Managing a rental property portfolio can be incredibly time-consuming. It involves a multitude of repetitive tasks, such as:
- Verifying received rent payments,
- Sending rent receipts and due date notices (in France), or
- Calculating charge breakdowns,
- Etc.
A property management software is useful for:
- Automating repetitive tasks
- Monthly monitoring of rent collection
- Automatic rent indexing
- Communication with tenants
- Sending rent receipts
- Sending due date notices
- Sending payment reminders (via SMS, email, or registered mail)
- Sending rent invoices (for professional tenants)
- Getting an overview of your property portfolio
- Complying with administrative, financial, and legal best practices in property management
This article explains how property management software enables you to manage your properties efficiently. Professional managers who work full-time can save the equivalent of half a full-time job by using management software.
Property Management Ebook Automated Tasks with Property Management Software
A property management software significantly improves your efficiency in managing your property portfolio. For instance, when an issue arises, such as a missed payment, an efficient tool alerts you and even offers to send a reminder to the tenant.
Let’s explore what a good, efficient property management software should handle on your behalf:
Automatic Rent Monitoring
Only a few software options are directly connected to your bank accounts and can automatically identify tenant payments without any intervention on your part!
For those of you who sift through 1,000 lines of bank statements each month, this feature will be a game changer.
The software connects to your bank accounts via what is called a bank aggregator. This service, which banks are required to offer, allows different applications to connect to them.
With this direct connection, the software automatically detects rent deposits in your account and associates them with the corresponding tenant. This eliminates the need to manually verify rents, reducing the risk of missing a late payment.
Sending Payment Reminders
Unpaid rent is one of the biggest risks in property management. It’s crucial not to let it go unchecked.
When your software detects that rent hasn’t been paid by the specified date, it automatically sends a reminder to your tenant.
You can configure reminders for each tenant according to the desired schedule and via the preferred channel (SMS, email, or registered mail).
If one of your tenants is a habitual late payer, you can set up more frequent and faster reminders to prevent issues and demonstrate that you are vigilant about rent payments.
A good property management software should integrate these different communication modes and allow you to send reminders via emails or registered letters, which are prerequisites for any legal action.
Check out our sample letters to send to your tenant in case of non-payment.
Sending Registered Letters in Case of Notice to Quit
In case of escalation, communications between you and the tenants will need to be used to build a case with your lawyer.
Emails or registered letters then become essential to initiate the process (at least two reminders must be sent to the tenant before approaching a peace judge).
As everyone knows, the opening hours of the post office are unpredictable, and once there, you can waste half an hour at best to send a registered letter.
A good management software allows automatic sending of registered letters, with the acknowledgment of receipt sent to the property owner.
Rent Indexing
Rent indexing is often neglected and forgotten, as landlords don’t usually think about it on the lease anniversary. However, it allows you to improve your property portfolio’s profitability over time.
A property management software handles:
- Calculating the new indexed rent
- Notifying your tenant
- Adjusting future rent receipts or invoices to the new amount.
Charge Breakdown and Rebilling
Charge breakdown is the quintessential task that is time-consuming and can be very tedious. Here again, quality software can make a significant difference.
It retrieves the tenant’s charge provisions and compares them to the invoices entered into the software at the end of the period to balance the accounts and notify the tenant of the charge adjustment.
Some advanced software doesn’t even require invoice entry, as they are directly connected to your accounting software and automatically import the necessary accounting entries to calculate the charge breakdown.
This allows you to perform charge breakdowns and rebilling for single-owner buildings, divided offices, or warehouses with multiple activity cells.
Accounting Management (with Export to Accounting Software via CSV)
Some property management software also assists with accounting management.
They allow the integration of incoming and outgoing invoices directly into the accounting system, avoiding double entry. They also help with VAT processing.
Technical Management Task Monitoring
Property management software also assists with the technical management of your property portfolio.
It notifies you of reminders for equipment maintenance in your rental properties: boilers, building maintenance, etc.
It also allows you to track and keep records of repairs and interventions that have taken place in each rented property.
Creating recurring tasks is also possible with property management software.
Depending on your needs, you can set up reminders for insurance receipt, boiler maintenance, or chimney sweeping.
Financial Reporting
Property management software generates financial reports for your property portfolio.
These documents centralize all your information. They allow you to have a comprehensive overview of your rental property activity.
A financial report checks the profitability of your properties and helps you make decisions about potential sales, renovations, or the purchase of new properties.
Rent Invoice Sending
For managing commercial leases, offices, or professional tenants, you are legally required to send a rent invoice to your tenants.
The property management software detects received rents and automatically sends rent invoices to tenants.
Compliance with Legal Best Practices
In case of a dispute due to non-payment, property management software allows you to easily prepare your lawyer’s case using the history of communications sent to tenants.
Centralizing Information and Documents
A property management software centralizes all information and documents related to your property portfolio.
This way, even if you’re on the other side of the world, if you need a document, it’s directly accessible from your computer, tablet, or smartphone.
Let’s see what data a good management software should handle:
Document Centralization
You can store the following documents in your software:
- Lease agreements
- Tenant’s home insurance policies
- Required diagnostics before renting (energy performance certificates, etc.)
