I’ve seen a few posts complaining about the changes of recent updates to Stessa, and I’ll be adding to this. I cannot stand the new Stessa and am really considering switching to a new platform. It feels like they never even beta tested any of these changes.
Here are my current problems:
There is no way to set an end date on month to month leases without changing to a fixed term lease. If there is a way, it certainly isn’t obvious like it used to be.
Previous leases that were ended have become active again with the no way to end the lease (see above). I show several units that ended years ago that are suddenly active and behind on rent.
When inputting income → rents, when you select the property, the unit no longer displays the tenant in the unit. It only shows the unit number and can be confusing when dealing with many tenants in a portfolio. Stessa used to display the name of the tenant in the unit. It does show the tenant in the unit once the payment has been recorded and you can change it after.
When adding rent and saving it, if there is an old lease that became active again after the update (see above), it automatically attaches the rent to the old tenant’s ledger since you cant see the name under the unit. This leads to confusion in the rent roll because it is reporting all the transactions incorrectly.
You can no longer open ledgers for tenants in a new tab when under the rent roll report page (it makes you click it to exit the whole report). This is just slow and poor design.
It now takes four clicks to access a tenant ledger
The new ledger is confusing and hard to follow (IMO you don’t need three separate pages for summary, ledger, and notes. Simplicity is better by a mile).
I can’t imagine I’m the only one that has noticed these issues. My business partners also have noticed the changes and dislike them. We all agree that Stessa is much harder to use now.
I used the “old” Stessa for years and loved it. Worked perfectly.
The new Stessa is miserable with constant new bugs and less than intuitive relocation of menu items. I’m considering changing softwares. I feel bad complaining about a free app, but the changes are difficult to manage.
Just a note to say we appreciate the feedback here and will be making adjustments to address many of the issues that have been raised since we redesigned how leases, tenants, and rent collection work in Stessa. Some of these improvements are already live, others will be rolling out in the weeks to come. Your feedback is essential and our Design team is currently conducting detailed customer interviews in preparation for a new round of refinements.
If you are interested in sharing your feedback or participating in a live screen-share session, please send an email to support@stessa.com with the subject line: “Leases & tenants interview request,” along with a few dates/times that work for you.
Really could not agree with this more. Feels like they are trying really hard to force use to collect rent through their software. Manually inputting rents takes much longer now than it did with the prior version, and leases are way more confusing to set up than they need to be. Transactions have also been glitchy for me ever since the new style was forced and surely I’m not the only one having constant issues. Really hope they listen to what people are saying and actually make good changes.
Using Stessa Rent Collection also doubles the transaction the now. There’s a combined (all rent paid through Stessa) “Transfer” transaction in addition to the individual “Rent Payment” for the tenant. An extra transaction displaying that probably helps on the backend accounting for Stessa but then just adds a lot of extra transactions to the Landlord’s ledger to sort through.
Since the recent update, my bank account keeps losing connection and transactions are not loading in. Also, for a lease that has expired, the tenant is still showing in the Rent Collection screen. This should just show “VACANT”. I think the update has suddenly made STESSA more complicated and far less intuitive. Disappointing.
Hi Devin, I emailed support@stessa.com with the subject line above and received the below AI reply. Was this as expected? It’s a poor user experience. In October, incoming payments were suddenly duplicated and my rent ledgers are incorrect. Ledgers now show tenants have overpaid by tens of thousands and I don’t know who is current and who isn’t. I downloaded my history of transactions to attempt to manually scrub and there are 1300+ duplicate transactions across all tenant ledgers. In good faith, I upgraded to Pro to get phone support, the next appointment is three weeks out, 12/15?? I had to notice all tenants that due to Stessa bugs, all rent payments should be Zelle’d or mailed.
AI reply: Thanks for reaching out and offering to share your UX feedback - that’s incredibly valuable given your background and experience with 40 units on our platform.
For feedback sessions and meetings with our team, Pro subscribers have access to priority support including the ability to schedule 1:1 meetings with our support team.
To schedule a call, log into your Pro account and visit the home screen of the messenger, then scroll down to find the “Schedule a Call” option. If you need assistance with this process, just request to speak with a human and we’ll help connect you with the right team member to discuss your feedback and potential interview opportunity.
Is there anything else I can help you with regarding this process?
This answer was composed by AI Assistant, Stessa’s AI Agent.
@bert323 summarized it well. I fell much of the same frustration after the addition of the rent collection tab replacing the old leases & tenants tab: un-intuitive lease/ledger/tenant interface with too many clicks, poorly designed ledger which takes up too much screen real-estate, confusing how to edit move in/move out dates. Ledger PDF’s don’t display VERY critical information (the full property address) and only display the nickname. I too dislike seeing the Stessa Rent Collection on every screen. Stessa is a great tool and the support team does their best. But this recent update took a change for the worse. I look forward to the improvements @devin alludes to.