Frequently asked questions.

Estavo is property operations software for self-managing landlords and real estate investors. It replaces disconnected spreadsheets with a single platform for income tracking, expense management, obligation reminders, maintenance requests, and tax reporting.

Estavo is built for people who own rental property and manage it themselves — vacation rental owners, long-term landlords, and real estate investors. If you're managing a portfolio with a spreadsheet and a pile of email threads, Estavo was built for you.

No. Estavo is software — not a service. We don't manage your properties, collect rent, or handle tenant communications on your behalf. Estavo is the tool that helps you do it yourself, more reliably.

No. The free tier is permanent for 1 unit — no credit card, no trial period, no expiry. Just sign up and start.

Estavo generates draft transactions from recurring bills automatically, alerts you before insurance and mortgage renewals expire, produces IRS Schedule E summaries at tax time, and gives everyone on your team the right level of access — without any of that being possible in a spreadsheet.

A unit is a rentable space — one apartment, one vacation rental, one room you rent out. A duplex counts as 2 units. A single-family home counts as 1 unit. A 10-unit apartment building counts as 10 units. Pricing is based on active units, not the number of properties in your account.

A property is the physical building or parcel of land. A unit is the rentable space within it. A single-family home has one unit. A duplex has two. Shared costs like mortgage and insurance attach to the property; income and unit-specific expenses attach to the unit.

Yes. Each unit has a lease type (short-term or long-term). Short-term units get booking platform tracking, guest welcome packet features, and check-in/check-out views. Long-term units get invoice generation and tenant notification features. You can have a mix in one portfolio.

Yes, on Starter plans and above. We provide CSV templates for properties, units, and transactions. Download the template, map your existing data to the columns, upload. For complex situations, we offer a free white-glove migration for the first 50 subscribers.

You can record bookings from Airbnb, VRBO, HomeAway, Booking.com, direct bookings, or any other source. Estavo tracks the platform per transaction so you can see which channels are performing.

No. Estavo is a financial operations platform — it records what goes in and out, but does not process payments or act as an intermediary between you and your tenants. You collect rent through your existing process (bank transfer, Venmo, check, whatever); Estavo records it.

You set up ObligationTemplates for recurring bills — mortgage, insurance, utilities, HOA fees. Estavo generates draft transaction records on schedule, sends you reminders before due dates, and alerts you when renewals are approaching or expiring. There's no 'is_recurring' checkbox — it's a full schedule engine.

Every transaction is categorized to one of the 15 IRS Schedule E categories when you enter it (or automatically when imported). At tax time, you export a Schedule E summary report. Hand the file to your CPA — no more spreadsheet reconciliation.

Yes. You can invite team members with role-based access: Owner (full access), Manager (property and transaction access), Accountant (financial read access), Maintenance (work orders only), Viewer (read-only). Sensitive credentials like WiFi passwords and door codes are only visible to Owner and Manager roles.

Estavo is a Progressive Web App (PWA) — you can install it on your phone home screen and it works offline. A native iOS and Android app is planned for Phase 2.

Yes. Maintenance requests support photo attachments, which can be captured directly from your phone camera. No separate upload step — take a photo, attach it to the work order.

Yes. The free tier is permanent for 1 active unit. No credit card required, no time limit, no trial expiry. It's not a trial — it's the free plan. You can use it indefinitely.

You'll be prompted to upgrade to the next plan. We don't silently charge you more or lock you out of existing features. You keep everything you have; you just can't add more units until you upgrade.

Annual billing with a discount is planned. It's not available in the initial release. Monthly billing is available at launch.

Yes, any time. Downgrade to a lower plan from your account settings. If you cancel, your data remains accessible for 30 days, after which you can export it. No cancellation fees.

The free tier is the trial — permanent, no credit card, 1 unit. When you hit a feature gate (like adding a 2nd unit or using CSV import), a contextual 14-day trial of the next plan activates automatically. No separate trial signup, no credit card to forget to cancel.

We're building a referral and partner program. Email us at hello@vivescriptsolutions.com with your situation and we'll figure something out.

Data is stored on PostgreSQL hosted in a secure data center. File attachments (receipts, photos) are stored in S3-compatible object storage with 15-minute expiring presigned URLs — no public file exposure.

Yes, always. You can export all transactions, properties, and units as CSV at any time, from any plan. Your data is yours. We don't lock it up.

Access credentials are encrypted with AES-256-GCM before storage. They're only decrypted when explicitly revealed by an authorized user (Owner or Manager role), which creates an audit log entry. They're never returned in list views.

Your data remains accessible for 30 days after cancellation. During that time, you can export everything. After 30 days, it's deleted from our servers. We'll send a reminder before deletion.