- Move-in and move-out inspection reports
- Purchase invoices related to your property (repairs, maintenance, etc.)
- Rent receipts and due date notices
- Notarized deeds
Centralizing Contact Information
A robust property management software allows you to store all the contact information of people involved in your property management in one place.
You can record contact details for:
- Your tenants
- Neighbors
- Guarantors
- The condo association manager
- Craftspeople to contact in case of issues
- Etc.
Thus, even when traveling, you maintain control over your property portfolio. If there’s an issue with one of your properties, you can call the right service provider.
Improving Visibility on Property Profitability
Overall Visibility on Payment Delays
When payment delays pile up, it can be difficult to keep track.
On the one hand, your tenant does not adhere to the rent indexation, and every month, they accumulate more rent arrears. Add to this a regular delay in rent payments, and maybe one of the payments is subject to an installment plan…
How do you keep track of what your tenant truly owes?
That’s the role of management software. It keeps the accounts up to date. This way, you directly know the total debt your tenant owes.
Saving Valuable Time for Strategic Planning
A management software allows you to structure your organization and no longer forget important tasks. Everything that could be automated has been.
This time-saving allows you to save money and take a step back to focus on your property portfolio and investments. You can then verify that your portfolio is profitable and acquire new properties.
Ensuring Reliability in Task Management
If a third party manages your properties and the management and information are not properly centralized, you risk facing issues in case of their absence.
It could be that information is scattered across folders, spreadsheets, or worse, in their head. They alone know all the tasks required to ensure proper management.
If they fall ill tomorrow, you might find yourself in a tough spot.
Using management software allows you to maintain control over the tasks to be performed. The processes are fixed, regardless of who implements them.
Onboarding a New Employee
Onboarding a new employee is complex. Property management involves many processes to explain and follow.
Traditional property management involves many informal processes, based on Excel spreadsheets, documents in folders, etc.
Absolutely nothing is formalized, making it very challenging to onboard a new employee. It can take several weeks, even months, before they are fully operational. This is costly in terms of time and money.
This is where management software comes in. It helps structure and ensure all processes in your property management.
You can train a new employee on a specific task defined by your software.
For instance, to perform indexing, your software provides the framework. It reminds you of important dates related to contracts, reference indices and quarters, calculation formulas, and template letters to communicate with your tenants.
Your new employee only has to follow the steps.
Choosing an Online Property Management Tool
Online property management solutions offer many advantages:
- They help avoid the need for specialized agencies that charge high fees
- They centralize information, making it accessible anytime for consultation, editing, or communication
- The digitization of documents simplifies daily management and saves money
- All tasks can be automated to avoid errors or omissions and to meet all your obligations to tenants
- Digital solutions offer innovative features tailored to property managers’ needs
Smovin: An All-In-One Tool
With Smovin’s property management solution, property owners can manage their properties with ease, regardless of portfolio size.
Smovin handles the property management of all types of properties:
- Residential,
- Commercial,
- Offices,
- Mixed-use,
- Etc.
The tool harmonizes and automates key property management tasks.
Thanks to its bank connection, rent tracking is assured. Unpaid rents are identified at a glance, and you can send payment reminders in a few clicks or automatically.
The solution assists with generating all necessary documents for your daily management (rent receipts, due date notices (for France), rent invoices, etc.).
Smovin simplifies accounting tracking with data imports or exports to or from your accounting tool. Smovin fully integrates with certain accounting tools like Exact Online. In this case, information flows between tools in just a few clicks.
Your dashboard provides an overview of:
- The tenant payment rate
- The occupancy rate of your portfolio
- The tasks to be completed based on key contract dates.
This tool greatly simplifies task tracking as you can also set up personalized reminders (property maintenance, rent indexing…).
With over 20,000 properties registered on the platform, Smovin offers a robust solution for real estate investors who want to monitor their portfolio in real time.
Controlling Your Portfolio with Ease
Smovin’s platform makes information centralization possible.
This way, you can keep a record of all your actions, whether related to your properties or tenants. These key insights provide greater visibility into your portfolio’s overall situation.
Smovin helps you:
- Minimize unpaid rents by automating reminder sends and identifying situations that require regularization,
- Avoid oversights, mistakes, and negligence,
- Track rent indexing by adjusting the amount at each lease anniversary,
- Redistribute non-flat-rate charges to tenants,
- Optimize the accounting tracking of activities.
Simply configure the information related to each property, set your rental conditions, and integrate your bank account with the tool.
Once implemented, Smovin requires no special skills or training to manage your rental properties daily.
Long-Term Positive Impacts
The Smovin application generates long-term benefits.
The automation of processes and improved visibility provide managers with all the tools they need to make relevant strategic decisions.
The benefits of the Smovin solution include:
- Increased productivity,
- Reduced errors and omissions,
- Greater responsiveness,
- Optimized profitability.
So, don’t hesitate to integrate this solution into your activities to implement more rigorous procedures.
Investing in a property management solution has become essential to cope with the complexity of administrative procedures.
Today, financial, fiscal, and legal challenges can be insurmountable without integrating a property management tool like Smovin.
