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Prepare for 2021 and beyond with these 6 PropTech strategies

Posted on March 5, 2021March 5, 2021 by Brian Zrimsek

The past year has been challenging for nearly every segment of the real estate industry. The COVID-19 pandemic initiated massive changes in behaviour and transformed how people interact with property. Working from home, non-essential store closures, increased demands for home delivery, a collapse in dining, sports and entertainment, eviction moratoriums and mass unemployment have challenged every corner of real estate. At the same time, in order to maintain operations and serve customers, the pandemic also accelerated technology adoption, shining the spotlight on PropTech.

In 2021, PropTech continues to be at the forefront of the ongoing transformation of the real estate industry. There are six key strategies that should be embraced to ensure success, to drive value and to get the most from the technologies that are available today while positioning for the ones on the horizon.

Digitalise now

Technology continues to be the main enabler in separating activities from the places in which they usually occur. The pandemic has accelerated many of those trends, especially in real estate. With quick pivots from companies across the globe, business went forward even as office-based employees were sent home. Business thrived and proved that there was another way, a digital way, to continue operations, maintain effectiveness and drive new efficiencies. Driven by necessity, the digital pivot must now be mainstreamed as one of the default ways to enable business.

Differentiate with data

With such a rapid transition to online activities over the past few years, many traditional data processing systems can no longer manage the voluminous data sets of the modern era – what we know today as “big data.” No matter how overwhelming it may be, this mass of data can be incredibly useful when it comes to addressing business problems that you might not have been able to tackle before. The trick is finding the signal in the noise. To best utilise and manage all of this data, you’ll need an enterprise-wide set of policies that define how data will be collected, stored, processed and communicated. In short, you’ll need a strategy and a set of tools to enable it.

Plan to win

This pandemic has created the most challenging moment for planning and forecasting since the Great Recession over a decade ago. But where the Recession impacted real estate in very specific ways, the effects of the pandemic are disrupting real estate in a much broader and deeper sense. In spite of all the unknowns, the need to reforecast 2021 and the years ahead provides an opportunity for technology to help lead the way. For short term planning and forecasting, integrated planning and budgeting tools can make quick work of using past periods to drive future period forecasts while providing for both general and specific assumptions.

Manage risk and compliance

Managing risk and compliance is a job with no end. New challenges arise and old ones evolve in unexpected ways. As new regulations are enacted by federal, state and local agencies, technology and data can make the never-ending quest to mitigate risk and remain in compliance a little less daunting. When risk is managed and fraud is eliminated, both the property and residents benefit and create a stronger, safer community.

Engage customers

With the world going paperless, it is clear that integrated virtual portals and other forms of web-based technologies are critical for customer engagement. While self-service extensions of transaction systems are the most common starting point, there are plenty of other customer engagement solutions now finding their footing in the real estate industry. These new capabilities are placing the customer (or in this case, the resident/tenant) at the center of the relationship, which is where the lease used to be. It’s about relationships, not accounting.

Reinvent the workplace

When the pandemic first started to impact organizations a year ago, a large portion of the workforce, especially office-based staff, decamped and quickly transitioned to working from home. Business processes quickly pivoted to paperless processing, digital signatures, and video conferencing. With 2020 behind us, we can confidently say that working from home full time is not just possible for many; it can be a setup for success. This begs the question: What do we need from a future office space…if one is needed at all?

Technology adoption and innovation continue, and PropTech has never been in a better position to drive positive change for real estate enterprises and their customers. Digitalized processes, data-driven differentiation, tech-powered planning processes, improved risk and compliance management, greatly enhanced customer engagement and the reinvention of the workplace are six key technology strategies that should be embraced in 2021 and used as a foundation for the rest of the decade.

Lease administration: The key to uncovering hidden costs in your leases

Posted on February 25, 2021January 20, 2023 by Chris Vroman

For a corporate occupier, managing the complex leases within the organisation’s property portfolio is a tedious endeavour, especially given how difficult it can be to ascertain the true monetary value of a lease.

When it comes to managing a large portfolio of complicated leases, human error is one of the biggest risks your organisation faces as the simplest of mistakes could cost a lot of money. At MRI Software, our team of lease administration experts interact with clients daily to catch many of these errors before they happen.

