I think this was addressed on the old forum, but I have been unable to locate the post. Does anyone use rentmanager.com, the cloud based product to manage their parks? We have looked at park sidekick, but we do not want to have to install it on a computer. We would rather run an application in the cloud. If you have not used rent manager, can you recommend any other online management software? Thanks.
We purchased rent manager (cloud based) a couple of years ago and are very happy with it. Of course no system is perfect and it is somewhat annoying when you need tech support - you have to leave a message and they will call you back. It has lots of features and report options, good website and training materials. The monthly license fee is $75 so you need to factor that in to your expenses. Only one person can be logged on at a time per license so you need to factor that in to your budget and operations.
Bret
Park sidekick offers a hosted solution I believe. We use sidekick and have it on one of our computers, we can have all of our managers logged in at once, and we only needed to pay for it once.
I have not used rent manager- though I have heard good things about it.
We use Quickbooks online and the cost is $40 per month. It is very easy to use, on the cloud, and can have multiple users logged on at the same time. It is not specific to the MHP industry or rental properties, yet works fine for us. Does sidekick or Rent Manager have unique features we should consider?
well- we can bill utilities very easy, and it puts the charges on the bills per the state mandated submetering rules. It tracks the tenants, occupants and produces good reports for tracking. It also produces a color coded map showing who is current and late. We also can track notes on the tenants, and produce nice invoices and statements for the tenants showing every charge and how it was applied. At a glance- you can see the entire history for the tenant.
On a side note- our managers post payments in some parks, they produce reports, the reports can be formatted into automatic 3 or 10 day notices, or late rent reports. I also use quickbooks and I do not want my managers having access to my quickbooks files.
So I let quickbooks do what it does well- my accounting
I let parksidekick do what it does really well- track my tenants, payments and invoicing.
Question for Jim J:
How have you set your computer system up, so that the stand alone version of Sidekick is accessable by different managers from different locations and computers.
Also what is entailed to integrate Sidekick with Quickbooks
As a manager, I will say that I love the RM program, although I have not used any other to compare with. While it seems a bit cumbersome when trying to find the reports you want to produce, there are some really good features. My favorite is the History/Notes tab because I use religiously because it’s very easy to keep and access notes on residents in the future if problems other than non-payment arise, which of course makes it easy for my supervisor to understand why I am making certain decisions.
So we have the program loaded on a server in my basement. One old requirement is a dedicated IP- which we have but is no longer necessary.
The sidekick program had a log in option, and one choice is to log into a remote server.
Once you enter the server name- the program finds the server and gets you to the front door.
Then there are 2 more levels of security, a individuals log in and password… and after that- a internet access password.
So as for quickbooks- we export the reports into a spreadsheet, then import the data into quickbooks using field mapping or in some cases- just entering larger bulk numbers.
How you enter into quickbooks (monthly or something other than monthly) depends on if your accrual or cash accounting.