Best Landlord Software for Small Business. Best Landlord Software for Property Management is designed to help you manage your rental properties easily and efficiently. It provides an array of tools to track leases, rental applications and expenses. The software also offers a tenant portal to allow easy communication between property managers and tenants.
You’ve just acquired a small business and you need to manage the rental properties, which would require professional property management software for landlords. It’s understandable that you want the best landlord software given how large your portfolio is. In fact, if you are like most landlords, you probably want any sort of software that could help you get things done faster and more efficiently.
No matter whether you are a small-time or a big-league property manager, it can’t be denied that you need the best landlord software for your rental business. I know you won’t find yourself in agreement with me on this tiny note but when it comes to a real life, practical ways to get things done, this point cuts through all confusion.
The Best Landlord Software for Small Business is a property management software that helps landlords, property managers and realtors to manage their rental property. It is also helpful to tenants since they can view the rent statement and other important information regarding their unit within this powerful software.
What is property management software?
Property management software helps landlords and real estate professionals track leases, residents and maintenance tasks, as well as collect rent and manage finances to reduce costs and streamline operations.
Buildium
Buildium has a good balance of features, ease of use, and affordable pricing, making it a great all-around pick. They also have great training and online support.
The only caveat to their pricing is that they’re designed for portfolios of 50 or more units. So, if you have less than that, you might be overpaying.
Features include:
- Online rent payments
- Custom reporting tools
- Automated monthly bank reconciliation
- A large number of integrations, such as Zillow and Apartments.com
Buildium pricing
Buildium’s Essential tier is per unit and starts at $50 per month up to 20 units. Additional units will cost you up to 150 units for $235 per month.
Larger portfolios can opt for the Growth plan starting at $160 per month minimum or Premium at $460.
Buildium offers a 14-day free trial, so you can try it out for free.
Propertyware
Propertyware is a complete property management software with powerful accounting features such as custom reporting, custom field options, and automatic payment reminders.
Its reporting is notable, as it offers some of the most detailed and comprehensive reporting features on this list.
It’s not designed for portfolios below 250 units, though, so the pricing will be high if you have less than that.
Features include:
- Good accounting, including custom reporting
- Work order management
- Email communication options for both tenants and owners
- Owner portal and reports
Propertyware pricing
Propertyware’s pricing model is a bit different. Instead of a per-unit pricing model or flat fee, they use a per-unit model with a monthly minimum.
They’re also on the pricey side, with the most base plan being $1 per unit, with a $250 minimum. In other words, unless you have upwards of 250 properties, Propertyware might not be a great fit.
Propertyware also has a one-time onboarding fee, equal to x2 your monthly price. So, if you’re on the basic $250 plan, you’d pay $500 one time for onboarding.
Rentroom
Rentroom is a complete property management tool geared towards rental properties. The software is easy to use and has a convenient cash reconciliation function and other unique community features.
The only downside is that Rentroom’s reporting feature is more than less neglectful. This is a crucial feature for basic accounting, thus larger property management businesses will have a hard time using Rentroom.
Features include:
- Work order management, including tenant maintenance requests from right within the software
- Online rent collection, including reminders
- Tenant portal
- Basic accounting features such as cash reconciliation, though limited reporting
Rentroom Pricing
Rentroom doesn’t list their pricing publicly, but they offer a free trial to try the software out before being asked to pay.
Landlord Studio
Websitewww.landlordstudio.comPrice from$5.99/moFree Trial14 days
Best accounting software for landlords based on ease of use
Landlord Studio just goes to show that you don’t have to compromise performance when developing a simpler platform.
Best for:
This software is best for landlords who are self-managing single-family and small multi-family residential rental property.
Ease of use:
While all the software programs reviewed have been user-friendly, Landlord Studio is the most intuitive, even with all of its powerful features. The software is easy to access on multiple platforms and the interface is simple and straightforward, both on mobile devices and on desktop.
Features:
Landlord Studio offers a broad range of features. Some of these include:
- Tracks income expenses
- Manages tenant screening through credit reports and rental background checks
- Runs professional tax reports
- Manages tenant communication
- Automated rent collection with secure online payments
- Integrates bank accounts
- Scans paper receipts
- Offers financial insights
Customer support:
Customer support is very responsive and open to suggestions. Their response time is usually a couple of hours and always within 24 hours. Their support venues include email, a help desk, chat, FAQs, forum, knowledge base, phone, webinars, live online, documentation, and videos.
Price:
The price starts at $5.99 a month per feature. They also offer a 14-day trial.
QuickBooks
Websitewww.quickbooks.intuit.comPrice from$25.00/moFree Trial30 Days
Best accounting software for landlords that is non-industry specific
We would be remiss if we didn’t include QuickBooks on this list since it is so popular and many people use this accounting software for their rental property. While not ideal, it is the best non-industry-specific software for rentals.
