What is everybody using to automate their land-lording business. I want to see what other Landlords are finding pros and cons. I have been looking at programs that assist with tenant screening, bookkeeping, tenant management and marketing. I spend too much time screening tenants and getting ads going on Craigslist and Zillow property manager. I am interested in what you all have to say. Please help me with making my life easier.

Others probably have more experience so take this newbie's experience with a grain of salt.

All my systems and forms come from Mike Bulter's "Landlording on Autopilot" and Leigh Robinson's "Landlording an handy manual for ..."

All the forms are in Word docs in Dropbox so I can access them from anywhere (so are the excel files).

I use tenantcloud.com to do two things. I use it create a rental ad with pictures and they push it to zillow, trulia, and hotpads so I only have to do it once. I use it to track tenants paying and when they pay.

I use mysmartmove.com to do the credit check. I send the prospective tenant a link from mysmartmove.com and they pay the fee and run a credit and criminal check on themselves and I get the report.

I use a free google voice phone # that I give the tenants which I forward to my "real" phone number so I always know if it is a tenant or a prospective tenant.

I use google mail (with a gmail email) to converse with the tenants instead of my "real" email address.

I use a simple excel spreadsheet as my business checkbook which at the end of the year I sort and total the categories for the accountant.

I use a simple excel spreadsheet to track property info like roof age, hot water heater age, air filter size, property size and cashflow and other financial stats.

I use Buildium. I like the online tenant applications, the maintenance/repair tracking, and the accounts receivable tracking. I do not like the lack of support for automated late fees on weekly and bi-weekly payers. Prices have been going up almost every year. I am considering switching, but haven't found anything else that has all the features I want at a reasonable price yet.

If you have A LOT of units I think appfolio is probably a good option, but for a small landlord it is too expensive.

Documents, leases, notices, are in Word. Bookkeeping done in Quickbooks. I use the QB calendar as a tickler file for rent increases. Tenant screening done via National Credit Reporting because we get the discount as a member of the Idaho Rental Managers and Owners Association. Zillow for advertisements. You can save your ad, so you don't need to redo it every time. (Good for multifamily where your units look the same.)

Talk about being a dinosaur, I still use Quicken Rental Property Manager (v. 2.0 which debuted in 2006). This ancient rental property software is easy to use and keep tracks of all rental income/expenses and tenant files.

I use it to track income/expenses. The features are too numerous to describe. I do t use all of them. It keeps track of leases, contact info, you can upload anything to it, they do rent collection (if you want), have an ability to create web pages for you, way too many things to explain.

Pretty easy to figure out how to use and customer support is terrific. I mostly use it for income/expense tracking because I have so much of it. I love the multitude of reports it generates for you. In an instant I can see whatever I want, how much I've spent with a specific vendor (they generate 1099s for you), what I've spent/earned by property, by tenant, by category, etc...

You can set up reminders which I use. Also has an ability to generate emails to tenants and for tenants to make requests (I've not used that). Like I said, way too many things to describe but easy to disregard the ones you don't need.

Bill, if you a MrLandlord member, there is a very good software program that you have access to. It also has different levels and pricing, however, it is only $15 per month as a member and that is for whatever number of units you grow to. I have been using it myself for several years. You can read about all its features at PropertyManagerCloud.com.

Like Kyle I use Buildium. It's OK.

I like the elementary web site they provide. Traffic to my web site is way down since I've been advertising on FB. It's easy to get listings up & take down. They also syndicate to Trulia & Zillow automatically so I don't have to henk with that.

I don't use the accounting. I still use QB. I have a system in place that has triple redundancy before I settle with owners every month to make sure everything balances. It's archaic, antiquated & time consuming but I'm also at ease knowing my numbers are correct before I settle with owners. When I was collecting over $100K in rent every month this was a little more imperative than it is now but I still use it.

They have online payments available as well. But I'm already paying a monthly subscription and they still want set up fees for a merchant account & I just said naw.