We’ve put together an on-demand webinar to discuss how you can identify these common errors. You can also read our list of three key areas in which common slip-ups could have resulted in real estate occupiers losing out on big money.

Free webinar on uncovering hidden lease costs

In this on-demand webinar, our team of experts will take you through best practices that will help you uncover hidden costs and opportunities for cost savings. You’ll learn:

Real-life examples of hidden lease costs
How to keep track of rent payments and critical dates more efficiently
Lease administration best practices

3 common mistakes to look for to uncover hidden lease costs

1. Unreliable lease abstraction

It’s not uncommon for important data points to get lost in the time-consuming process of manually pulling information from your leases and contracts. Collecting all of the data, provisions, and terms from your leases – and knowing where that information can be found quickly – is a great way to drive cost savings. Utilising “deep lease data” can benefit your business by bringing to light automatic renewal provisions, security deposit billings, and improvement allowances.

With inefficient lease abstraction, automatic renewal provisions in leases and contracts can sometimes go unnoticed, especially if the lease has been added to your portfolio through a large acquisition. If left undiscovered, these renewal provisions can cost your organization a whole 12 months’ worth of rent. In large acquisitions like this, you could also be losing out on security deposits that your accounting department won’t have an accrual for, meaning the deposit will be paid out. With a more efficient review of these leases and through cross-referencing with legal documents, these deposits could be accounted for.

2. Poorly tracked improvement projects

Major facilities management projects that involve multiple departments (and, as such, multiple points of contact) could also be exposing your organisation to financial losses. If the improvement allowances tied to these projects aren’t properly tracked, it could end up costing millions of dollars in delay costs and funds not collected from landlords.

3. Rent payment and processing errors

There are plenty of steps in the rent payment and collection process that could be exposing your organisation to financial risk. Whether due to technical errors, oversights, or landlords in accidental misalignment with their leases, money can easily fall through the cracks and considering that rent serves as the largest dollar expense in most organisations, that money can add up fast.

One step of the rent collection process where errors can occur is in the application of late fees. Sometimes, late fees are applied when they’re not supposed to be – it’s even possible that a landlord might have set their system to charge rent as late until marked otherwise. If rent is paid on time and charged with late fees anyway, that could end up costing your organisation thousands. Similar errors can occur in the simple act of rent payment. If a payment isn’t applied to the corresponding account in a timely manner, there’s a risk that the money could get lost in a landlord’s bank account.

Catch mistakes before they impact your business

Having the right technology and expert advice to manage your leases can save your organisation thousands of dollars. Whether it’s through AI-powered lease abstraction tools that pull critical terms and key data out of your leases or through a committed team of experts that can catch errors in rent payment processes through monthly reconciliation, MRI Software’s lease administration solutions can enable you to tap into the full potential of your data, drive cost savings, and simplify your leases.

Tenancy management news: Changes to Victorian tenancy laws

Posted on February 16, 2021 by kestoesta

New tenancy management laws will take effect in Victoria staring 29 March 2021. The Residential Tenancies Regulations 2021 follows on from the proposed Residential Tenancies Amendment Act 2018 that has been delayed due to coronavirus (COVID-19). The reforms respond to extensive community feedback during the Victorian Government’s Fairer Safer Housing consultation to review the Residential Tenancies Act 1997.

Here’s a quick overview of what property managers and landlords can expect with these new regulations and how utilising a tenancy management software can help you with compliance.

Tenancy management changes under the Residential Tenancies Regulations 2021

The 132 reforms include a small number of provisions that have been replicated from the Tenancies Amendments Act 2018 to address issues arising from COVID-19 such as provisions relating to family violence and rental agreements.

The new laws also include a provision for rental providers and tenants/renters who have existing rental agreements signed before 1 July 2020 to be exempted from some of the new tenancy laws until the agreement is terminated and a new agreement is signed.

What these changes mean for landlords and property managers

With these amendments, expect substantial changes to property and tenancy management processes, documents and systems. Property managers and investors who self-manage their properties should start educating themselves on these new set of tenancy laws to remain compliant.

For more information on these upcoming changes, please read the document on Residential Tenancies Regulations 2021.

Compliance with your tenancy management software

It is important that you leverage your property management software to make compliance with these amendments part of your processes. Property Tree comes with a compliance register feature that will help you easily record, track, and report on compliance regulations for your properties.

