Stessa is a good place to start. The wall shows up when you need to collect rent, give tenants a portal, or hand your accountant real books instead of a categorized bank feed.
Reflects Rentwelly's positioning and common market observations; verify current features and pricing with each vendor.
Collecting the rent. Watching money arrive is not the same as making it arrive. Once you are chasing a late payment or applying a fee by hand, you want collection and accounting in one system.
Giving tenants somewhere to go. Without a portal, every balance question and maintenance request lands in your text messages.
Closing the year. This is the big one. A categorized feed answers roughly what you spent. It does not give you a balance sheet, a trial balance your accountant can audit, or a number you can trace back to the transaction that created it.
Every rent payment, fee, and expense posts to a real double-entry ledger. Your balance sheet balances because it has to, not because you reconciled it by hand.
Online payments, automatic late fees, and receipts — recorded straight to the ledger, so collections and accounting never drift apart.
Tenants log in to pay, see their balance, and file maintenance requests. Fewer texts, fewer lost receipts, less chasing.
Schedule E figures, 1099s, and owner statements come out of the ledger instead of a spreadsheet you rebuild every spring.
No single tool suits every landlord. Here is an honest read on the options people shortlist alongside Stessa, and who each one actually fits.
Rentwelly — best if you want a real double-entry ledger underneath ordinary landlord work: rent collection, a tenant portal, and books an accountant can audit. From $39/mo, no unit minimum.
Landlord Studio — the closest like-for-like swap. Income and expense tracking plus rent collection, with a well-regarded mobile app. Accounting is category-based rather than a full general ledger.
Baselane — banking-first. Landlord banking with bookkeeping attached, which is convenient if you are happy moving your money there and less so if you want to keep your existing accounts. See our Baselane comparison.
TurboTenant — strongest when the bottleneck is finding tenants rather than keeping books: listings and screening lead the product, with a free core and paid add-ons.
Rentec Direct — long-established and deeper on accounting than most tools in this tier, aimed at landlords and small managers. The interface shows its age.
DoorLoop — a full property-management platform. More capability, and more cost, than most self-managing landlords need, but a fair choice if you manage for other owners. See our DoorLoop comparison.
Vendor features and pricing change often — confirm current details on each provider site before deciding.
Also worth reading: Baselane alternative, DoorLoop vs Stessa, and software for small landlords.
Free for 14 days, no credit card. Import your portfolio and see a balance sheet that ties out.
Usually because of one of three walls: you need to actually collect rent and chase late payments, you need somewhere for tenants to log in, or your accountant wants books rather than a categorized bank feed. A tracker is great at showing you what happened. It is not built to run the operation or close the year.
No, and that is deliberate. Rentwelly starts at $39/mo for up to 20 units, with a free 14-day trial and no credit card required. Free tools monetize elsewhere; paying a small flat fee is what buys you a real general ledger, rent collection, and support.
A bank feed categorized into buckets produces an approximate P&L. Double-entry produces a balance sheet that balances, a trial balance, an audit trail for every number, and clean 1099s and Schedule E figures at year end. When something looks wrong you can drill from the report to the transaction that caused it.
Yes. Rentwelly imports properties, units, leases, tenants, and opening balances by CSV, so you can switch mid-year and keep reporting continuity rather than starting from zero in January.
More on the pricing page or contact us.