Stessa, Baselane, or a spreadsheet vs. a real bookkeeper — do I need both?
Free landlord software is genuinely good at what it does. It's worth knowing exactly where it stops, instead of finding out the hard way.
I'm not going to tell you Stessa or Baselane are bad — they're not. They're free or cheap, built specifically for landlords, and for a lot of situations they genuinely do the job. The honest question isn't "software or bookkeeper," it's knowing exactly where the software's automation stops being enough.
What they're genuinely good at
Connecting to a bank account, auto-categorizing straightforward income and expenses, and giving you a real-time dashboard for a single property or a small, simple portfolio. If that's your situation, the software alone might be enough, and I'll tell you that honestly on a call rather than talk you into something you don't need yet.
Where it actually stops working
- Multiple entities or LLCs: consolidated, tax-ready books across several entities isn't what this software is built for
- Refinances: recording a refi correctly — the payoff of the old loan, the new loan, cash-out treatment, closing costs — needs real judgment, not auto-categorization
- CapEx vs. repairs: the software will categorize a transaction; it won't apply the IRS distinction correctly. See where that line actually falls
- Real reconciliation: auto-imported bank feeds catch the obvious stuff. They don't catch a duplicate, a miscategorization, or a transaction that doesn't match what actually happened — a human checking against the actual statement does
The software isn't wrong for using. It's wrong for outgrowing without noticing.
You don't have to choose one
Plenty of clients keep using Stessa or Baselane for their own quick property-level visibility while I handle the actual bookkeeping underneath it — reconciled, CapEx separated, tax-ready. The software gives you a dashboard. It doesn't replace someone checking that the numbers behind it are actually right.
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Find out where your books really stand
Free 30-minute call. Bring your last bank statement or don't — either way you'll leave knowing what's actually going on.
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