Ease of use:
QuickBooks can be a little clunky and cumbersome for those tracking their rental property on their software. While it can be done, there are some industry-specific features that QuickBooks doesn’t have that make tracking income and expenses associated with rental property portfolios much easier.
Features:
While lacking industry-specific features such as tenant screenings, rental listings, etc., to make the features in QuickBooks work, you need to think of them in different scenarios.
For example, customers will be your tenants, classes will be your properties, and income types such as rent, pet fees, late fees will be your products. Recurring invoices can be set up as rent payments and the chart of accounts can be set up using the Schedule E categories.
Invoice payments can be set up for rent collection, but you don’t have tenant portals or automatic payments. You can track your tenants but you can’t send out automated emails or enjoy the benefit of the tenant screening.
Customer Support:
Customer support at QuickBooks is not one of its strengths. Understandably, it falls short when the support team is trained more for generic applications and not trained in a specific industry.
Price:
Pricing starts at $25 a month and there is a 30- day free trial.
Stessa
Stessa is a digital platform for property investors to manage, monitor, and communicate the performance of real estate assets. Created by real estate investors, Stessa allows users to easily keep track of property performance, finances, and the paper trail that comes with real estate investing—in one central place.
Stessa will track income, expenses, and provide investors with dozens of critical investing metrics and tax-ready documentation.
Beyond the fact that it’s free, Stessa also offers a number of innovative solutions for landlords who want a tool that moves beyond simple accounting inputs and outputs. For instance, Stessa recently added real-time receipt scanning with automatic tax-ready real estate categorization to the Stessa mobile apps for iOS and Android.
Simplify your rental property reportingLEARN MORE
All receipts and invoices that are scanned with the Stessa app are also available on the online platform and vice-versa, so you always have a complete picture of your property expenses. Stessa’s machine learning and OCR technologies parse all the details and then organizes the information. All transaction details are stored in the cloud with the industry’s best security, so everything is always accessible and available during tax time or for audit purposes.
Further, Stessa has a document storage feature that allows landlords and investors to capture all of their critical financial and accounting documents in one centralized database.
Other cool features from the Stessa accounting software app includes rental reports and a mortgage portal for those looking to explore their financing options.
Appfolio
Appfolio, and Buildium below, are both full suite property management software. Appfolio is therefore a powerful tool for landlords and property managers to keep track of tenants, properties, payments, word orders, and more.
Appfolio does have accounting features, such as deposits, online payments, automated late fees, and more.
How can property management software help me with marketing?
Marketing your vacancies and conveying quality in the photos and text you post can be a time-consuming challenge for property managers. Modern property management systems offer functionality to help with website and vacancy management, with features for branding, search engine optimization, social media integration, and full marketing campaign management.
What questions should I ask vendors when evaluating property management products?
When seeking information about property management software, property owners should ask a few questions to make sure it’s the right fit for their needs. These include:
What parts of the software do users most frequently report problems with?
While property owners should pay attention to what vendors are excited to share about their system, they should be sure to ask about common pain points for customers and which features typically take the most time to master.
What are the additional required costs for the software?
Aside from monthly subscription costs, a landlord should get an idea about additional costs for other services or hardware. Training and implementation are common, up-front costs to consider.
Can you customize the system to meet my specific needs?
Most vendors are flexible enough to customize their software by adding new fields for tenant information or combining a specific set of features for a landlord.
What 5 key Property Management Software features should I look for?
Accounting
Manage the general ledger, accounts payable and rent payments. Most systems assist with bank reconciliation and generating financial reports.
Tenant & lease tracking
Assists with the entire leasing process, including tenant screening, move-in and move-out management and rent and utility payment collections.
Budgeting & forecasting
Develop accurate operating budgets and reports and forecast future costs and values, as well as account for consumer price index (CPI) changes, inflation and market rates.
Building maintenance
Submit and track work orders, either from employees or renters, and assign tasks to maintenance workers.
Tenant portal
Allows tenants to pay rent and fees, submit maintenance requests and opens a communication channel between residents and staff.
Conclusion
If you are a small business owner or a landlord, there are many areas in which making the right decisions could help you to improve your business. Software is one of the most common elements in business, and it can help you to run things more efficiently and keep track of metrics. There is a range of software products that can help landlords, from accounting software to landlord software. If you are not familiar with the term “best rental software” or “best software for landlords”, let me tell you that it refers to the most efficient tools to manage and automate your business. You see, landlords have a lot of business aspects to deal with, especially if they own multiple properties.
Find the best landlord software for small businesses. Property management software can help landlords keep track of their properties and tenants, including rent collection and maintenance. We review different programs to help you decide which one is the best fit for your property management needs! Landlords, who own more than one rental property, are always looking for a way to save time and money. Luckily, there are some tools designed to help these landlords make their job easier. The best landlord software allows you to manage the whole real estate operation in an efficient and effective manner.