Book a free demo to see how Property Tree can help you make light work of compliance and other property management tasks.

The future of work: Reopening offices after COVID-19

Posted on January 9, 2021April 28, 2021 by Andy Welkley

When the Coronavirus pandemic first led businesses around the globe to close offices at the beginning of 2020, few would have expected that so many people would still be working remotely at the end of the year. But despite ongoing uncertainties and restrictions, the future is certainly looking brighter each day, especially as the rollout of the COVID-19 vaccine is already underway in the UK and North America, and the prospect of reopening offices after COVID-19 is sooner than ever. The pandemic has accelerated trends many expected to take off a few years down the road – namely, the reimagining of how office spaces will function and the rise of flexible workspaces.

In a panel moderated by Beth Schwartz, MRI’s Senior Director of Product Management, at our recent ‘Ascend Anywhere‘ virtual users conference, leading experts from across the real estate industry joined a panel to discuss “The Future of the Office” and how the pandemic is affecting trends in the sector. There were a few areas that the panel picked out as ones to watch, which will be of keen interest to both commercial landlords and corporate occupiers in the New Year.

Meeting the need for greater flexibility

While the return to the “old normal” appears to be on the horizon, it is unlikely to be the same workplace “normal” that existed before the pandemic. Having many people in the office only part of the time and teams spread across geographies is no longer the huge challenge it may have seemed in the past, and organizations have had the opportunity to test remote working scenarios while considering how to better utilize their physical spaces. As we move into a post-pandemic world, traditional work methods will likely make way for flexible working. Many people within businesses are far more likely to mix working at home with hot-desking rather than having their own full-time, fixed workspaces in the office.

The attitudes of many people – and employers – towards working remotely and being in the office have undergone a fundamental change now that they have seen how efficient working from home can be. Many office workers live a substantial distance from their workplace and faced a substantial commute before the pandemic. They have now seen how working at home – at least part of the time – has positively altered their work-life balance and in many cases improved their productivity, which is an encouragement for employers. During the pandemic, many people have only been venturing into the office one or two days a week even when lockdown restrictions have been lifted, a pattern that promises to become much more of the norm post-COVID.

We may also see more shared spaces where people can come together to collaborate on tasks and meeting goals. Another Ascend panelist, Robert Pavese, Partner at Atlanta Property Group, expects to see a post-COVID uptick in demand not just for flexible workspaces but spaces for “common area gatherings”, which he noted was already a trend before the crisis. “We have a lot of designs which we put on the shelf. We haven’t thrown anything away because I do think that it will come back – but everything is on hold right now.”

Modern-day amenities – plus safeguards

The Future of the Office panel kicked off by looking at a rise in a variety of amenities, designed into commercial properties and offered to tenants – a trend the panel saw continuing. Beth Schwartz noted that “things like onsite dining, specialty shops, gyms, activities like yoga and so forth” were emerging as key requirements for corporate occupiers and that employees were often looking at those amenities when deciding on a potential employer. Tim Curran, CEO of Building Engines, adds that those sorts of amenities – which have been pushed further into the mainstream of the modern workplace by coworking spaces such as WeWork – are no fad and are now seen as “fundamentally valuable to tenants.”

Panellist Scott Morey, Executive Director at One11 Advisors commented that many companies were looking beyond these sorts of amenities as a result of COVID. “We’ve seen a shift from amenity to necessity as tenants see more value in safety, security and transparency.” Indeed, while pre-coronavirus trends indicated a steep rise in amenities being designed into properties, employees now also want to make sure the facilities address factors such as how clean the air is, how safe building procedures are, how safely space management is handled, and other factors to help tenants feel comfortable in an office building.

The vital role of PropTech

In rethinking properties as we move out of the pandemic, PropTech will play an essential role in helping both building owners and occupiers understand how their employees are using the workspace, what their working patterns are, how the building can be adapted to those – and using all this information to reconfigure existing commercial spaces or guide new developments. Another outcome of coronavirus is that it has accelerated the need for technology at almost all levels of work and space management. As Tim Curran noted, it is critical for businesses to now have “flexible software and processes in place” so that everyone can adapt to new ways of working and move forward together.

