Property Management Software’s Blog

Apart for the tenancy agreement that you sign with your tenant when they move into your property, the next most important piece of paper you give to your tenants will be the ‘Tenant Welcome Pack.’

And to be quite honest with you, if your chosen property management software or landlord software solution doesn’t provide this then it is lacking a key requirement of every landlord.

This single sheet of paper is likely to answer the vast majority of questions that any tenant will have when they move into the property.

More importantly it provides you with the perfect opportunity to win over the tenants’ trust in you.

In the ‘Tenant Welcome Pack’ you must provide the following essential information:

- Your personal contact details

- The safety certificate details (i.e. for gas, energy performance, electrics etc.)

- The insurance policies (i.e. central heating insurance, plumbing insurance, etc.)

- The utility supplier details (Gas/Water/Electricity/Council Tax suppliers etc.)

- Details of the tenancy deposit scheme (if applicable)

It is always a great idea to have the tenant welcome pack with you when you are showing prospective tenants around the property because should the potential tenant ask “Who supplies the gas?” you can respond by saying:

“Good question! This is my ‘Tenant Welcome Pack’ and it shows all the utility suppliers for the property, along with their contact details. All tenants get a copy of this when they move into the property.”

As you can see, this is an excellent way to let your tenants know that you take your property business seriously.

When using the right property management software or general property software a tenant welcome pack is easy to generate. You simply enter all the information once for the property and then the report should be automatically generated at a touch of a button.

Our property management software and landlord software solutions are designed by landlords for landlords. Use our property software solutions today to get better organised and boost your cash flow! If you want easy to use landlord software that will help you to get better organized and slash your accountancy and legal fees then try our landlord solutions today.

One of the key requirements for any landlord software is to make sure that your tenants’ rental payments are fully tracked.

At the end of the day your tenants’ full and timely payments will have a direct impact on the success you have in your property business. If they pay on time then it is highly likely that you will be able to maintain a healthy cash flow.

However, untimely non-payments could quickly lead to your property business turning into a nightmare, and the last thing you want to do is end up chasing tenants for payments through the courts or spending time, money and effort evicting them.

As our property management software solutions have evolved, our customers have wanted more and more focus on tenant management.

Here are some of the key requirements that they have requested and which we have subsequently developed:

Tenant Payment History Reports – This is a basic requirement of any landlords software package, but our customer have requested up-to-the minute reports giving a full status of rents received to date, rents outstanding to date, when the were paid and whether they were paid on time.

Tenant Invoicing – As more and more landlords are spending time getting better organised with their property business, they now want property software to have the facility to invoice their tenants in advance. This is especially the case with landlords who have larger portfolios

Tenant Receipts – The need for generating tenant receipts is also high, with receipts being generated for all tenant payments. This gives both you and your tenant proof that payments have been made.

Overdue Rents and Forthcoming Rents – having full visibility of rents that are outstanding and rents that are due in the near future is vital to ensuring that your landlord software can forecast what your cash flow situation will be.

As I said from the outset, cash flow is the most important ingredient for the success of any landlord and, therefore, it is vital that you know what your cash flow situation is and what it is likely to be.

The above features are just some that have been added into our property management software and are aimed at making sure that you are able to effectively and efficiently manage all aspects of your tenant rents.

Want easy to use property management software and landlord software that is designed by landlords? If so then try our ground breaking property software solution ‘landlords property manager’! If you want easy to use landlord software that will help you to get better organized and slash your accountancy and legal fees then try our landlord solutions today.

Ever since the worldwide property boom started in the early 2000s, a number of property management software suppliers have come to the market and no sooner have they appeared then they have even more quickly disappeared.

The idea of producing property management software (also known as landlord software for more established investors) did make sense. After all, it was a growing business where more and more people were investing in property and were generating healthy capital gains, in some cases good cash flow, from their rental income.

Therefore, tools/software was required to help landlords to better manage their portfolio.

Unfortunately, a number of these companies have failed, and will continue to fail, for the following reasons:

1) Not being designed by experienced landlords

One of the reasons I designed Landlords Property Manager was because, as a practising landlord and software designer, I had not come across any software that had actually been designed by landlords.

I was amazed how too many people who were good at writing software programs for other markets (that they had business knowledge of) had created software that failed to address so many of the landlords’ basic management needs.

2) Not being recognised by the authoritative organisations

Every good software package that is successful will get endorsements from authoritative landlord organisations or reputable landlords.

This is a major way for any landlord software to gain credibility, as failure to do so can leave people unsure of what they are buying.

3) Not providing adequate after-sales service

Any software solution is only as good as it’s after sales support service, and those not providing an adequate service will soon get found out. I am amazed how even in today’s environment the number of firms that still only provide a mobile number to contact for support issues!

