What is Property Management Software and How Does It Work?
As an investor or property manager, you juggle multiple tasks simultaneously. You perform legal paperwork, manage finances, remind and receive rent, etc. It becomes easier if you have a business to maintain or a job to work alongside your investment endeavours.
Fortunately, there are many property management software available in the market to help you oversee your property management tasks. These tools help you streamline functions, automate critical jobs, ease your workload, and remove stress. You will not make the mistakes you commonly do when you wear multiple hats as the software will be taking care of repetitive tasks and streamlining operations.
This piece is your no-nonsense guide to property management system software, its features, benefits and more. Let’s get started:
What is Property Management Software?
Property management system software is an app or software that aids property managers or investors in streamlining financial, managerial and back-office processes.
These tools help you order and automate your daily functions pertinent to overseeing rental properties. They share features with general business management applications like financials and banking. But property management software also has other features that support marketing and communication efforts, tenant vetting, leasing and inspections and meeting insurance requirements.
They often provide features such as maintenance tracking, document storage, digital leases, online payment processing and online tenant portals. They offer help to a vast array of users from landlords overseeing hundreds of properties to independent property owners.
Needless to say, these software applications accelerate and simplify property management functions.
How Does Property Management Software Work?
Property management systems are integral apps for property owners, property managers, and real estate agents, providing a thorough tool for handling rental units efficiently. Here are a few essential features that explain how property management software works:
1. Records All Data in One Place
Property management solution stores all necessary data in its database such as info about renters, leases, upkeep orders, and accounting ledger. It gives you rapid access to essential information and simplifies processes.
2. Manages Tenants
It typically boasts a tenant portal to allow renters to lodge repair requests, check lease papers, and chat with you. It facilitates applicant assessment, document signing, and rent collection. It ensures the effectiveness and rapidity of these tasks.
3. Handles Maintenance and Work Requests
Property management systems work to manage maintenance requests and monitor work orders. You can allocate jobs to service providers, and oversee performance to check if maintenance tasks are being completed on time.
4. Handles Accounting and Financial Matters
A PMS has powerful accounting features to monitor rental money and costs, create reports, and help in expense handling. They may also work alongside other bookkeeping tools for smooth accounting functions.
5. Gathers Rent
Property management software can gather rent online furnishing ease to both managers and renters. It mitigates the headache of physical rent collection and helps tenants pay on time from their homes.
6. Reporting and Analytics
They typically have reporting tools that record and display data about the performance of your units. These reports may have repair expenses, occupancy rates, rental income etc which helps you make future decisions.
Read More: How to Use Real Estate CRM Software to Convert Leads into Sales?
7. Marketing and Property Listing
This software helps you promote your apartments. Property management solutions may streamline the generation of listings, publishing on several listing websites, and monitoring the performance of listings.
8. Compliance and Legal Paperwork
Property management software checks if you are obeying all local rules and regulations. It may save and handle legal papers such as addendums, notices and leases, and aids in checking for compliance with all laws and requirements.
9. Customization and Scalability
A PMS can be tailored to fulfil particular requirements and used to scale the expansion of your property portfolio. You can modify it as per your business needs, to cater for aspects that emerge with your growing needs.
Benefits of Property Management Software
1. Administers and Monitors Maintenance
Property maintenance is the number one helping aspect of consumer satisfaction. You will boost our tenant retention rate if you better care for our units.
It decreases the amount of money and time needed to drive and keep new tenants and gives you more liberty as an investor. Software that streamlines maintenance management and scheduling ensures your daily jobs are handled.
It gives a clear overview of all current and upcoming upkeep requests which helps you schedule them properly. With the increase in smartphone usage, particularly the capability to conveniently send and get images — some people will just capture a photo and send it to you.
A central location for maintenance documents gathers these pictures in one repository. You can then employ them to assist service providers in solving the issue and to support possible insurance claims.
2. Tenant Applications and Screenings
We all look for an ideal tenant to avoid any hassle, but we should stay ready when things get a little challenging. Screening tenants’ applications through a streamlined process is one way to ensure the retention of ideal renters.
Some property management tools help users sift not-so-ideal applicants with traits such as reference verifications, tenant histories and background checks. This helps you understand whether you can depend on the potential tenant to pay on time.
Background vetting features are added or available via external tool integrations and may show concerns if they find information related to a potential landlord. Try finding a PMS solution that has a credit check feature for further peace of mind.
