While the coronavirus outbreak continues to wreak havoc on the nation’s workforce, landlords are starting to feel the squeeze. Millions of tenants suddenly find themselves out of work and unable to pay rent. Local and state governments have stepped in to stop evictions, and many landlords are responding by offering to defer rent payments for 30-90 days. Regardless of how you’re approaching the situation with your tenants, it’s now more important than ever to keep accurate records of which tenants paid how much rent on what date.
Earlier this month, Stessa introduced two new features to help you handle emerging challenges with rent collection! Number one is that you can now assign any income or expense transaction directly to a specific unit. You already had the ability to assign transactions at the portfolio or property level, and this third level of granularity promises to provide even more insights into rent collection, capital expenses, and other items that may relate to only one unit.
The second helpful feature we recently launched is the Stress Test Report, which is explained in a separate article.
Assign Unit-Level Transactions in Two Clicks
To see unit-level transactions in action, just visit your Transactions page. For any multi-unit property, when you hover over an income or expense line item, you’ll now see a second line appear underneath the property name. The new option reads, “+ Assign to unit.” Click this to pull up a pick list of the various units you’ve set up for this property on your Leases & Tenants page. Pick the correct unit and you’re done! It’s that easy.
This feature is great for tracking and filtering all prior rent payments by unit. That will help you keep tabs on which units have outstanding balances and when their most recent payment was received. You can also use unit-level assignments to tie capital expense projects like kitchen and bathroom remodels to the correct unit. Repairs and maintenance expenses are another category you may want to track by unit. Sometimes a particular unit will incur more than its fair share of R&M, but you may not be aware of an ongoing issue unless you’re keeping tabs on expenses at the unit-level.
Run Reports at the Unit Level
As with portfolios and properties, you can also run reports by unit once you’ve assigned various income and expenses this way. Just use the “Reports” button on your Transactions page and then set the “Reporting” option to “By Unit.”
This is the easiest way to quickly tally up rent collections by unit across a single property. Given our current economic trajectory, you may need to take advantage of reports like this regularly to work out payment plans and make sure everyone is keeping up with their revised rent schedules.
To start tracking your rent collections by unit, set up your first property on Stessa. It’s free to get started!