Forward-thinking leaders in the real estate industry will embrace PropTech solutions as they continue to deal with the fallout of the pandemic and its aftermath. By leveraging purpose-built digital tools, those landlords and tenants that move towards putting technology at the heart of their business will be able to unlock a new depth of understanding that enhances property use and efficiency. The reality is that operating a building safely, efficiently and effectively is no easy task, and there has never been a time more important than now to create a foundation of agility and adaptability.

Watch the on-demand webinar to learn how space management software can help you in reopening offices after COVID-19.

Value Added

Posted on January 8, 2021June 14, 2022 by Elizabeth Spencer

FMJ talks to Kevin Shipp and Dorette Van den Ende from MRI about four essential services that must be considered when choosing a CAFM provider, and what each should deliver to help FMs reap the full benefits from this software.

The essential services behind the success of your CAFM solution

In this age of agility, having the right CAFM software is more crucial than ever.

From small maintenance teams to global organisations, CAFM is now a mission-critical system for all businesses, supplying the data and frameworks required to maximise efficiency, enhance decision-making and create safe, comfortable work environments.

But it can’t work alone. You could have the most advanced, comprehensive solution on the market – yet without exceptional operational services surrounding it, your FM teams will not unlock the true potential of this technology.

Here, FMJ talks to Kevin Shipp and Dorette Van den Ende from MRI about four essential services that must be considered when choosing a CAFM provider, and what each should deliver to help FMs reap the full benefits from this software:

Consultancy
Project Management
Training
Support

Consultancy

First, the foundation of any successful FM solution is how it is planned and implemented. Effective consultancy is at the heart of this.

Your provider at this stage should seek to gain total understanding of the pain points and nuances in your organisation. Then, using their knowledge of both their solutions and the wider FM landscape, they use this to forge a unique roadmap for the project based on your needs.

So, an informed provider is vital – they should know their technology inside-out, as well as the trends impacting your industry, to craft the architecture of your system (via a scoping study) so it meets your exact requirements. This ensures your pain points are resolved and the system is tailored to you as a business.

Furthermore, collaboration is at the core of good consultancy. Your provider should place a focus on forging a strong relationship between their team and your company’s stakeholders. This guarantees all information is communicated to build and enhance your system over time, leading to a beneficial client experience.

Project Management

Project management is the driving force behind an FM system’s successful implementation. This is actioning the concepts of the consultancy phase, going step-by-step to ensure that the actual solution fulfils its objectives.

What should good project management give you?

Strong communication – like the consultancy stage, a provider’s PM team should be clear and consistent in updating you on the progress of the system, as well as reaching out to relevant specialists in their internal team.

Punctuality – missed deadlines can quickly cause costs to escalate, so it’s important to research a provider’s tendency to overrun.

Expertise – the PM team should know the solutions they are implementing thoroughly, so it is implemented as anticipated to meet the needs of your business.

Process – ask your provider to demonstrate their project cycle, as this should robustly cover all aspects of bringing a system to life, as well as all quality assurance efforts involved.

Continued development – the best FM providers will always strive for perfecting, evaluating every project to identify areas of improvement for the future.

Training

Once your system is implemented, it’s vital your team knows how to use it to its fullest. That is where seasoned training is so crucial.

The quality of a provider’s training service dictates not only how effectively you harness an FM solution, but also how widely it’s understood and adopted across your team. Even if the system is implemented successfully, team-wide backing is key to it delivering a return.

Naturally, this requires trainers with an A-Z knowledge of their technology. But the best providers go further to understand your system. If your FM solution is unique for your needs, training should similarly be tailored with a complete knowledge of your requirements.

With this in mind, a provider should practise what they preach internally. How they train their own staff should be a reflection of the work they do for your team, so everyone understands the intricacies of the system and can explain/operate it with total confidence.

Finally, particularly fitting for the current landscape, your providers’ training should be adaptable, and just as effective delivered virtually as it would be in-person.

Support

Last but certainly not least, let’s talk about support. Should anything go wrong with your FM system, you will want reassurance that you have a dependable, dedicated support network behind it to resolve this swiftly and efficiently.

It is beneficial for there to be a strong relationship between the team responsible for the professional services noted above and the support team. This ensures that those responsible for monitoring and managing the system for the long term are completely aware of its unique features and the client’s specific requirements.