3. Simplifies Accounting
Landlords who need to manage several properties typically find accounting challenging. Property management solutions may aid you in handling and updating your accounts. It can also help you organize all aspects of filing taxes.
As a business owner, you need to strictly monitor your finances and property management is just the same. The ideal property management solution will aid you in augmenting income while mitigating costs.
Cost-handling functionalities supply an extensive rundown of your business’s financial condition that helps you use your budget effectively. Tax management features assist you in obeying local tax regulations while bank integrations simplify the reconciliation process.
Some property management systems have powerful BI (business intelligence) features. They assess a vast array of monetary metrics such as maintenance, income, and costs and show results in an understandable format.
Extensive analytics unpack areas of function that stay on budget along with any factors that need to be more efficiently handled.
Read More: Exploring Property Management Software Solutions in the UAE
4. Streamlines Communication
Some property management tools automate communications with contractors, tenants and landlords. Traits such as bulk text messaging and automated rent reminders speed up communication and lower workload.
Contact management is another headache for property managers as lists can rapidly become cluttered and unordered. So property management software will have extensive contact management features to aid you in better ordering your contacts and decrease the number of hours you spend looking for phone numbers and emails.
You can also categorize tenants, landlords, vendors, maintenance workers and other business partners together for a more simplified contact management and workflow.
Tenant repositories help you contact renters easily while supplier repositories make it convenient to swiftly get the service you require. Also, the lead management feature ensures your units stay occupied at all times.
5. Online Payments
A critical part of good customer experience is the ability to pay easily. Your renters will pay on time if you provide them with easy payment methods. Online payment methods allow renters to pay on the go and free them from having to visit your office.
The result? You will not be running after tenants to receive payments and filing late charges. Some property management software features rent track which displays the names of tenants who have paid and the names of those who haven’t. A few PMS boast automatic late-charge calculators.
Online tenant portals allow tenants to pay rent online and display their data on communication histories, upkeep orders and rental receipts. An extensive tenant website will also alleviate the managerial workload.
6. Advertising and Marketing
Just like any business, advertising and marketing is key to keeping your products (units) in front of the eyes of the prospects. Landlords may lose income if their apartments stay vacant for a long time which happens if they can’t get some time to put up ads on properly listing sites.
The solution? An extensive marketing and advertising module that lets you show rental information in a digestible fashion. Website management and social media integration features help you market your units to a vast customer base.
Property managers should have a well-designed site to show their existing and future vacancies. They could market beautiful units such as vacation rentals or villas for sale, complete with online booking features for more ease.
Including a customer review section on the website helps you drive interest as current and old renters would advocate that your unit is a desirable one. This rings more true if you keep your tenants happy most of the time. When prospects have evidence of our reliability as a property manager who has well-maintained units, you will start to view a boost in quality candidates.
7. Fast-Tracks Growth
If you want to grow your property investment or management business, you must use a property management system. These tools complete your daily managerial jobs freeing your time slots where you can focus on expanding your business.
For example, lead management is a big hassle for property managers as some tenants vacate the unit without prior notice or you have to vacate the apartment for their inappropriate behaviour. In any case, an empty unit means a loss of revenue so the property manager leaves all other things and starts putting up advertising and assessing applications.
With the lead management feature, you can plan for this type of issue which frees property manager to focus on their business.
Main Types of Property Management Software
Residential Property Management Software
This software application aims to manage homes, villas, apartments, inexpensive accommodation and student housing.
Cozy and Avail are two efficient residential property management software for independent property owners that oversee less than five units. Both of these options are free, provide an impressive degree of automation and don’t have loads of unnecessary features.
If a landlord manages less than 150 units, they might require more robust software. RentBedi and Buildium are more powerful and enable users to automate areas of their managerial tasks via a user-friendly application. Plus, they provide an excellent deal of scalability when a user is developing their property portfolio.
Commercial Property Management Software
This software app is ideal for users who manage retail outlets, industrial properties and office spaces. Commercial property management software features leasing and marketing management customized to the users’ commercial requirements.
Two great options are Re-Leased and AppFolio which boasts market-specific traits absent in most residential PMSs. these features are corporate training, support for ratio utility billing and common area maintenance. Both are famous options for commercial property owners and managers.
Conclusion
This concludes our article on the definition and working of property management software. We explained the basics of a property management solution, its perks, features and main types. We hope this piece has helped you decide whether you need one or which type or option is best for you. A property management software system can make your life easy as a property manager as it automates many tasks and streamlines other operations. Happy property managing!