Running a property management business is a lot of work. It can often feel like you’re doing several jobs at once, any one of them qualifying as a full-time gig. You may find yourself wearing the hat of marketing coordinator, maintenance supervisor, accountant, and background investigator all in the same day.
It’s no secret that these tasks can be overwhelming at the best of times. There are a few ways to get around these challenges:
- You may hire additional staff as your budget allows.
- You can always keep a careful eye on the growth of your business. It’s essential to make sure that your reach doesn’t exceed your grasp.
- Property managers today have another option that is rapidly becoming a pillar for success: Automation.
Some tasks are clear choices for automation: your inbound marketing efforts, regular emails, and routine scheduling can be easily automated and managed through a variety of software tools and operating systems. Just staying on top of your email inbox can seem like a sweeping victory in some cases. Be sure that any task you move to automate is worthy of the attention! Focusing on the most tedious or time-consuming tasks when looking to make your property management workflows more efficient will maximize your efforts.
There are a few other aspects of your property management business that can be prime candidates for automation, even if they are a little less obvious at first glance.
1. Automation as a Recruiting Tool
If you currently employ staff—or you are considering padding your ranks in the near future—think about automating your recruitment process. Even a relatively small scale recruitment effort that’s focused on filling on one or two positions can take weeks or months when you’re doing it all by hand.
Remember that it’s more complicated than placing a ‘help wanted’ ad and shaking some hands:
- You’ll be thinking about what demographics you want to draw from and how to reach them.
- You’ll be writing job descriptions.
- You’ll be posting positions on many different networks and screening applications.
- You’ll be running background checks.
- You’ll be scheduling and conducting interviews—the list goes on!
While you can’t automate every aspect of this process, you can turn to several different platforms to do the legwork for you. Automating at least the first part of this process relieves you of the burden of generating leads and screening applications: you can focus on investigating your candidates and conducting interviews.
2. Automating Rent Collection
While watching a P.O. box for monthly checks to trickle in used to be a collective experience among property managers, the myriad of online payment options now available has made snail mail all but obsolete.
- Automation can make rent payments a snap for you and tenants in your properties.
- Establish an online system to automate rent payments, and you can set aside the problems that come with taking (and cashing or depositing) rent checks manually.
- Save yourself a trip to the bank, allow your tenants to schedule payments automatically, and track who has or hasn’t paid with the click of a mouse.
You can tie your rent collection systems in with other forms of workflow automation as well: send out automatic reminder emails a few days before the rent is due and watch tenant excuses wither on the vine. Automatic rent collection is a boon for your renters as well: it saves them from having to hunt down stamps and envelopes, and the relatively instant nature of online transactions can make balancing a household budget a little simpler.
3. Automation to Manage Your Mail
If you’ve already turned to workflow automation tools for your rent collection, why not take the next step and look at automating package delivery to your properties as well? Many residents who are living in multi-family housing struggle with consistent, theft-proof, and reliable package delivery.
We aren’t talking about delivery by drone (yet), but automating notifications associated with package delivery and allowing seamless access to a secure storage area can be a massive win for your renters’ experience with your property management business. Automated package locker systems (like a residential version of an Amazon locker) can allow completely safe storage and automatic notification to a resident when a package is delivered. You can put these systems to work for you as well: you’ll always have a secure and easy way to manage your business mail.
Automation Is Changing Property Management
Automation can make your life easier in many ways. You may be leaning toward automation for your marketing and communication already!
Still, it’s easy to forget some of the other ways that stepping back can make your work easier. You can simplify your hiring process, make rent collection automatic, and turn package collection from a hassle into a snap—and these are just a few of the ways you can put automation to work for your property management company!
It can be a challenge to let go of some aspects of running your property management business—but this is one area where you’ll find that the more that you try to do, the less that you can accomplish. When you’ve automated many of your routine tasks, you have the free time to focus on what is truly important—and give your clients and properties the attention that they deserve.
Maybe you feel like you haven’t gotten all that you can out of what automation has to offer your property management business? Whether you’re looking for help in one or two areas or a more comprehensive solution to your business challenges, Geekly Media has a solution for you. Reach out to us today: we can make your life easier in some unexpected ways!
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