Of course, this means that there is only ever one contact and if that person is not available then how long will you wait for the assistance you require?

4) Relying on other sources of income to fund the software

I appreciate that every software idea requires some sort of cash impetus in order to get the ball rolling. In fact, this is true for any businesses.

However, relying on other sources of income to fund the software at all times is very risky. This is especially the case for software solutions that are free. What if that source of income dries up? What if they then decide to start charging a fee after having marketed the software is free? With software, as the number of subscriptions increase then so does the support aspect and the need to hire good support people. Failure to pay good money for good staff can quickly lead to a business’s downfall.

Any successful business should become self funding and the most successful software companies are those that offer value for money both in terms of service and support, and are profitable!

5) Is not easy to use

Don’t forget the whole purpose for any property software package is to make life easier for landlords. Therefore, it should be easy to use and it should be even easier to enter your information.

Property Portfolio Software prides itself on providing easy to use property management software and landlord software solutions that are designed by landlords. Our property software solutions will save you time, money and effort in managing all aspects of your property business. If you want easy to use landlord software that will help you to get better organized and slash your accountancy and legal fees then try our landlord solutions today.

A business is only as good as the support it offers to its customers. Therefore, one of the most important questions you should ask when choosing your property management software solution is ‘what support services are offered?’

If I am looking at any software or service then this is one of the first questions I look to get an answer for, and I look for the following answers:

1) Email and Ticketing

This is the standard way that most support services operate nowadays and, therefore, it is important to understand how and when your emails will be responded to.

Your property software supplier should have a ticket management system in place for all your software queries to be logged and tracked. You will be able to log into the ticket management system and see the status of your support query at any time.

2) Telephone Support

It is always important to be able to speak to somebody. Although emailing has become more and more popular there are some people who just want to hear the voice of friendly customer services personnel on the other end of the phone.

So firstly look for a telephone number and make sure that it is not a premium rate telephone number or even worse, a mobile number.

If it is a mobile number then it will mean you are likely to find it difficult to get hold of the sole person providing the support.

If it is a premium rate number then be wary. Is this a sign that the company doesn’t want to be contacted and is only interested in making the sale?

Now I do understand that some landlord software businesses are internet based only and don’t offer any telephone number at all. If this is the case then I would definitely want to see what their response times are before I departed with any money.

3) On-line chat

Last but not least we should be able to chat with the company we are looking to buy our landlord software from or have already purchased it from.

Now we use communication technologies such as MSN, Yahoo Messenger or Skype to communicate with our friends and colleagues all over the world so I would also expect to be able to chat to someone on-line.

In short, make sure your property management software supplier offers a good combination of the above after-sales software support services.

Property Portfolio Software prides itself on providing easy to use property management software and landlord software solutions that are designed by landlords. Our property software solutions will save you time, money and effort in managing all aspects of your property business. If you want easy to use landlord software that will help you to get better organized and slash your accountancy and legal fees then try our landlord solutions today.

There are two reasons why a person desires to become a landlord.

The first is to acquire an appreciating asset that, when disposed of, will generate a handsome capital gain.

The second is to have a property that is generating a month by month positive cash flow that will either supplement any other income or will in fact become the sole income for the landlord.

It is quite common now for landlords to take the time and effort to buy a property management software or landlord software solution that will help them to better manage their growing property portfolio.

However, any software solution must be capable of accurately tracking the cash flow that the portfolio is generating.

With Landlords Property Manager you have a property software solution that not only allows landlords to track their entire property related income and expenditure, but goes one step further by providing cash flow reports and graphs.

For example, you can track how much positive (or negative) cash flow is being generated across a single property or across the entire portfolio.

You can also use this clever landlord software package to generate Microsoft excel based reports and graphs to see in chronological sequence all the income and expenditure. Of course, if you want to then send this spreadsheet to your accountant it involves just a couple of mouse clicks.

It will highlight any properties that are generating a negative cash flow and then you can start to scrutinise the expenditure, or lack of income, and take quick remedial action.

Such remedial action could include: increasing the rents; removing some of the expenditure that is incurred; or you could start shopping around to find cheaper suppliers.

In fact, you should always be addressing the above constantly, but sometimes it is only when you see things in black and white, or you see how your cash flow situation is, that you take the appropriate action.

As every landlord knows, good cash flow management is the heartbeat of any successful property business and, therefore, your property management software should be helping you monitor this and highlight the areas requiring attention and improvement.

Our property management software and landlord software solutions are designed by landlords for landlords. Use our property software solutions today to get better organised and boost your cash flow! If you want easy to use landlord software that will help you to get better organized and slash your accountancy and legal fees then try our landlord solutions today.

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