Choosing Property Management Software: The Ultimate Guide

Choosing the right property management system starts with asking the right questions. We've broken do the key areas you should investigate in this article and laid out the questions to ask so you make the best decision.

What are your unique needs?
What is must-have functionality?
How easy is it to use? What workflows exist to make me better at managing property?
What does implementation and on-boarding look like?
How accessible is the product?
All-in-one vs. specialised systems

What are your unique needs?

Kicking off your quest for the perfect software begins with a deep dive into what makes your needs unique. Solicit feedback from your team to identify the critical areas of improvement and essential functions required. Are tenant screening, rent collection, and maintenance oversight on your list of necessities? Or perhaps, your focus leans towards enhancing accounting processes, marketing efforts, and tax preparation? These key considerations should guide your selection process.

Take a moment to analyze the nuances of your situation

Is your portfolio commercial, residential portfolio or a mix?
Are you performing the job of a property manager or are you managing a portfolio that you own?
Do you plan to grow the size of your portfolio in the future?

Whether you're overseeing a modest number of units or managing a sprawling, multifamily complex, the scale and complexity of your operations dictate the level of sophistication needed in your software choice.

What is must-have functionality?

Is product you are buying a full 360 solution and is that what you need? Does it have all the necessary features to make your management of commercial property better than it is today.

The key functionality we recommend any one looking to manage property should seek are:

Lease management
Inspections and maintenance
Compliance management
Tenant communication
Document storage
Reporting and Insights
Trust/Client Accounting (For Property Managers)

There are some situations which it maybe better to have specialist systems performing specific tasks. We cover this further below.

How easy is it to use? What workflows exist to make me better at managing property?

Once the software is integrated into the business, the intuitiveness of the user interface and the features of the product gain importance. You buying process should cover these aspects just as much as the onboarding. Here you must ask question like:

Does the platform offer a centralized calendar for tracking daily activities?
Can it send sophisticated alerts and reminders for critical tasks such as rent reviews, lease terminations, compliance with health and safety regulations, and property inspections?
Does it have industry best practice workflow automation such as:
- Automatic transaction matching and reconciliation
- Automate payment files & bank statements
- Auto-generate and auto-send professional invoices
- Automated budgets
- Single and bulk disbursements
- In-platform trade quotes and work orders

Does it have automated arrears management?

What does implementation and onboarding look like?

The setup of the software is everything for your team and the goal is for a new system provoke headaches for your team. To ensure this is the case you need to assess the ease of onboarding, the depth of training, and the quality of support available.

An effective property management system should be straightforward and user-friendly, enabling swift and successful adoption. The journey begins with the onboarding process. The importance of comprehensive training resources and dedicated vendor support in facilitating a seamless transition cannot be overstated. A complicated onboarding experience is often a precursor to difficulties in everyday use and obtaining support.

The goal of integrating technology is to streamline, not complicate, your business operations. The perfect property management software is characterized by effortless setup, a gentle learning curve, and consistent, supportive assistance. A platform that is easy to use and comes with extensive training resources ensures that you and your staff can make the most of the software from the get-go. Dependence on this software will be daily, making it essential that the onboarding process is straightforward, the user interface is clean and intuitive, and support is reliable, to avoid constant frustration.

How accessible is the product?

In today's fast-paced business environment, the ability for your team to operate seamlessly, regardless of location, time, or the devices they use, is not just an advantage—it's a necessity. We understand the critical importance of mobility and flexibility in accelerating productivity and fostering collaboration among team members.

But what about the tools needed to make this possible?

Its very important to understand if the system you plan on purchasing is on-premise server based or is it a cloud based system.
Next you must check is the product provides multiple different access points for your different stakeholders. These could be different portals or apps for you tenants, property managers and landlords.

All-in-one vs. specialised systems

Many of today’s all-in-one property management solutions represent an important advancement in how landlords manage their portfolios by bringing together tasks of managing properties with accounting. However, these solutions often fall short of the mark because their depth of functionality is limited, and users can’t customise their tech stack to the specific needs of their business.

Rather than trying to find a solution that is ‘everything to everyone’, an integrated ecosystem is created by selecting specialised software and linking them all together. Instead of your property managers using an all-in-one system designed for accounts teams, you can pick property management software designed for property managers and accounting software designed for accounts teams and integrate the two systems. This means the systems are communicating with each other and data isn’t getting lost in each one.

Finance teams don’t want to move away from their specialised accounting package to a property management system that claims to be an all-in-one solution. This is because that accounting platform is also used to run the whole business, from handling payroll to producing financial statements. Ultimately, the finance team needs the property management data to sync with their accounting system so they have a single source of truth for their company. An integrated ecosystem allows you to select the best property management platform and the best accounting software, instead of being forced to make things work with unfamiliar solutions. Forward-thinking landlords are now turning to the cloud where they can build their business around seamlessly aligning the functionalities of their preferred apps and software.

To understand this further you should explore the benefits of using an integrated property management system vs an all in one solution.