To me this is pretty concerning. Stessa has got a new payment processor and how things are showing up in the transactions page is pretty disappointing. Take a look at this screenshot from my ledger.
I’ve been informed by Stessa that all rent will show up as a deposit into the account when the tenant pays rent and then subsequently there will be a Stessa Payout Transfer showing up. This payout will NOT be associated with specific units or properties and will simply be a funds transfer from their processor into your account and may be a combination of different rent amounts, even partial rent amounts.
I would MUCH prefer to see Stessa flag a rent as PENDING on the rent collection tab and NOT have an entry into the transactions page UNTIL it has cleared and those funds are actually deposited into our account. Please speak up if you agree.
I agree that this is an issue. There should be only 1 transaction per rent payment. However, Stessa is automatically creating 2 transactions per rent payment. The first for the actual payment and the second (called Stessa Payout) for the transfer from their processor to my account, which is categorized as a Transfer and is throwing off our books and hence should not be added to our transactions. All of my transfers should add up to zero across all my books. There should be a debit from one account matching a credit from another account. Since the “processor” is not one of my accounts, I should not see it as a transfer, and should only see the first transaction as income. The best work-around that I’m aware of is to manually delete all these “Stessa Payout” transactions or merge the two transactions. Either way, it requires unnecessary extra work to correct it. If anyone knows a better way, please reply letting me know.
Thanks for chiming in. Totally agree. I hope they can resolve this because it doesn’t make sense nor follow common accounting practices. Hopefully if enough people chime in on this thread or provide feedback they will consider changing it back to it was previously!
Agreed. This totally goes against accounting principals and muddies the water. This is a HUGE concern and to me shows they are heading in the wrong direction.
I was wondering why there were extra rent payments! Ridiculous hopefully they figure it out quickly and fix it. They just need to only put a transaction that has finished into the accounting. Otherwise it wont be correct.
Thanks for chiming in. I have a support call scheduled for Thursday with them so hopefully I can emphasize that. If anyone else is pro member I encourage you to do the same.
As is, the banking isn’t very transparent and like we all feel this makes it less so. I’m worried I will need to move back to external accounts. It’s a shame because they’ve made some great progress developing the platform.
I’m glad it wasn’t just me hating this. Now my ledgers are all screwed up and I think I made things worse in my attempt at fixing this. I have already communicated my displeasure to Stessa about this change.
Yep, definitely not just you. I had a call with Stessa support yesterday and emphasized how poor this new implementation is and that it’s not consistent with accounting standards
Hopefully others can chime in and if so we can likely get it resolved quicker.
Stessa changed the payment processor behind the scenes and one of the changes is the “Stessa Payout” accounting line item. Another change is fees charged, my tenants have been paying with different methods and I’ve now had two tenants report they were charged extra last month for their payment. I believe they are now enforcing the 3% convenience fee. I wish Stessa would communicate this clearly with landlords and tenants since (1) as a landlord I wasn’t aware and (2) my tenants both seem caught offguard.
@peter Your analysis of the problem and solution is 100% correct. I totally agree. It would also be much cleaner if each payment was deposited into the cash management account as it was paid to help landlords track which payments didn’t go through and for which property.
Does anyone know if Stessa is addressing this? Beginning in October, all of my rent ledgers are now incorrect and I don’t know who has paid and who hasn’t. I downloaded my history of transactions and there are 1300 duplicated transactions across all tenant ledgers. I upgraded to Pro to get phone support and you have to make an appointment. The next appointment is three weeks out???
Just want to chime in and share that all the rent payments don’t list an account in the ledger, there is no account listed and hence why the Stessa Payout entries are. Bummed to see this but just realized it when I was reviewing year end stuff. You can see the last column is blank.
Can others please complain to Stessa to get this fixed. I’m PRO and I had a support call where one thing I addressed was this. It’s got to get fixed ASAP
hopefully they figure it out quickly and fix it. They just need to only put a transaction that has finished into the accounting. Otherwise it wont be correct.