Benefits for the building owner or property manager

• Foremost, automation of property management processes is an important advantage of an online property management website, thereby saving a good of money, time, and energy. For anybody, manual supervision of property-related issues, particularly when the property is a large building, is almost a daunting task as it involves several aspects that one need to monitor closely. Automation allows property managers and home owners avoid all these hassles and transfer their focus on other developmental and investment issues.
• By providing online rent payment facility to residents, property owners or managers can indeed simplify the process of rent collection.
• As a person managing the activities of a large building with number of apartments or shops, you would never want any of them lie vacant at any point of time, thereby causing money loss. An online property management website can even help in advertising your vacancies in a sophisticated manner, something which is important for creating larger impact on the readers and obtained good tenants.
• In addition, there are several other important issues that might crop up when you own a large building. These include maintenance complaints, repairs, and preparation of financial documents for taxation purposes, sending late payment notices, creating rent agreements, eviction notices, and other agreements or keeping track of tenant records. All these jobs can be conveniently handled by building an online property management website that suits your needs and requirements. In fact, one can even segregate properties, send invoices, prepare balance sheets, and manage supplier and vendor information using online asset management software. In addition, as a building owner, you can even gather latest information about the locality or surroundings from the website, so that you are better prepared than others are.

As many people think, online property management software is not just any ordinary or simple accounting package that can create only balance sheets. On the contrary, it is a tool enabled with necessary applications required to support every activity related to real estate workflow that includes recurring bills, monthly rent payments, unruly tenants, building repairs, or even issues related to changing government rules and property taxes. For somebody owning a large building, developing an online property management website for the use of building residents is beneficial in many ways. Some of these benefits are listed below.

Benefits for the tenants

• For residents living in large buildings or apartments, paying monthly rents on a fixed date by means cash or checks can be problematic. If the property owners build a property management website that provides online bill payment facility, tenants no longer have to worry about forgetting rent. They can make the payment according to their convenience while sitting in the comfort of their home. This facility is extremely beneficial for tenants whose monthly rents vary due to addition of utility bill amounts.
• Another problematic aspect for tenants in large buildings is filing complaints about repairs and installations. Moreover, keeping track of the complaint status is again another painful job. With a property management website, one can easily file complaints online and can regularly keep an eye on whether necessary action was taken or not. While building the website, one can even include aspects such as in-system email communication, through which renters can easily communicate their woes with the property owner or manager who is overseeing the property management issues.

• Credit/debit card payments- With the advent of advanced technological applications such as internet and e-commerce, the usage of credit and debit cards for purchasing goods on the internet has increased tremendously over the last couple of years. Interestingly credit/debit cards can be used for paying rents. Unlike recurring debit option, credit/debit card payment is a dynamic withdrawal system, particularly beneficial in situations where rent amounts vary each month. One of the disadvantages of paying through credit cards is that the option is a bit expensive as credit card companies charge a certain fee for every online transaction made by the customer. These charges are usually 2-3% of the transaction amount. Secondly, property managers do have to face the risk chargebacks in case of any fraudulent transactions from the residents.

• Resident-initiated fund transfer – This is the most convenient option for both the tenants and the property managers. In this online payment option, the tenant can sign up into the secure payment gateway provided on the community’s website, enter his/her checking account details, type in the payment amount and other details and click on the submit button. There is another alternative in a resident-initiated fund transfer. In this, the resident can sign-up into his online checking account, submit the payment details of the property manager including the checking account number and name, enter the payment amount, specify the date on which payment has to be made and click on submit. On the specified date, specified amount of money would be debited from the resident’s account and deposited into the checking account of the property manager. Advantage of this system is that the resident does exercise complete control on the checking account, payment amount, and the date on which rent has to be paid. Secondly, this is a low cost option, is flexible, and allows payments to be made from anywhere and anytime. Even the funds are delivered without much delay.

There are multiple advantages of offering tenants an online rent payment solution. While one can drastically decrease the administrative costs and time, online rent payment systems can also reduce the payment errors that usually happen during rent collection. Moreover, with such a system in place, property managers can perform better without worrying about collecting rents. All they need to do is coordinate with the tenants to make payments. Even for tenants, option of online payments is convenient as one can pay rent without needing to step out of the home.

