When Mobile Device is Better than Your Laptop for Property Management?

Data: 2016.11.08

Efficient property management requires overcoming many challenges you face every day. A lot of them can be solved with the right Property Management software (Read the article on What You Need to Evaluate Before Purchasing Your New Property-Management Software here). However, you may have a nice back-office system, but it just doesn’t work well in some cases where you need more dynamism and mobility. In this blog, I will cover the main points where your mobile phone or tablet would be more useful than your laptop in order to manage your properties effectively.

Maintenance.

Think about your employees who don’t sit in the office but work everywhere in the building. What can be easier than checking daily tasks and tenant requests via phone without taking out your laptop or going to the office and printing out a bunch of papers? You should be able to enter the repair log, check item costs or assign tasks for others with no need for much time or knowledge of a complex property management system. Also, you should be able to give the tenant a quick answer regarding the appointment time for your next visit after checking your availability in your works calendar.

Reporting.

Usually top managers want to see the current situation of the business anytime and anywhere. What can be a simpler way of doing that than opening your mobile app and checking the necessary numbers or charts? There are very nice tools such as PowerBI that can show you real-time data. The ability to customize the dashboard, or select only those reports that you would like to see, makes it possible to have your personal tool for monitoring the performance of the business. And it takes no more time than having a cup of coffee.

Quick communication.

Mobile software can help you give a quick answer to potential tenants about available premises, and even see what is due to be booked on a particular date. This would reduce the risk of losing business when you’re out of office. You won’t need to contact your colleagues and share your commissions with them just because you had to leave the office.
• Move-in/move-out. This is a usual scenario for many property managers. Imagine a paperless move-in or move-out process. You can access the system and put in the necessary records through your mobile device. Checking inventory on the premises, managing handovers (keys, tags etc.) and adding comments to a contract shouldn’t be a complex task for a property manager.

Tenant records.

A property manager should have the possibility of checking a tenant’s financial data, work requests or other records related to the tenant without contacting accountants or maintenance managers. All the necessary information should be available with a couple of touches on your phone or tablet. This could help you when negotiating new contract details or inspecting premises during the move-in or move-out process.

Taking pictures.

Do you remember taking photos, transferring them from the phone/camera to your pc, then storing them somewhere in the file server? Nobody wants to do that in the old way. During site inspection or accepting new premises, taking and storing pictures to the core system can be as easy as posting them to Facebook or Twitter.

Mobile apps eliminate the need for paper, and save property managers both time and energy. In this fast-paced life, we need to have things now and here. The property manager’s job is no exception. So when deciding what software to use – be sure that you can access all the data through a mobile app or at least through the web. You’ll have happier employees, leading to more effective work, leading to higher profits!

The Soft4RealEstate property management software solution that helps you manage your business more efficiently is built on the Microsoft Dynamics NAV platform, and that means that you can use it on any type of device from android or apple smartphone (mobile app) to pc or mac. The possibility of accessing it through a web browser gives accessibility from anywhere at anytime. All you need is an internet connection and a device.

SOFT4, as a provider of a software solution for commercial property management, is constantly releasing blog articles about how to meet and cope with  trends, tendencies, and challenges, and giving suggestions as to how to react to the changing environment in order to stay competitive.

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