Getting started with Rentastic is designed to be quick, and simple. In a matter of minutes, you can be up and running, classifying transactions like a pro. Let’s get on to a quick start!

Create an Account

Creating an account is about as simple as you’d think. Head on over to the Register page, and create an account using your email and password.

After verifying your email, you’ll be brought back to the main dashboard screen.

The Dashboard

The dashboard is essentially your home to get a quick view of how your investments are performing. It shows income, expenses, and a quick view at property performance. Upon first registering for an account, your dashboard will be blank until we’ve completed a few house-keeping items:

As you complete each of the initial three steps, the circle will fill with a check mark, indicating that they’ve been completed. Once all three steps have been completed, your dashboard will begin populating with data.

Add your first property

For a quick start on adding your first property, you can either click on “Properties” from the left sidebar menu, or you can click on “Add your first property” from the list of initial steps.

You’ll then be brought to the “Properties” screen. Click on the “Add Property” button in the top-right corner:

From here, you’ll be brought to the “Add Property” screen, where you can begin entering all the data for your first investment property.

Fill in as many of the fields as you can, such as Initial Loan Amount, Current Loan Balance, Estimated Market value, Purchase date, and more. The more info you can provide Rentastic, the better we can forecast your property’s performance.

Note that after entering the property address, city, state, and zip code, that many of the fields will be automatically filled in for you. This information is pulled from public sources. If data is not auto-populated for you, it simply means that the address doesn’t exist, or we weren’t able to find any publicly-accessible data on the property.

Once you’re satisfied, click “Save”.

Congratulations! You’ve added your first property. You can continue adding additional properties here now, if you’d like.

Clicking on the newly-added property will bring you to the “Property Details” page. Here, you’ll notice that there is a plethora of information provided. As you continue on to link you bank accounts and classify transactions for each property, this data will begin to update and give you a better picture as to your property’s actual performance. For now, most fields will show “$0”.

If you now return to the Dashboard, you’ll notice that the first item has been completed.

Linking a bank account

Linking a bank account is an integral part of Rentastic. This is how we calculate the actual performance of your properties. Linking a bank account is safe and secure, and incredibly easy.

For a quick start, select “Bank Accounts” on the left sidebar menu, and then click on “Link Account”:

A grey screen should then pop up, allowing you to select which Bank Account you would like to add. If it’s not listed on the main screen, you can easily search for it. Rentastic supports thousands of banks and credit unions, adding new ones every day.

At this time, however, Capital One does not work with Rentastic.

After selecting your bank, you’ll be asked to enter your username and password. For this example, we’ve chosen Chase Bank.

After entering your username and password, you’ll be shown this screen, where you can select which accounts you’d like to link to Rentastic. You can choose as many or as few as you’d like. Most people will link Checking, Saving, and Credit Card accounts, but ignore others. Rentastic strongly recommends that you link a business account, and not intermingle personal finances with business finances.

Upon successful linking, you’ll be brought to this screen, showing you the bank accounts that Rentastic is currently tracking.

Notice now, that next to the “Transactions” link in the left sidebar, you’ll see a red number appear. This shows that you have new transactions waiting to be classified.

Classify transactions

Now that we’ve successfully added our properties and bank accounts, we’re ready to classify our transactions. Select “Transactions” from the left side menu.

Transactions highlighted in red mean that they still have yet to be classified. For each transaction, select the dropdown under “Category” to assign it. We can do the same with the “Property” selector as well. When a property is classified, the red outline will dissapear.

Tip: Premium members can set up classification rules to help make classifying transactions easier.

The initial classification of items is the most tedious part of the entire process. Once all items are classified, you’ll only be asked to classify new transactions from that point forward.

That’s it!

Congratulations! You’ve successfully set up Rentastic. Wasn’t that easy?