Set yourself up for success on Stessa with this 4-step process to refine your dashboard metrics and bring your transactions data current.
1. Confirm Acquisition Details
How to Ensure Accurate Data on Your Property and Portfolio Dashboards
Your Property and Portfolio dashboards are powerful tools for tracking the performance of your real estate investments. However, in order for these dashboards to provide accurate and useful information, it is crucial that the underlying data is complete and correct. One of the first steps to optimizing your dashboards is to confirm that the acquisition cost and date are accurately entered for each Property.
To begin, navigate from the Dashboard to the individual Property page using the navigation dropdown menu at the top of the page.
Once on the Property page, click the three dot menu button and select "Edit Property Details" to bring up the Edit Details flyout. Here, you will be able to review and update the key information for your Property.
From here, the three most important pieces of information to confirm are the Acquisition Date, Acquisition Price, and Date Placed in Service. These details are crucial for calculating the Cash-on-Cash metrics on your dashboards, which provide valuable insights into the financial performance of your Property.
The Acquisition Date is the date on which you purchased the Property. This should be the date that the transaction was completed and you officially took ownership of the Property.
The Acquisition Price is the total cost of acquiring the Property, including any fees or expenses associated with the purchase. This should reflect the actual amount of money you paid for the Property.
The Date Placed in Service is the date on which the Property was ready to be rented out or used for its intended purpose. This date is important for calculating depreciation and other tax-related metrics.
Once you have confirmed that these details are accurate and up-to-date, you can be confident that your dashboards are providing you with reliable information. It is recommended to regularly review and update this information as needed to ensure the accuracy of your data.
The first step to optimizing your Property and Portfolio dashboards is to confirm that the correct acquisition cost and date are entered for each Property. By following the steps outlined in this article, you can ensure that your dashboards are providing you with accurate and valuable insights into your real estate investments.
To ensure reliable metrics:
Go to the Property Dashboard – Use the dropdown menu at the top to select the property.
Click ⋮ The kebab meu button (three dots)→ "Edit Property Details."
Verify these key fields:
Acquisition Date
Acquisition Price
Date Placed in Service
Why it matters: These values directly impact your Cash-on-Cash returns—so keep them up to date!
Be sure to click the "Save" button at the bottom of the Edit Details flyout.
2. Bring Your CapEx Schedule Current
Visit the Transactions page and enter all historical capital projects there, including renovations, major plumbing/electrical upgrades, new doors, windows, and flooring, and any other costs you'd like to capitalize and depreciate over the useful life of the project by clicking "+Add" and selecting the Capital Expenses category.
You can enter a single line item called "Closing Costs Added to Basis" dated the same as your original acquisition for certain closing costs that become part of your original basis. These typically include things like seller owed property taxes that you paid and were not reimbursed for, owner's title insurance costs (not lender's), legal fees, recording fees, and survey fees among others. Loan fees are not considered part of your cost basis as they are amortized separately for tax purposes.
3. Confirm Your Loan Details
Mortgage and other loan details are managed through the "Financials & Assets" tab on the Property Details page and the "Mortgage" cards located just to the right of the page.
To add a new loan, click the "Add" icon within the Mortage card, you will then be prompted to either "connect bank account" or "add manually".
Provide as much detail as possible to help Stessa generate accurate metrics.
To edit the details of an existing mortgage or loan, click the kebab menu button (three dots) icon on the "Mortgage" card and click Edit.
The Edit mortgage details fly-out will appear and allow you to make any necessary edits.
4. Add or Import Cash Flow Data from Prior Periods
Now that we've entered acquisition, capital expenses, and loan details, you have a few different options for entering historical investment performance data. In prior years, it's likely that you either tracked cash flow in a spreadsheet or relied on your bookkeeper or CPA to tally everything up at the end of the year.
Depending on how much detail you want to track in Stessa for prior years, you can navigate to your Transactions page and bring your data current in one of the following ways:
Simply record a new manual "Income" transaction dated Dec 31 of each prior calendar year of ownership, in an amount equal to your total net cash flow (after debt but before taxes) for the year. Ignore operating expenses and debt expenses since you're recording a pure net cash flow number.
Manually record transactions dated Dec 31 of each prior calendar year of ownership, for "Income" equal to gross income and for each "Operating Expenses" category equal to the amount recorded for each on your Schedule E. Make sure the math ties out to your final net cash flow number for the year.
Use the CSV upload process detailed in How to Import Transactions Data (CSV) to populate your Transactions page with detailed income and expense line items from prior periods.
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