A few weeks back, a fellow landlord told me of a situation where her tenant fell into rent arrears. To offer you a clipped version of a rather complicated story, the best solution was to take the issue to court. The tenant had been resident for six years, but was over two months late with her payments on the date of the hearing, so our fellow landlord arrived at the court with the rent statements to back up her case, and was good to go.
It all seemed fairly straightforward really – until the judge decided to throw the case out of court! I was so shocked to hear this – when our fellow landlord had done all of the right things, I couldn’t fathom WHY. The reason the judge gave was due to a lack of evidence that a couple of rent increases applied within the six year period were served correctly!!! Now, come on. Unless you are naturally super organised, or perhaps a hoarder, I can’t imagine many landlords would keep hold of such a piece of information. How very annoying for her!
So I felt compelled to share this story to illustrate the absolute NEED to keep everything relating to a tenancy, as you never know what you might need to rely on in the future.
Which brings me around to the topic of this blog – organisation.
Now, I thoroughly enjoy being in an organised space – but I don’t exactly enjoy doing the organising. It’s a bit like cleaning – I want to be in a clean house, but don’t want to be doing the cleaning. So I need to create methods that will make organising as easy as possible for me to stick to.
If you’re like me and need a little nudge to encourage you to be more organised, here’s some of the methods I’ve found that have helped:
Property Management Software
The point at which you will need to start using property management software will differ for everyone. Those who are naturally more detail-oriented and organised will be able to manage a greater number of properties and tenants than someone more creative or people-minded. One fellow landlord admitted that organisation was not his forte so he was an absolute mess with just two HMO’s! It’s just not worth the struggle (and the potential set-backs like what our landlord at the beginning of the post experienced). Find a Software program that will enable you to keep viewings, tenancy documents, tenant communication, property info, maintenance and property certificates all in one place. When you centralise your processes, you gain greater visibility and control over your business operations.
Employ an assistant
I’m a complete convert! Since finding my first fabulous assistant, I honestly don’t know how I managed to run the business without any help. Employ assistants who love to organise and they will keep you and your whole business in check. Even an hour a day, or a couple of hours a week will be a massive help for you. You’ll find all you need to know about hiring and training a VA in our free E-Book “Free your time from tenant issues and admin hell in 7 easy steps”.
Dropbox
Great for sharing large or multiple files. I dumped lots of photos and files into Dropbox, and my VA’s organised them into the right places. It was such great feeling to see all of this stuff finally collated and organised and put into the relevant folders, and it meant we could operate more efficiently together. I now also use Dropbox to send documents to the accountant, the web developer, to clients and a variety of other reasons too…
Colour code your diary
When my assistants started to book appointments into my diary, I initially found it difficult to get my head around the tasks that appeared on my daily schedule (because I hadn’t put them there myself). Colour coding the tasks made it so much simpler. Now we can all see when I will be working in the office, when I will be out on the road, and when I have allocated ‘me-time’ with just a quick glance.
Book back-to-back viewings where possible
This one is more about time organisation than document organisation, but I thought it would be good to throw in here anyway. Booking back-to-back appointments is a bit of a balancing act – if you will potentially miss out on a good tenant by not being available when they are, it might be worth your while to go out of your way to meet them for a viewing. Wherever and whenever possible though, always strive to book appointments back-to-back to save yourself wasted time for travelling.
Asana
Asana is a task and project management software tool which we use as our operations manual. Staff can easily locate and update the instructions to carry out any task for any of the business processes. Instructions can be uploaded as video tutorials, documents, images, or simply written instructions.
Podio
Podio is a great tool to help you manage the flow of any project, sale or deal. We use it to manage our deal sourcing. Again, I love having all of the data and relevant communication collated and in one place.
Accounting software
Rather than rummaging through reams of paper in filing cabinets, you can access all supplier records in one place. It makes analysis of expenses an easy task, any time of day. You can view specific invoices at the touch of a button, or gain a quick overview of all invoices from one supplier. Using accounting software also gives the the opportunity to view monthly management accounts, rather than waiting to the end of the financial year to see the performance of your company.
Receiptbank
I don’t actually use Receiptbank myself yet, but for those who want to go paperless, Receiptbank is a no-brainer. Photograph your business receipts and they will be automatically uploaded to your accounting program and allocated to the right expense account. Then simply bin your receipt – et voila – you are now organised and paperless!
There’s lots of other software tools that can be used to help you organise your landlord business, and I discuss some of them in my blog “10 Tech Hacks to bring a modern edge to your Landlord Business”.
Don’t let a lack of organisation negatively impact on your business operations. It’s simple and inexpensive to introduce just a few organisational tools, and bring a sense of ease and clarity to your day. And the more organised your information and files are, the easier it is to operate as a team, the more professional your operation, and the more likely you are to win those court cases.
Need More Help Organising Your Landlord Business?
Check out the SenecaRooms Virtual Management Services. We’ll act as your admin department, your customer service department and your Propertymark-trained managing agent – all rolled into one – so you only need to show up for the jobs on the ground, like meeting a gas engineer to carry out the annual safety checks. You get to free your time to focus on other things, but with full transparency over the business happenings, and yet deliver a more professional experience for your tenants too.