Managing a portfolio of properties is notoriously time-consuming. There are lots of areas that need to be managed. Consequently, many agencies find it hard to grow their business with their current workload.
This is where property management software can help. Property management software is designed to streamline your processes, boost efficiency, and save your agency valuable time and money, which allows you to focus on revenue-generating tasks that can grow your agency.
Automation:
Although it may sound obvious, a considerable amount of time and resources need to be invested in growing your agency, which many agencies don’t have the capacity for. Day-to-day property management includes lots of admin tasks, which if completed manually, are incredibly time-consuming. For example, sending out rent reminders. Too many manual processes are not sustainable when trying to grow your agency.
Software allows agencies to automate many different processes, including rent payments, reminders, maintenance requests, reporting, and much more. By automating daily tasks, agencies can focus more time and energy on achieving their growth goal and reduce admin time.
As an example, the maintenance workflow involves lots of moving parts, including understanding the request details, contacting an external contractor, scheduling appointments, updating all those involved, and much more. When done manually this workflow can take up a large chunk of an agency’s resources and time.
With property management software, agencies can automate the maintenance workflow and streamline the communication between all involved, providing agencies with valuable opportunities to allocate spare time and resources to increasing revenues and growing their portfolio in the interest of success.
Centralise your business:
There are many different areas of property management, and often agencies use different softwares to help them with each different area.
Having a vast array of systems for different processes means that your information, documents, and data are siloed. This makes cross-checking information difficult and time-consuming, as well as increasing the chance of mistakes being made and important things being missed.
Property management software will centralise your business operations, allowing you to manage all processes of the tenancy journey in one area, such as organising initial viewings, managing maintenance requests, and much more.
By having full visibility of operations and key business data that is easily accessible for all members of the team, the chances of important information being missed are greatly decreased, reducing the risk of costly mistakes. Having full visibility also greatly boosts your agency’s efficiency, alongside improving in-team communication.
Scalable processes:
In order to efficiently manage your current portfolio and more properties you take on as your business grows, you must have processes which are able to withstand the pressure and scale with your agency.
If your current processes cannot maintain sustainable management of properties, then your likelihood of further growth is extremely limited. Simply hiring more staff is not a cost-effective way to grow and you don’t want to put too much pressure on your current staff.
Property management software provides flexible processes which can cope with the challenges growth brings. Depending on the software selected, it can provide agents with the ability to add further detailed processes related to more tenancies, making the process of acquiring new properties and tenancies more efficient.
It is important to select a customisable software which allows for changes as and when they’re required, meaning it is vital to choose one with a flexible infrastructure for it to be suitable for your agency.
Tenant retention:
Having your properties consistently filled is important for agency growth, therefore, tenant satisfaction is highly important.
Increasing void periods will result in lower revenue being generated, alongside facing disappointment from property owners. Lower revenue means limited financial growth, and disappointed owners leads to a shrinking portfolio, and so agency growth becomes unachievable.
It is therefore vital to maintain high tenant satisfaction. Slow response times, poor service and lack of communication will eventually lead to tenants feeling dissatisfied, potentially leading to an increase in tenant turnover.
Property management software provides agents the ability to quickly communicate with and respond to tenants. Faster responses results in pleased tenants, increasing the probability current tenants will stay.
Some softwares allow tenants to easily view documents and other important information related to their tenancy with a dedicated platform or dashboard. This eliminates the need to contact property managers for the requested information and frees up more time for agents to prioritise other tasks aimed enabling their agency to grow further.
Effective communication:
Overseeing multiple properties and tenancies with different individuals who need different information can become confusing and hard to track. This can lead to information being missed or confused with other properties, so an efficient and organised communication channel is essential.
Hosting and tracking all communication with stakeholders on a property management software that all staff have access to reduces the risk of messages being missed, as well as boosting efficiency.
Constantly communicating with stakeholders also takes up a lot of valuable time and resources that could be allocated to growing your agency.
For example, property owners place their trust in you to oversee the care of their property, and so will want frequent updates. This can become time-consuming for agencies who will be constantly sending updates to owners.
Selected property management softwares can provide dashboards for property owners, where they have full visibility of the relevant information regarding their properties. This provides agents with more time to focus on other tasks.
Finance management:
Managing your financial processes manually and in a decentralised manner leaves you at greater risk of human error and costly mistakes being made.
Letting agents are responsible for overseeing a wide range of outgoing and incoming payments, such as rental payments from tenants, which need reconciling. As a result, agencies are forced to allocate manpower to this process, increasing staff costs, restricting the time spent on prioritising tasks focusing on your agency’s growth.
Property management software provides agencies with the ability to streamline their financial processes. They’re able to easily track invoices, bills, and other outgoing or inbound transactions.
Some softwares allow you to automate the matching and reconciliation process. In addition to this, you’re able to perform single or bulk payment distributions, and automate owner or vendor payments all within one centralised system.
Effective financial management will encourage growth by enabling agencies to track payments and act accordingly should issues arise. Being able to do so will mean as your portfolio grows, your agency is able to handle the financial responsibilities and complex processes that are involved, whilst reducing the costly risk of human error.
*Disclaimer: please note this blog is only intended as a guide, and is not to be taken as legal advice*
