Hemlane Review: Price, Features, Pros and Cons

What is Hemlane?

Hemlane is a property management software with comprehensive features to help users easily manage the entire life cycles of residential rental properties. Users can manage properties located only in the United States, but this cloud-based software is accessible from anywhere in the world from any device with an internet connection.

The base software plan includes tools for marketing, tenant screening, lease tracking, rent payments, and conducting maintenance and repairs. The two advanced plans grant users access to services like 24/7 emergency maintenance support and networks of service professionals and leasing agents.

Our Ratings

Adding New Properties

Adding a new property or a unit to an existing property is easy.

After clicking “Add Property” in the Properties tab, you are able to:

• Select housing type
• Add the address
• Add any team members to associate with the property
• Select the service package
• Upload any necessary documents like images or PDFs
• Add any unit numbers

Once the property and units are added, you can attach them to a tenant profile. You can also move an existing unit to a different property.

Onboarding New Tenants

Adding a new tenant is easy. Simply go to the tenants and leases tab, click add new tenant, and fill out the form. On this form, you can invite the tenant to sign up for Hemlane where they can access the tenant portal. You can also select whether they were pre-approved, or request an online application or background check. The following lease terms can be added:

• Start and end dates
• Monthly rent
• Due date
• Security deposit

Tenant records appear to be sorted by the date that they were created. While you cannot sort them in any other way, you can search your tenant records by their name or email. For users with many tenants, this may present a challenge if they cannot remember the tenant name but they know what the unit is.

Managing Rent Collection

Managing payments is straightforward, and 100% of funds go to the account owner. You can add as many bank accounts as you need with no extra charge from Hemlane. Rent payment options include:

• One time or recurring payments
• Late fees
• Partial payments
• Automatic or manual rent payments
• ACH (free) credit or debit card (3% fee)
• Request /record offline payments

Your first ACH payment processed on Hemlane can take up to 10 business days. All others take 2-3 business days. It’s easy to change the terms/details on rent collection, but you must delete any invoices that were already generated in order to change them. You cannot edit an invoice that was already sent. Other benefits include:

• Daily email summaries of payments
• Monthly email summaries
• Cash flow statements
• Income statement
• Lease ledger
• Download statements - export to CSV or PDF

Maintenance Request Portal

You can easily create a new maintenance request, select the unit, select the issue category, and describe the request. You may also able to upload an image to the maintenance ticket, which could show the problem needing attention.

The software allows you to select a tenant (or opt not to) to associate it with the maintenance request–letting you then select a tenant to contact for scheduling the maintenance. There was also a button to select if no tenants occupy the property. If that is selected, you can add a contact of a team member to help me coordinate the maintenance.

While creating a request, you are unable to navigate to any other parts of the software without completing the request–but you can exit the request, which deletes it completely.

Once the request is completed, there are options to add updates, more photos or documents, and work estimates. I can also easily create a work order, then assign it to a service professional with detailed information about the request.

Tenants can also easily create maintenance and repair requests through the tenant portal.

What Features Are Missing?

Through our experience using Hemlane, we desired:

• Mobile App: While Hemlane is accessible by any device with an internet connection and is mobile-friendly, it does not have a dedicated mobile app. A mobile app containing all the software features would enhance the user experience for users that are constantly on-the-go and need the simplified interface. An app could also give alerts to all users (property managers, tenants, leasing agents, maintenance technicians, etc.) regarding needed documentation, payments, and work orders.

• Integrations: It appears that Hemlane does not integrate with any third-party software at this time. Integrations with accounting tools like Quickbooks could expand functionality for users that need more robust accounting features and want to more easily transfer data.

Pricing Plans

How secure is Hemlane?

Hemlane uses bank-level encryption security to protect payments. Their payment systems are current with banking industry security standards, and their processor is certified to PCI Service Provider Level 1. Hemlane stores sensitive data as encrypted “tokens” which means that nobody on their team will be able to see the data, only the users who entered the data.

Does Hemlane integrate with QuickBooks?

No, Hemlane does not integrate with QuickBooks. Though, Hemlane does have a guide for importing your financial data from Hemlane into QuickBooks.

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Summary

I recommend Hemlane for small real estate businesses that want to manage operations through one platform. Although the cloud-based software is mobile-friendly, many user reviews note that they desire a fully functional mobile app to conduct operations. Also, though there are many great features to help users manage their properties, more integrations would help users connect with other third party software to expand functionality for tasks like accounting.

The Basic plan starts as low as $30 per month. It includes all the tools you need to self-manage your rental properties.

Some property management software charges users for set numbers of units. Since Hemlane charges a base fee plus a fee per unit, you only pay for what you need.

With Essential and Complete plans, you gain access to Hemlane’s 24/7 emergency support team which diagnoses and troubleshoots requests, manages work orders with your service professionals, and schedules maintenance and repairs with tenants. With the Complete plan, you also gain access to Hemlane’s network of maintenance and repair vendors.

Though Hemlane is more expensive than some of its competitors, it is still a cost effective way to easily manage your rental properties from anywhere in the world.