We are first time park buyers and looking for recommendations for a great software program. The previous owner used word and excel to track things but we want a web based software program. I’ve been researching different programs… Rent Manager, Appfolio, American Business Software and Buildium so far.
Some things on the program wish list besides the standard property & unit information are…
Good reporting including ad hoc capabilities
Mortgage servicing
Tenant screening
Tenant portal
Auto apply late charges
Ability to attach documents
Showhome project tracking
Web based
Bulk payment application or some type of ability to apply payments quickly
Accounting functionality and/or ability to export data into quickbooks
We run our income through RentManager and our expenses through Quickbooks (and copy over the income on a monthly basis from RM to QB). I tried Quickbooks online, but found I didn’t like it as much, so we’re tied to a specific computer for that. But if there was someone else with QB with whom I wanted to share the data entry, I could share the files (they are online).
Each of RMO and QB/QBO has pluses and minuses and could theoretically do the work for both income and expenses, but they each don’t handle the other “side” of things as well.
We use NoteSmith for notes but it is the worst piece of commercial software I have ever encountered. I hate it. Unfortunately, I have not found anything else that is substantially useful. I’d appreciate any tips for handling notes better.
For tenant screening we use Kroll Factual Services.
Thanks, Brandon! Rent Manager is the software that I like best so far. Is Kroll Factual Services tied to Rent Manager? Rent Manager referred me to AmRent for screening services and my understanding is that links right into Rent Manager so there’s no double entry. I will look at Kroll and see what they offer.
Great thread Ccon! I’m in the same boat and have had the same question on my mind. I want to embrace technology and software in the business where it seems like there isn’t a lot. Please post your final decision and a short “Why?” when you guys do finalize. I would really love to learn from your experience.
Brandon,
When you import into either RM or QB, is it a fairly simply process or did you have to do some custom enhancements to it?
Many of our clients are using Lender’s Software Inc for their captive finance companies. They are very happy with it in part because it is chattel lending manufactured home specific.
Thanks, Ken. Do you have contact information for Lender’s Software Inc? Their website does not seem to work.
Moezer, when I transfer data from RMO to QB, I do it “by hand.” I look up in RMO how much income we received, late fees, deposits, discounts, etc., and I put that information into QB monthly via a general journal entry. I then check to make sure that QB thinks we received (via the bank transaction downloads) the same amount that RMO thinks we received (when entering rents & charges).
I haven’t talked to them for a while. I have no idea why their website is not working, but you are correct it isn’t working. I’m in Dallas for the TMHA workshop on Dodd-Frank. I will call some of the clients I know were using Hal to see if I can find out what is going on when I get back later this week.
We use parksidekick to manage the parks, notesmith for our notes and RTO’s, and quickbooks (not online) for our books.
I like parksidekick because you pay once, not monthly, yearly etc… We also can have a copy on all of the managers computers, and everyone can log in and have access to the data. I have used notesmith for almost 10 years now, so i must be used to it because I like it… and quickbooks is easy because every accountant and CPA has a copy and can open your books. We do our tenant checks with Kroll factual data, and we use Dropbox for our cloud,online file storage- but- we have converted one park to Skydrive as a test- they give 7gb free!
Apparently they are growing by leaps and bounds. I am not an IT guy but the way I understand it is they were hosting their own website and while installing more drive systems to accommodate that growth they had a choice of crashing their website or not being able to store more data. They chose to crash their website. They apparently will have the new IBM server installed 1/16/14.
The contact information I posted is still good for them and their email is working.
One last thought on something I do understand. Not all software has the correct factors for interest calculations for each state. Different states have different mandates regarding interest. It is very important to use the correct factor for each state you operate in. Be Careful. I know of at least one of our clients that switched software and paid a $50K fine for failing to check the factors. (Big client) I also know that National City paid huge fines on their MH chattel loan portfolio about 10 years ago for using Ohio factors in 5 other states.