Quicbooks, such as Rent-Right. among others. It’s got added features such as tracking lease expirations, tenant service calls etc. features that I found unnecessary and not worth the bother.
Before I started RE, I had a friend whose dad owned a 32 unit apartment building, and his rental office is at the corner of the living room. Above the desk is a HUGE chart, 32 rows, a row for each tenant, then columns, column 1 being the tenant name, column 2 being the lease expiration date, and 12 more columns beyond that marked January to December to track rent payments, and if the rent is paid in full, a big RED “X” with magic marker in the box. When a lease is renewed, the old date is crossed off, replaced by the new date.
Nice and simple.
I can see from across the room, 20 feet away, who paid, who’s behind. He’s got a little “stick it” to remind himself of tenant service calls.
After I reviewed some of the tenant tracking software, it does nothing much more that what my friend’s Cuban immigrant dad does, at 10 times the complexity, where I can easily see at a glance across the room what’s going on.
Thanks - you’re right. I never really looked at it that way, but your right. Those software programs are sometimes complex when all you need to to is use your basic accounting software, Quicken, Quickbooks, MS money. Thanks for helping me think it thought. They just just the same and I can keep notes somewhere else on the database maybe.