There are different modes of online payment options property managers can choose from and implement them in their property management systems according to the convenience. These options include

• Automatic Transfer of Funds – Also termed as automatic electronic funds transfer or recurring debit payments, this is one of the foremost online payment options that can be made available by property managers with ease. In this method, funds get debited from the tenant’s checking/credit account automatically on a fixed date of every month. In right terms, this option cannot be categorized under online rent payment systems. However, it does offer certain advantages. By allowing an automatic transfer of funds option, tenants no longer have to worry about forgetting rent payment. Secondly, the option does not cost much. There are also quite a few disadvantages of recurring debit. Foremost, the tenants have to forego the control exercised on their checking accounts. Secondly, this system allows only fixed withdrawals every time. However, the amount tenant has to pay might vary when it rent also involves utility billing. Keeping track of the balances and running after tenants to have the dues cleared can be problematic for property managers. In such situations, recurring debit might not be a right solution for both the property managers and for the tenants.

Often, property owners find themselves surprised when they find out that residential property management is not all about collecting rents from the tenants. On the other hand, it requires a great deal of money management that includes maintaining financial records, preparing balance sheets involving income and expenditure details, and bookkeeping. In addition, one needs to ensure that all the reports are ready for annual taxation purpose. Residential property management software provides property owners the ability to track every single aspect involved when taking care of their residential property. Mentioned in this article are some important features that must be present in any residential property management software.

•    Inventory – With an inventory, it is easier to keep track of every aspect related to the rental property. In this, one can clearly list out every single detail about the property including the property dimensions, type of property, information about the tenant, rent details, and even list out all the complaints received with respect to a particular property. In addition, one can even create groups or segregate properties depending on the location, property values, or even based on monthly rental values. In fact, property management firms can gain maximum benefit by using residential property management software as it helps them manage multiple properties with ease.
•    Creating and printing reports – Report creation and record maintenance is critical when it comes to managing any residential property as it helps maintain transparency during transactions and avoids any disputes. In this regard, residential property management software currently available in the market can be of extreme help. Whether you want to review the lease agreement, prepare an eviction notice, or send a late payment notice, you can easily create any report. Most of the software contain saved templates of forms that are commonly used by property owners or managing firms. Users can create customized documents using these templates and store them at appropriate location, thereby saving a good amount of time and energy.
•    Preparing balance sheets – Financial management package is another important feature provided by many residential property management software, something that is extremely necessary both for accounting and year-end taxation purpose.
•    Extensive data storage capacity – One major prerequisite offered by almost every property management software is providing ample storage space, thereby helping users store every small amount of data including several intricate details about each property such as the carpet type, color of the wall, doors and window specifications, interior decoration details, and even about the appliances present in the home. Many of the software have so much space that you can even upload and preserve your tenants’ profile such as the name of the tenant, personal credit reports, current employer details, references from past property owners, copies of mails that you had communicated with the tenant and any other information that you might consider useful in future. In some of the software, one can even upload digital images of each and every room in the home and store them. These images would be of immense help when the property is rented out to tenants, as they can be used as evidence describing the existing condition at the time when the home was being given out on rent.

•    Inexpensive – By and large, you need to either pay a subscription fee or purchase the rental property management software. Hence, always check for a company that does not require you to have a long term commitment or a single annual payment.
•    Customer support – In most cases, consumers using rental property management software are not software professionals. In addition, these are complex software developed using advanced concepts. Hence, always look for a company that provides customer support and technical assistance whenever required.

The software should also provide an uncomplicated and faster data management system that can ease out the problems experienced during data generation, data handling, and data search. It would be an additional benefit if your software can generate auto-forms, letters and can even print checks.
•    Security – Security is inarguably one critical aspect that must given due importance, particularly when looking for web-based rental property management software.

Always choose one that uses an SSL encryption for data transfer and data storage. Moreover, in good online rental property managing software, data is stored on a secure server present at a distant location.

Every time the software has to be upgraded, the user needs to buy the upgrades from the developer’s site, download them, and have to go through an intricate upgradation process. In this regard, web-integrated third generation software can be a perfect choice as the consumer does not require handling any software upgradation.

The entire upgradation is done by the developer. Whenever the user signs in, he is ready to use the upgraded version. Secondly, one would not have the fear of losing sensitive data when using web-based software programs.

At present, there are numerous rental property management software available in the market. To pick the right one, one needs to understand whether the software suffices one’s needs and requirements. In addition, the software should be flexible, easy to install and convenient to use. Mentioned below are some tips that can help you select good rental property management software.

Property management software can create huge leverage in property management. Are you seriously considering an all round software for your company? Then having a website can be a great way to manage tenant handling, rent collections, property marketing, and maintaining public relations. Here are some ideas on what to expect-

Homepage- Your property management website’s homepage is not just another homepage. You have to make sure you’re making the most out of it. The home page can be very creative and at the same time it should have smart functionalities like announcements, news or forthcoming events.
As for an instance, your property management website can keep advertisements for home sales. Successful home pages have welcome notes, and weather forecast (aggregated from free weather channels).