This makes for a smooth transition and handover between the teams, so support can pick up right where the prior team left off, with no impact on the quality of service you (the client) receives.

This is critical to the ongoing performance of your solution, and you should ensure you have access to a support service that:

Is always available – modern buildings are always active, so it’s important to have a support network that can assist 24/7, 365 days a year
Has established escalation procedures – different issues will have a variety of touchpoints, so checking your provider has a clear structure for escalating issues is valuable to ensure yours will be handled in due time.
Is reinforced by SLAs – just like FMs are subject to PFI contracts, your system provider should trust their quality of service enough to be subject to SLAs, and the penalties they incur if not met.
Has a human voice – rather than rely on chatbots or outsourced call centres, it is reassuring to speak to a real expert when you reach out to support.
Treats you as important – the continued success of your solution shouldn’t be solely reliant on juniors with little-to-no experience; your issue should be handled by someone with the necessary expertise to provide the most timely, effective solution

A successful FM system is far more than the technology inside of it. Your relationship with a provider should be more than “supplier/customer”.

We hope this insight into the range of services that drive these solutions towards maximum performance has demonstrated this and will encourage you to think deeper about who you work with on your next project.

About MRI

At MRI, we don’t just understand the services that underlie an effective CAFM system – we go above and beyond to deliver them for our customers. Our operations services include:

Consultancy
Project management
Training
Support

Furthermore, our Key Account Management team goes above and beyond the call of duty for our customers, forming escalation points for any call and always being available to talk if anything needs correcting. Our 10-point “Business As Usual” process is unique in our industry, ensuring every touchpoint call, escalation or complaint is handled swiftly and effectively.

Through these, we enable FM teams globally to harness the extraordinary potential of MRI Evolution to meet their specific requirements.

Visit MRI Evolution to learn more about our software and the services that unlock its benefits.

Return to work: 3 ways to restore tenant confidence in commercial office buildings

Posted on December 22, 2020February 22, 2021 by Andy Welkley

During 2020, many commercial office buildings faced an unexpected challenge: empty offices. The pandemic created a sudden shift to remote working, which will likely continue even after vaccines become more widely available. Businesses of all types are reevaluating their use of office space, and as a result, the relationships between commercial landlords and tenants are more important than ever.

While the pandemic will eventually abate, its impact on tenants’ comfort levels could last years. So, what can commercial property managers and building operators do to create trust and make tenants feel comfortable in an office again?

Build tenant relationships with space planning, communications and visitor management

Commercial landlords and tenants have negotiated many uncommon things over the past year, including lease concessions related to COVID-19 and multiple options for rent deferment or abatement. The relationships built over the course of those conversations will hopefully open the door for more collaboration on an effective return-to-work strategy.

1. Space management practices

Even before the pandemic, space planning and occupant comfort were becoming an important part of portfolio management. The increasing need for flexibility is top of mind for landlords, since tenants are rethinking their use of space. In some cases, employees may become spread across a distributed hub-and-spoke model in which a company has a central office in the city but offers employees the option to work from a satellite office in the suburbs.

Here are a few space planning questions to ask your tenants to find out how much flexibility they require:

Will employees be working part-time or flexible hours?
Will you be rethinking your space to accommodate social distancing?
What percentage of your workforce will continue to work remotely? How are you assigning and tracking assets?
Will portions of your office space be temporary or hotelling space?

Effective space management software can help optimize your use of space and leverage it as part of your lease management strategy.

2. Tenant online services

Landlords can provide tenants with online services – a familiar remote work environment, to make returning to the office more convenient. With an online portal, tenants can make payments, enter sales data and initiate service requests, and much more wherever they are, 24/7. MRI Tenant Connect can help you proactively improve the tenant experience and efficiently increase operational efficiency.

3. Visitor management

It’s essential to understand the capacity of your space and to manage the number of people on your property at a given time. Visitor management software for commercial office buildings can help you manage tenants and guests across multiple control points to get an accurate picture of activity in your space.

Flexibility is key

As the past year has demonstrated, commercial property managers need to be prepared for anything. Using technology to better understand space planning, communicate with tenants, and manage visitors can improve tenant satisfaction and help building operations run more smoothly. As the office space will also need to welcome back vendors and visitors down the line, learn how to mitigate risk as more people come back into the office.

