Tenant Portal Software for Rental Property Management – Propertyware

Treat Tenants Like VIPs with Tenant Portals

Marc Eiting — Tue, 12 Jan 2016 22:38:02 +0000

In a look at landlord-tenant relationships, LinkedIn states that “the average renter is responsible, has plenty of disposable income and a desire to live in a clean and safe home.” As you seek excellence in your rental property management, try to re-frame your tenant-manager relationship as one that has customer service at its core.

Be Flexible With Your Lease

Forbes says that while you need to have a standard lease agreement, you should tweak it to fit your situation. Flexibility around what’s included in the lease can help your tenants feel more at home. For example, if a tenant has pets, the lease agreement can give more specifics about what pets you can accommodate and any related fees or other information.

Anticipate Your Tenants’ Needs

Your tenants need a safe and well-maintained home in a neighborhood that fits their lifestyle. You can’t change the neighborhood, but you can change the place where your tenants live. Using maintenance scheduling tools, you can anticipate your tenants needs and make their lives easier by performing regular maintenance on your rental properties. Regular inspections and preventative maintenance will prevent emergencies from occurring and reduce urgent calls to your office.

Understand What Matters Most

What matters to your tenants? The answer will vary from person to person. It may be that your tenants need to rest during the daytime because they work the night shift. They may be looking for a safe yard where their child can play. When you meet new tenants, determine what matters most to them and make an extra effort to ensure that aspect of the property is in excellent condition before they move in. If it’s a scheduling or communication issue that matters most, take special care to ensure that you work your schedule around your tenants’ and communicate in a way that works for them.

Communicate Well

There’s nothing more frustrating than stymied communication, especially when there’s a problem like a broken pipe or a loose or missing rail on the stairs. If your tenants were customers at an upscale hotel, any problems would be addressed as soon as possible and with an apology as well. Give your tenants the ability to communicate with you more easily by using online tenant portals that allow them to log-in, submit a request, and see what the status of that request might be. Respond personally to needs and critiques when you can to address the problem more thoroughly.

“We wouldn’t be the company we are without Propertyware… it allows us (with only 2 people) to manage the entire business” – Jeff Shelton / 3rd Base Realty

When you’re working in the field of rental property management, you need to have a support system. Propertyware is a system that will support you as you develop your website, collect data, and engage in customer service practices that enhance and solidify your business. Contact us to learn more about how Propertyware can help your business communicate with your tenants and meet their needs. Take a free tour today.

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How Tenant Portals Make Online Rental Payments Easy

Marc Eiting — Wed, 18 Oct 2017 10:00:32 +0000

When you allow online rental payments via a tenant portal system, you make payment easier for your tenants. Today, digital payments are common, and people are more likely to be willing to pay their bills and their rent online. For your business, this means that you’ll be paid quicker and the entire process will be easier for you and your tenants.

Encouraging tenants to pay online

Some of your tenants may be comfortable paying online, while others may be more reluctant. For those who are worried about online payment, you can offer a simple tutorial and implement additional website security to reassure them that their information is safe. If tenants have a hard time remembering to sign up, provide an incentive for new people. Make the online signup process a standard part of your new tenant program.

Electronic payments are easy to track with your property management system

When you’re doing online payments, your payments become much easier to track. You can get your software programs to automatically track when payments come in so that you can understand who pays on time and who is chronically late. Your software can tally up overdue payments for you, and it can give you reports on the percentage of on time payments throughout the year.

Online payments facilitate automation

As you try to get certain processes more automated, payments are a logical choice. An online payment system is easy to manage with automatic invoices, and it’s also simple to set up recurring reminders through your software and payment systems. Not only is online payment faster, it saves your employees time.

They are attractive to tenants

While online payments are helpful for you, they’re also very attractive to most tenants. Tenants want to pay their bills at night and avoid going to a mail box. The convenience of online payments can become one element of a package that attracts new tenants to your business. Additional Reading: Top 25 Websites for Advertising Your Property Rental Listing

Improve your cash flow

If your cash isn’t flowing, you have a much harder time running and building your business. Getting online payments is quicker and easier than receiving checks in the mail. Quoted in The Globe and Mail, Mike McDerment CEO of FreshBooks states that “managing your cash flow is basically the lifeblood of your business as a small business owner, so with something so mission critical, you want to choose carefully.”

You can focus on the future

Online payment frees up your cash flow to focus on the future. A Wall Street Journal article (subscription required) mentions that small business owners are “finding that mobile-payment devices and other technologies are making it easier …to turn sales into working capital overnight.” In this rapidly-moving world in which properties, tenants, and business needs can change so quickly, implementing a property management system that can help with online rental payments allows you to free up time and money to focus on the future. Are you trying to make it easier for your tenants to pay online? With its unique tenant portal, Propertyware’s property management software makes it simple for tenants to go online, ask questions, and make payments.

