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Stessa New Customer FAQ
Stessa New Customer FAQ

What is Stessa? Who's it for? Get answers to your most basic questions. Then sign up and see what Stessa can do for your portfolio.

Victor Perez avatar
Written by Victor Perez
Updated over 3 months ago

What is Stessa?

Stessa is modern software built specifically for owners of residential income property. Set up your first property today to automate your income and expense tracking, produce instant reports for tax season, and get real-time performance metrics.
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What Do Stessa's Dashboards & Reports Look Like?

Sample Dashboard:

Sample Income Statement:

Sample Net Cash Flow Report:

Who is Stessa Designed For?

Stessa is built specifically for owners of residential rental properties. It’s not for property managers and it’s not for fund managers with large commercial portfolios. If you just bought your first single-family rental in Dallas, Stessa is for you. If you’re a seasoned multi-family investor with fifty units across six states, Stessa is for you too.
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Is Stessa Property Management Software?

No. Stessa is an asset management software. There’s a subtle but important difference between managing a property and managing an investment. That said, thousands of rental property owners use Stessa to reduce and/or eliminate the need for a property manager, especially as it relates to rent collection and key accounting and bookkeeping tasks. In this way, you may find that Stessa saves you hundreds or even thousands of dollars a year.

For those owners that do retain a property manager, your PM typically handles maintenance and repairs and other day-to-day tasks like mowing the lawn and paying the bills. Some property managers are pretty good at these functions but most are awful at telling you what it all means.

Stessa helps you take a step back and see what’s really going on with your investments. We’ll connect to your property management portal (if your PM uses AppFolio or Propertyware) and financial accounts, import transactions automatically, and then auto-categorize them so you can see everything in one place. Stessa also tracks key performance metrics like net operating income, net cash flow, and effective cap rate so you can optimize performance and make better hold/sell decisions.
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How is Stessa different from Quickbooks?

Quickbooks is a complex accounting program that is designed to service all types of businesses. Customizing Quickbooks to track rental property income and expenses can be a complicated and time-consuming process, especially if you're new to real estate investing. That said, if you have entity-level accounting needs, run a real estate-related business that doesn't own rental property, or are accustomed to maintaining traditional balance sheets, you may still prefer to pay for a full-service accounting platform like Quickbooks.

Stessa is a platform that's purpose-built for rental property owners and works seamlessly from day one. Key real estate metrics like net cash flow, appreciation, and valuations are standard components of the dashboards. Real estate-related income and expense categories are built directly into the transactions ledger, as is quick reporting to help you (or your CPA) prepare Schedule E and Form 8825 tax forms. With Stessa, you can expect to be up and running in 15 mins or less!

Can I Use Stessa for Rent Collection & Credit Checks?

Yes, Stessa does indeed offer rent collection. When you sign up for Stessa and enable Stessa Rent Pay, your tenants can pay directly via ACH. Best of all, there are no fees for you or your tenant! To learn more about how rent collection works in Stessa, check out Stessa Rent Pay for Owners.

Credit checks, background checks, and tenant application services are now available on the Rental Application Page.
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Can I Use Stessa for Commercial Properties?

Stessa is purpose-built for residential income properties. You’re welcome to set up relatively simple commercial properties on the platform to see how it works for you, assuming there's an address match in our database. Just keep in mind that Stessa is not designed to accommodate office, industrial, or specialty properties with complicated rent rolls or single-tenant triple-net leased buildings with lots of pass-through operating expenses. We also do not provide support for setting up and managing commercial properties on the platform.
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Is Stessa Available Outside the US?

Unfortunately, we’re not currently supporting income property owners outside the U.S.
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How Long Does It Take to Set Up a Property on Stessa?

Setting up your first property on Stessa takes about 5-10 minutes. Owners of single-family rentals and smaller multi-family buildings may be able to do a simple setup from memory alone. Owners of larger buildings or extensive portfolios will likely need to look up a few key pieces of information like rent rolls and mortgage details to get started.
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Does Stessa Work for Large Portfolios?

Yes. There’s no limit to how many rental properties you can set up on Stessa. If you have different investors in different assets, you can invite them to see only dashboard information related to their portfolios, with either edit or read-only access privileges. You can assign income and expenses and run reports at both the property and portfolio levels.
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How Do I Know My Data is Secure?

Stessa uses industry-leading encryption to keep your data safe and secure. Our servers run the most up-to-date transport layer security and never allow insecure protocols or outdated ciphers. All sensitive information is protected at rest and in transit using multi-layer key management encryption.

We’ve partnered with industry veteran Yodlee/Envestnet to manage the secure bank connections that make importing your income and expense data seamless. Your bank credentials are never seen or stored by Stessa. For more detailed information, see our full Privacy Statement.
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How Much Does Stessa Cost?

Stessa Essentials is a free version filled with core tools for rental property owners. You can add an unlimited number of properties, connect as many bank accounts as you like, run endless reports, and freely export your transaction data to Excel anytime.

The Manage plan, offered at $12/month when paid annually, offers eSigning by DocuSign, 60+ legal forms and templates, automated Schedule E report, and more.

The Pro plan, offered at $28/month when paid annually, includes everything in the Manage plan plus unlimited portfolios, advanced reports including Schedule of Real Estate Owned (SREO), unlimited smart receipt scans, higher APY, priority phone support, and more. Explore Stessa Pricing options.

How Do I Cancel My Account?

If you ever decide Stessa isn't for you, it's easy to transfer your data out of Stessa and then close your account. Just use the "Export" button on your Transactions page to immediately download full details for all transactions to a single CSV file. Then follow the simple instructions to Close Your Stessa Account.
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How Do I Get Started?
Visit this secure link to set up your first property: https://app.stessa.com
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