Technology for the Property Management Professional

Using Excel Instead of Property Management Software Is Risky Business

Posted on 30. Aug, 2010 by Mary Girsch-Bock.

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It’s no secret that there are a lot of Excel users in the property management community. An outstanding spreadsheet program, Excel frequently plugs in the gaps commonly found in accounting programs. But there’s a group of property managers that may find themselves relying on Excel a little too much.

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Contest Winner: How Much Does It Cost To Process A Rent Check

Posted on 24. Jun, 2010 by Aimee Miller.

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We recently held a contest and asked property managers to guess the true cost of processing a monthly rent check. Property managers from all over the U.S. submitted their best guess and were automatically entered into a drawing to win a super cool Flip Video Camera.

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Your Paperless Office: Five Great Reasons to Move Payments Online

Posted on 28. Apr, 2010 by Jim Semick.

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A single check seems small enough. But added up, the checks your property management company deposits or prints can ultimately bury your staff under a mound of paper. If you are on the way to a paperless office but haven’t yet tackled electronic payments for receivables and payables, you are paying more than you need to run your operation.

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Rent Week Pain Relief: What’s the Best Online Payment Solution?

Posted on 24. Mar, 2010 by Jim Semick.

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It’s rent week again, and all hands are on deck. If you’re like many other property management firms, you have an unwritten rule: no vacation during rent week. You realize that rent checks cost your company time and money with unnecessary handling, data entry, errors, staff frustration and other inefficiencies. Surely there has to be a better way.

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SoftwareAdvice.com Survey: How Are Property Managers Using Technology?

Posted on 23. Dec, 2009 by Aimee Miller.

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SoftwareAdvice.com recently sent out a survey to learn more about how property managers are using technology in their business.
A few interesting highlights:
1. Almost half of the companies surveyed grew their business last year – either growing by increased revenue or more units. This is great to hear in a struggling market! But how did they [...]

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Keeping up with the Jones’s: Compare Away!

Posted on 21. Sep, 2009 by Aimee Miller.

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Here are three sites I’ve found that help property managers compare things that are worth comparing:

Average rental rates
This is a helpful tool from RentBits (link). It lets you compare rents for apartments and houses in many geographic areas. It has an easy interface and you can see both the average and median prices over the [...]

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Get More Done, In Less Time. Step Three – Use Google Docs

Posted on 21. Jul, 2009 by Albert Oaten.

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This is the third of a three part series on how you can move to free, web-based Google tools and find more time in your busy day. In part one we went over how to set up and use Gmail. In part two we covered how to use Google Calendar to manage your office schedules.
Week [...]

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Get More Done, In Less Time. Step Two – Use Google Calendar

Posted on 13. Jul, 2009 by Albert Oaten.

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In our first of three Google articles, we covered how property managers can benefit from using Gmail. For our second article, we’re going to show you how to set up and use Google Calendars so you can work more efficiently and free up some valuable time.
Week 2 – Get going on the calendars: Google Calendars [...]

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Get More Done, In Less Time. Step One – Use Gmail

Posted on 06. Jul, 2009 by Albert Oaten.

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Here are some videos we’ve created to help you get started using free collaboration tools from Google. These will help you find ways to work better, faster and get more done (it is truly possible!).
The great thing about these collaboration tools from Google is that they are free and web-based so you don’t need to [...]

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Web-Based Tools for Property Managers – Increase Productivity and Save Some Cash

Posted on 13. Jun, 2009 by Aimee Miller.

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How can you grow your business this year without growing your staff?
In a recent poll conducted during an AppFolio webinar we asked property managers if they were planning to add more properties this year and if they were planning to increase their staff to accommodate an increased workload. The majority said they are planning to [...]