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How to Streamline Your Property Management Processes

Marc Eiting — Wed, 20 Jan 2016 16:55:15 +0000

You want your property management business to be a top performer. How can you work more efficiently, save money, and rise to the top? Excellence in property management comes from the systems you use to organize your business. Try these techniques to streamline your property management strategy.

Create a Tenant Portal

To be more efficient, you should consider how you communicate with your tenants. With a rental property tenant portal, you can give tenants access to information about their accounts and the property where they live. They’ll be able to ask questions, find answers, and complete tasks like rent payment online. New tenants can apply for a rental property online as well. This streamlines your communication with your tenants, freeing up your time to answer the more unusual and urgent questions. According to Property Management Minutes, reducing tenant turnover can also streamline your business and make it more financially viable. “The cost of a single turn including rent loss generally starts in the range of $1000 and can easily grow to a range of $2500 to $5000 depending on the capital replacements.” Reduce the time you need to spend on turnover management, and you free time and money to improve your property management business in other ways.

Determine Property Management Marketing ROI

Do you know if your marketing strategies are hitting the mark? Use marketing analytics software to put your money where your momentum is. Marketing analytics software helps you understand the strengths and weaknesses of your website and focus your marketing dollars on qualified leads. Look for marketing software that provides month over month comparisons of prospect metrics, lead conversions and overall marketing ROI.

Use Software for Spend Management

When you’re wondering how to decrease property management expenses, consider standardizing those expenses. A spend management program and standardized product purchasing program can help you spend in accordance with your values and your bottom line. It makes spending practices consistent and allows you to look for deals and discounts on specific, targeted items that are part of your usual spending. Simplifying your buying process not only saves you time, it saves you money.

Property Management Accounting Software

Proper accounting software allows you to track the ins and outs of your business’s financial life. According to the Houston Chronicle’s Small Business feature,

“tracking financial data provides important information for a company regarding revenue stream, status of bill payments and prediction of future cash flows.”

Without proper data about your financial management, you’re operating without a financial roadmap. Your accounting software should help you ensure payments, track your account balances, stay on budget, and project cash flows to avoid a cash flow crunch.

Analyze Your Accounts Using Property Management Software

Accounting software not only helps your business stay on track every day, but it also helps you note problem areas and find solutions. For example, if you notice that rent nonpayment or late payment is an area where you’re losing a lot of money; you can develop strategies to address this proactively with your tenants. If you see that emergency repairs are making a hole in your budget, you can create strategies for ongoing maintenance. Use your accounting software as a tool to assess your financial strategies on an ongoing basis so that you can plan and implement solutions.

Ready to Accomplish More, in Less Time with Property Management Software?

As you work to improve your efficiency, Propertyware is on your side. Our software products are here to support you as you rise to the top of your field. Streamline your work and your finances with our accounting and property management software products.

Watch a demo of Propertyware to see how our software can help you streamline your property management business.

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Property Management and the New Way To Connect

Marc Eiting — Thu, 25 Feb 2016 19:12:47 +0000

In this industry, you work with an interconnected web of properties. Some have similar maintenance needs or are in the same part of the city. Others have urgent concerns that are outside the norm and need to be addressed immediately. Forbes says that small businesses that are seeking software solutions often “lack the resources to make sure the technology is customized and adopted.” As you work to streamline your property management processes, you need to find rental property management software that is focused on your unique needs as a property manager and helps you to understand and manage the many connected yet diverse needs of your properties.

Owner Portals Connect With and Ease Owner Concerns

When you’re managing multiple properties, you’re likely working with multiple owners. All of these owners have questions from time to time, and those questions are important and pressing. Provide your owners with the ability to answer their questions about payment or the status of a property by developing an owner portal. This portal can also include a way for owners to get in touch with you in case their questions are not answered by the property information that you place online.

Renters Love Tenant Portals

Your tenants need to know the details of their property, from the landscaping maintenance schedule to the way that they can pay their overdue rent quickly and easily. By providing a tenant portal, you can provide tenants with an easy way to pay the rent and access information about their account and their rental property, and they’ll also have a quick and easy way to ask you questions. The Bigger Pockets blog talks about the importance of working together with your tenants to find solutions: “The enemy is the maintenance problem. We are the tenant’s ally. Why would anyone get mad at their ally?” Adding a tenant portal helps you communicate with your tenant and find solutions to their problems.

