As a property manager, one of your greatest responsibilities is to control costs and maintain profitability. But what specifically are you doing to improve your bottom line?
It’s no secret that one of the biggest challenges you face as a property manager is minimizing your operating costs. Logically speaking, the less time and money you spend on operating your business, the more profitable you will be. But for many property managers, this concept is easier said than done.
Outside of the housing market, companies who need to cut costs and improve profitability are turning to the power of automation, and there’s no reason why property managers can’t do the same. In fact, automation tools have made major strides in property management, and their potential impact on the bottom line are too attractive to ignore.
The Money-Saving Benefits of Property Management Automation
The term ‘automation’ carries a level of vagueness. Most people think of little robots doing tasks behind the scenes, while others think of turning a key and kicking back as technology goes to work on their behalf.
Because automation can take so many different formats, it’s not always easy to put it into context, especially in an industry like property management where most tasks are typically performed the old-fashioned pen-and-paper way.
But if there was a way to slash the time spent on certain activities without sacrificing the quality of the outcome, you have more time to focus on other tasks that will increase your property’s bottom line. In addition, automation can help you streamline planning, make predictions, and provide a better tenant experience at scale to further increase your profitability.
To make some sense of the infinite types of workflow automation for property managers, we’ve highlighted 4 key areas where your firm can save time and money from day one!
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Getting Started
Automation for the sake of automation isn’t going to give you as much of an ROI as strategically choosing your initiatives. Ideally, your automation solutions should help you save more than you spend. Take a look at some of the tasks that will truly benefit from the time and effort you invest in automating:
1. Set up Package Tracking and Management Automations
Time spent on things like package management is lost lease opportunity. While you’re busy sorting residents’ packages, writing notifications, and trying to find a safe place to store them, you may have prospective tenants waiting for a tour or an email response.
Instead, inbound package management software like Notifii Track helps property managers streamline the logging and notification process from minutes to seconds per package. Using the package logging app, managers can scan each package as it arrives and automatically notify residents. This lightning-fast communication allows residents to pick up their packages sooner, which frees up valuable storage space in your office.
This way, you aren’t writing notices and distributing them by hand, giving more time to work on revenue-driving activities.
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2. Let Your Software Serve Your Late Rent Notices & Notifications
It is often underestimated how much time is needed to create late rent notices, 3-day pay or quit notices, or any other notification for a tenant. The property manager must go through the process of creating the notice, locating the tenant’s unit number, and then walking the property to manually tape the notice on the tenant’s door. It doesn’t sound like much, but when done numerous times a day, it can monopolize a huge batch of time for any property manager.
Email & text community communication and notifications can save hours of wasted time, and bring managers closer to their residents. For example, Notifii Connect allows managers to send out mass email and text notifications, automate messages to be triggered on certain days, when certain actions are taken, and even when specified actions are not taken, such as missed rent.
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3. Get Your Hands Off Maintenance Reminders & Requests
A recent study found that 1 in 3 property managers say maintenance tasks are their biggest challenges in property management. It’s not just a matter of maintaining a regular schedule, but also issuing payments for work performed and adding tenant maintenance issues and requests to your already jam-packed schedule.
An easier way is to automate the maintenance request and routine scheduled maintenance processes to eliminate paperwork and improve response time. You can use automated maintenance software to submit work orders, keep track of payments, send updates, schedule recurring tasks, and gain better visibility into this area more efficiently than doing it all by hand.
4. Let Rent Collection Take Care of Itself
Online rent collection or automated rent reminder notifications are a growing practice, and for good reason: it takes a lot of the manual labor out of the equation for you AND your tenants.
With online rent collection, tenants can make payments online, which are automatically logged in your records. You can then generate reports to see who has and hasn’t paid, and automated reminders decrease delinquency.
Added bonus – many apartment owners and managers are marketing online payments and reminders as valuable amenities that give their tenants greater flexibility, giving them one more reason to choose your community over another.
4. Find New Residents with Automated Marketing
Marketing automation has made leaps and bounds in recent years, both in terms of function and affordability. Property owners and managers can automate many of their inbound marketing activities at scale for very little cost.
For example, you might include a live chat feature on your website that instantly connects you to prospective tenants. When the chat is initiated, the user can receive an immediate, automated response while waiting for you to connect.
You can also automate lead capture, email marketing activities with Notifii Connect. You’ll invest some time in getting your marketing systems set up, but once you do, it’s like flipping a switch and letting them run on autopilot, saving you hours and even days over the long term.
Automate your workflows with Notifii
Notifii provides a turnkey cloud-based solution that integrates with your property management CRM like Realpage and Yardi. We provide a seamless experience across devices so you can automate package pick up workflows and resident communications.