I keep seeing Rent Manager recommended, but at $75+/user/month it’s hard to justify when half the features don’t apply to a smaller operation. Curious what people at that scale are actually running. Full PM tool, QuickBooks + spreadsheets, or something else entirely? And what’s the one workflow that still doesn’t have a good solution regardless of what you’re using?
I manage my 78 space park (plus small commercial building) with spreadsheets and Google Voice (free).
I created a spreadsheet to record Income/Expenses, a spreadsheet to calculate monthly invoices (includes water/sewer bill, other fees and home payment (I have one rental and no homes being sold on a contract) and spreadsheets to track home rehab expenses (sometimes I buy a home from a tenant, rehab it and then resell it). I copy and paste monthly invoices from a spreadsheet to an email and email tenants their bill - this takes about an hour. I will probably create a mail merge to to this but copy and pasting works fine. Tenants deposit their rent payment directly to my bank account that I can access in real time online or on my phone.
I use MSWord to create rules violation notices, etc that my manager delivers to tenants. There aren’t many so I don’t need a system to track follow ups. If I did need to track them I’d create something on a spreadsheet.
I use Google Voice for texting and phone calls. I mostly communicate park updates/info via email (I send one email to all tenants and Bcc them). My park is low maintenance so I don’t feel the need for a CRM tool to track tasks, etc. If I did I’d get something very basic that was free.
I don’t really have any workflows.
RM is more than just a financial tool. You can have your phone system setup through them, do tenant screening through the software, sink water meter readings, do mailings and much more. I believe they have an app for the tenants to use for payments and communication, which we have not utilized yet.
We have used RM for over a decade, and they keep making improvements over the years. We have been very happy with their services. The customer support is pretty good also. They speak English well, use turbo meeting to assist, and I usually wait less than 5 minutes to talk to someone who is well trained and helpful.
It really depends on what you need.
I ran a 66-space park for 10 years using just QuickBooks and a spreadsheet. It was easy. We only billed for space rent.
If you have to read meters and calculate bills, it does get a little more complicated. For one park, you do not need sophisticated software. I used PBmanager for a few years. It’s easy and affordable. https://pbmanager.com/
One caveat to PBmanager: as you add more parks, their software can get a little clunky. IE login and logout of each park; reporting, etc. They are just a Billing software company.
We have 10 parks, and we are very happy with ManageAmerica. We looked at Rent Manager, and it did not have (at the time we looked) all the features we needed.
We are succeeding with TurboTenant for rental platform which links to REIHub (accounting) for a reasonable fee. We then have RelayBank which offers us incredible creative flexibility for accounts, debit cards that allow tenants to make cash deposits at ATMS for free, and of course Excel spreadsheets. Hope this helps!
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Buildium has many good features, not terribly expensive.
That’s a great point about the all-in-one nature of the platform. Having the tenant screening and meter readings integrated into the same system definitely streamlines the workflow for smaller portfolios.
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$75 per month is nothing compared to the efficiencies you gain - $1 per lot. You automate payments, receipts, communications, etc. I started with a lesser system when we wren smaller to save a few bucks, and it cost us more in the transition to a more robust system. Buy the software, share a login, and spend the $75.
I personally used Excel for our first 32 units, and it was a nightmare to track late payers and has no automation. Quickbooks is going to cost at least $35 or so and is inferior for this application.
I own 6 small parks and I am using an old expired version of QB Pro and spreadsheets. I find QB online does not work well for rental property.
52 pad park - iv been using Google Sheets and Voice - just signed up with Rent Manager and I wish I would have sooner.
Ran ops across 9 CA parks at the portfolio level, and this thread matches what I saw everywhere under ~100 lots — RM’s real cost isn’t the $75/user, it’s paying for features a small park never touches. Spreadsheets + QuickBooks + Google Voice genuinely covers most of it fine.
To calvinbarker’s actual question — the one workflow that still doesn’t have a good solution: utility/meter billing. It’s the thing nobody’s stack above really handles. tmperrault’s spending an hour a month copy-pasting invoices by hand, and SDGuy needed a separate bolt-on tool just for that one piece even while running QuickBooks for everything else. Same pattern every time — general tools and spreadsheets both stop right at the meter-reading-to-invoice step.
Happy to share what I use for that gap if anyone’s dealing with it.
I use tenantcloud even since I’ve moved from more single family to mobile home parks. It’s sufficient. Not expensive. Other softwares that I’ve viewed are nice but have a lot of bells and whistles that I wouldnt use and more expensive. I own 5 parks with 67 lots
Not a park owner (I’m researching the space while building software for park owners), it’s really interesting to see everyone land with different tools! Spreadsheets, QuickBooks, RM, PBmanager (hadn’t heard of that one!)
I’m building a tool in this space and aiming specifically for mobile home parks. Rent and submetered water on one bill, and a ledger so you can see who’s actually paid, which sounds like the part mPark ran into with Excel. I’m trying to keep it to what smaller parks actually use.
It’s free to look at and doesn’t need an account, and it’s in my profile if anyone wants to poke at it. I’d honestly rather have feedback than signups right now- if you try it and it’s missing something obvious for your park, I’d really like to hear it!
We used to use only Google Voice and spreadsheets, and it worked very well. However, more than two years ago, we switched to ScheduleMyRent.com and Odoo.
Odoo Accounting has made our bookkeeping much easier and automatically downloads transactions from our banks and other accounts. We are very happy with our current setup, it is much more streamlined.