Communication is your core business. It is essential to be able to communicate efficiently with landowners, tenants, contractors and anyone else who may have an interest in a property under management.
All Contacts including land owners, tenants, contractors are kept in one table for easy location and to expedite communication.
The Property Management for Windows (PMW) system maintains a diary of appointments and tasks so that you don’t miss an event.
A log of all phone conversations is maintained for easy reference back to what was previously discussed and may be printed for use in tribunal hearings.
Phone calls may be logged by the receptionist and assigned to a Property Manager to follow up.
All letters, emails and SMS messages sent through the system are logged to provide a complete history of communication with a contact. This log may also be printed should it be needed for legal purposes.
The PMW system provides mail merge documents for Arrears, Inspections, Rent Reviews, Lease Renewals, Management Agreement renewals and Ad-Hoc letters to any contact.
Property Details
Keeping track of the variety of events that relate to properties under management is a large part of the work that is done in this industry – achieving this with minimal effort helps managers to actually manage. The PMW system presents the information in a way that is easy to find and logically ordered so that the details are always at the user’s fingertips.
Multiple land owners may be entered for each property and each owner may have multiple properties.
Multiple Tenants may be entered for each property and rentals tracked either jointly or individually.
The property details that are stored include all features that need to be tracked (such as smoke alarm type and date last checked, security systems and agent pin number) and features for advertising purposes when a property becomes vacant.
It is possible to store an unlimited number of documents of any type in association with a property record. This is useful for scanned copies of agreements, images, personal notes, copies of reports or any other file that may be of relevance to a property.
Insurance can be tracked for each property and contractor in the system. Where maintenance is covered under a policy, they system can generate an insurance claim form with details of the policy and the item being claimed.
Inspections may be entered and printed as a simple overall condition description of main features, or, as a complete detailed check sheet for each item within the property.
A Key register logs all usage of keys including date and time issued and returned (or lost and found) and a key receipt may be printed when the key status is changed.
Property Maintenance
The system provides for quote requests to be sent to contractors and when accepted to be converted into a work order.
Quote requests and work orders may also be generated from diary entries and call logs.
Work orders may be created from quote requests or on an ad-hoc basis.
Payment for work done may be made when closing a completed work order directly from the work order form.
A complete history of work orders and quote requests is maintained and reports provided to show outstanding and overdue work.
When selecting a contractor for a job, the system will alert you to a preferred contractor for the type of service required for the related property.
Conversely it will also warn if a contractor is selected that has been flagged as “not to be used” at a specified location.
Quote requests and work orders may be printed or emailed to contractors.
Work orders may be made to be standing orders (repeating every so often) perpetually or for a number of times.
Management Agreement Details
The management agreement contains a complete description of the terms of the agreement including all fees and charges.
A percentage share for multiple Land owners linked to an agreement allows for the dissection of accounts and the disbursement of receipts.
Land owner statements (users are able to select multiple forms from a range of statement layouts) may be sent as PDF or HTML by email or printed.
Mailing labels may also be printed if being mailed to landowner.
Scanned Accounts
Creditor Accounts may be scanned and attached to owner statements when emailed or reprinted for statements that are mailed.
Tenancies
Each tenancy record tracks the rent paid and the paid to date. If a rental date is modified, the reason for this must be entered and appears in the rental payment history as is appropriate for any tenancy tribunal needs.
Rent review dates are maintained and may be set to update automatically.
Terms of the lease agreement are recorded against each tenancy and include support for fixed term or periodical tenancies.
Lease break fees may be charged automatically and invoiced to tenants where necessary.
Letting and lease renewal charges are automatically levied to owners.
When required a tenant reference is also automatically generated including details of the average lateness of rental payments last inspection results etc.
Water accounts may be calculated and billed to the tenant. Water bills may also optionally be invoiced to the tenant.
Trust Accounting
The system provides for multiple trust accounts to be operated concurrently.
Daily bank sheets may be produced when taking funds to the bank each day.
The system allows for payment to owners and contractors by cheque or direct credit to their account.
A reconciliation process allows for receipts, cheques and direct credits to be reconciled with bank statements and provides for variations (such as rent paid in the trust by an “as yet unknown” tenant).
Where pre-printed forms are used, the system is able to print cheques and receipts as they are generated.
The system supports both Accruals Based GST and Cash Based GST calculations.
Imported Bank Statements
Downloaded bank statements may be imported into the system and matched against tenant BPAY or Agency Numbers and then automatically receipted into the system.
Since there is no bank standard for this, there are about 20 different bank file types supported covering all main types.
Where possible, any trust cheques or direct credits listed on the statement will be flagged as presented when the file is processed.
Direct Debits
Tenants may be flagged as paying by direct debit.
The system will generate a file to be sent to the bank each day to deduct the rent due from tenant accounts.
A separate posting process allows for the posting of these direct debits to take place once the direct debit appears on the bank statement.
The process also takes into account outstanding tenant invoices and the amount may be overridden where necessary to pay for other items.
Debtor Invoices
Tenants and other contacts may be invoiced from within the property management system.
Invoices due to be paid are listed on the income screen when a tenant payment is receipted and payment of selected invoices may be included in the receipt.
Invoices may be entered as future dated and may be made to repeat a number of times (or perpetually) where a standing charge is levied against a tenant or where the tenant has asked to pay a debt in installments.
Water accounts are automatically invoiced when calculated.
Creditor Invoices
Creditor invoices may be entered in the property management system and associated with a scanned image of the invoice.
The system will check for a duplicate entry and warn the user by matching an invoice number and creditor contact number against prior entries.
Creditor invoices may be forward dated so that funds are not held prematurely from owner payments or paid before payment is required.
Like the debtor invoice, creditor invoices may be standing (for regular payments such as an owner’s mortgage repayment or of monthly standard fees to the agent) or may be set to repeat only a fixed number of times.
Payments to owners and creditors are aggregated on a cheque or direct with provision for an automatic print of remittance advices.
Barcoded Accounts
Accounts from utility providers generally carry a post office payment barcode.
The system provides for this barcode to be defined and used with a barcode scanner for entry of these accounts into the system.
This not only speeds the process but reduces the risk of data entry errors.
Links to Third Party Products
The system will link to the RealWorks ™ and ADLforms™ programs to output standard forms and to prevent double entry of tenant and property details.
Client using the DataTools ™ Rapid Addressing Tool are also able to barcode and validate addresses as they are entered.
Contact details may be exported to Microsoft ™ Outlook for easy synchronization with a hand held PDA.
Output is also provided for Pocket Reporter ™
Shortcuts and ease of Use
The system also has a number of features for ease of use.
The date may be entered by a calendar control that allows for date calculation (plus or minus a set number of days, weeks, months).
Today’s date may be entered using the F2 function key or the plus key.
The date may by changed one day at a time using the plus or minus key or one month at a time using the shift plus or minus key).
Searching for any entity (contact, property, owner, contractor or tenant) to be reference within a form is simple by just entering part of the tenant name or address a shortlist will appear to select from. Alternatively a search form is available at all places that such entities need to be specified.
Access to the details of each referenced entity is available from each referencing form. For example, while in the receipt form, the tenant, property or tenant contact form may be displayed providing easy access to all details relating to the tenancy while receipting.
A tree view of all owners with their related management agreements, properties and tenants is available in a floating form that may remain open in the background.
Almost all reports and statements may be viewed onscreen, printed, exported to an XLS spreadsheet file or saved or emailed as either a PDF or a HTML file.