Better Vendor Coordination Means Higher Tenant and Owner Satisfaction

When you’re working with multiple properties with different needs, you need to have the ability to contact vendors quickly and easily. With property management software, you’ll have a list of vendors at your fingertips. You’ll also be able to view project locations and see the progress of a project by looking at your customized alerts. Since you’ll understand all of the details of the work your vendors are doing and you’ll be in touch with them every step of the way, you’ll be able to manage up to 67% more service requests, increasing tenant and owner satisfaction.

Connect Your Schedules

Are you still working in a scheduling system that’s not designed for rental property management or using a paper day planner? If so, you’re missing out on the features available to you if you place your scheduling into a specifically-designed property management software system. With property management software, you and your employees can track and log your work hours with online collaboration tools. You can also examine the time you’ve spent on a project by searching by property, work order, or transaction. If you love Outlook and Google Calendars, you can still use them, but they’ll sync seamlessly with your rental property management software so that your schedule and your teams’ and properties’ needs are connected.

Connect With the Cloud

Are you and your employees as flexible as you’d like to be?

If you’d like to increase your ability to troubleshoot, schedule, and contact tenants, owners, and vendors when you’re out of the office, work with cloud-based software products. A cloud-based system will allow you to access your documents, vendor lists, property inspections, lease agreements, and much more while you’re on site, making it simpler to find the solutions needed to resolve problems. You can even work with tenants to enter data for tenant screening and sign documents while you’re out of the office.

Watch this video from Jeff Shelton, owner of 3rd Base Realty, and see why he says “We wouldn’t be the company we are without Propertyware… it allows us (with only 2 people) to manage the entire business”.

Are you looking for software products that have the potential to transform the way that you work on rental property management? By choosing software that’s specifically designed for property managers, you’ll be better able to manage multiple properties on a tight timeline. Contact Propertyware today to set up an online demo.

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Tenant and Owner Portals for Rental Property Websites

Marc Eiting — Fri, 11 Mar 2016 15:00:00 +0000

When you add tenant and owner portals to your property management website, you boost owner and tenant satisfaction, and save time with online rent payments.

Why Add a Tenant Portal or Owner Portal?

When you manage a portfolio of properties, it can be difficult to stay connected with each individual tenant. A tenant and owner portals are great relationship management tools that help improve communication and strengthen your relationships with renters. Inman states that for tenants, “the relationship…with your landlord can directly impact your lifestyle, comfort, image and financial standing.” The same goes for communication between tenants, owners, and property managers. Business success rests on the success of these personal relationships. If you are a property manager, much of your energy is probably focused on properties and the rental market. However, the property owner holds your business asset, and you need to ensure you meet their needs, as well. With owner portals, you can ensure clear communication that’s personalized for each owner and each property.

Portals Integrate With Online Property Management Software

As you implement an online property management software system, you allow tenants and owners to access key information. What important details can you place in your tenant or owner portal? You might add information about upcoming or past maintenance or about payment schedules for owners. With portals that are integrated with your property management software, it’s simple to provide updates or change information about a property, conveying this easily to your tenants and owners.

Processing Online Rent Payments

Is the rent lost in the mail again? One of the advantages of a portal is the ability to track and manage online payments, eliminating concerns about the time lag, inaccuracy, and the occasional loss of rental checks. Today, people can pay for goods and services in a single step process online, allowing vendors to receive almost immediate payment. Use online payment processing software to receive payments more quickly and simplify the process for tenants. Track payments as well, so that tenants can confirm that their rent has gone through or determine what they still have to pay, while owners can track their payments owed.

Set Parameters

Tenant portals are a convenient noticeboard for rental property managers. Add information about deposits, or store property rules online for easy reference. Tenant portals also allow you to be completely clear with your tenants about all aspects of your property management and make information available in a single, easy to access location.

Communicate Well and Reduce Complaints

When you work in the property management industry, you are bound to receive complaints at some point. According to an article in the Telegraph, “dealing promptly with maintenance problems and fairly with other issues generates goodwill that pays dividends.” Generate good feeling, and you’ll receive rent payments on time and have a more secure relationship with your owners and tenants. With online property management software that features tenant portals, you can move from reactive to proactive, focusing on communication that sets the conditions for success and reduces complaints.

“Our owners love the owner portals. Our tenants love the tenant portals. With Propertyware, you can go in, do a direct deposit, create the owner statement, and publish it to their portal, or email it to them.” – Michele Fox / Fox Rental Management

Tenant and Owner Portal Software for Rental Property Websites

As your business grows, you need to have a simple way to consolidate information for your tenants and owners. With tenant and owner portals, you’ll reduce the time you spend chasing down information about your properties and increase your tenants’ and owners’ ability to find that information themselves. Are you curious to see how tenant and owner portals work? Sign up for a free tour of Propertyware today.

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