Major updates are coming to Strata Master in 2021

Posted on December 16, 2020July 27, 2022 by David Bowie

As this long year draws to a close, I wanted to take a moment to put pen to paper and write to all our Strata Master customers, to explain our vision for Strata Master and the Strata software industry moving forward. 2021 is going to be a big year for MRI, and Strata Master is key to our plans.

Whilst 2020 was a year full of challenges for us all, the impacts of COVID-19 were not all negative. Accelerated adoption of technology and a willingness to try new things were both hallmarks of this year in strata: we’re seeing increased participation from lot owners as they take to online meetings, and managers embrace SMS and portal technology at increased rates. To support these changes, and more, we are ploughing ahead with the biggest release in Strata Master history for mid next year.

In particular, I am pleased to announce three major integrations that will be included in our next release:

We are partnering with SMATA to deliver a fully integrated, cloud-based maintenance module, built for strata managers and already delivering value and time savings through the management of over 30,000 strata lots integrated with Strata Master
Full integration with StrataVote – the market-leading cloud-based meeting management software – to deliver unrivalled meetings and electronic voting functionality
Intuitive banking with a Macquarie Bank direct debit integration

In addition, we have major features coming that will save your business time and improve the level of service you can offer your customers. These include extensive building manager functionality, automated SMS when sending a levy notice, a range of formatting options for the notes section, new buttons to make keeping up with insurance easier, a CC field for comms, and much more. You can read the list of major enhancements in more detail below.

Work has already commenced on these initiatives. In Q1, we will be hosting webinars, and providing software demonstrations so you can see exactly what is coming in the next release. In Q2, these features will go live for our Early Adopter customers, and in Q3 we expect to be ready to set all of these features live for everyone.

In the meantime, if you would like to discuss anything, please don’t hesitate to get in touch with your account manager, Sam Cochrane (Sam.Cochrane@mrisoftware.com), or reach out directly to me at David.Bowie@mrisoftware.com.

Thank you for your support, and I look forward to continuing our partnership in 2021. In the meantime, from all of us here at MRI, I’d like to wish you and your loved ones a very Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year.

Sincerely,

David Bowie

Vice President and APAC Managing Director

Watch David’s Christmas Message

Here’s what you’ll get in the biggest release in Strata Master history

Coming in 2021

A cloud-based maintenance module in partnership with SMATA

Maintenance is a big part of a strata managers workload and it needs to be easier for you, your owners, and your committee members with features like:

Maintenance workflows so you can create, manage, share and track work requests with as much automation as possible, whilst still being able to customise it to suit you and your portfolio’s needs.
Interactive building profiles with recent and upcoming works, documents and more.
Contractor profiles with recent and upcoming jobs, workload metrics and customer ratings.
Voting Notice Boards that make approving work requests, quotes and variances easier than ever.

A full StrataVote integration so you can take control of your meetings

Tap into unrivalled meetings and electronic voting functionality by connecting Strata Master with the market-leading cloud-based meeting management software.

Increase lot owner participation and satisfaction by making remote meetings simple.
Create beautiful agendas and minutes quickly with custom templates that match your brand.
Get quality and consistency across your meeting process with intelligent business rules that only allow consistent and compliant motions, meetings, and documentation.

Intuitive banking with a Macquarie Direct Debit integration

Reduce arrears by taking the burden off owners to remember to pay their levies on time. With Direct Debit you can save them the hassle and simply debit levies when they’re due.

Plus, this will help remove paper forms and filing as Macquarie Direct Debit utilises a digital authority, so you won’t need to store it for 7 years, unlike paper-based direct debit authorities.

Building Managers in Strata Master

Add a new Building Manager contact type is being created so building Managers can be added the same way as Real Estate Agents.

You’ll be able to assign a Building Manager to single or multiple corps via a new Building Manager tab on the building card. And from there it’s easy to include them in your email and SMS communications, as they can be added as a contact group to the Bulk Communications Wizard, and even SMSed straight from the Building Manager tab. You can include them in repairs and maintenance in both the ‘reported by’ and ‘access contact’ fields when sending Work Orders and Quote Requests, configure the Building Manager to be the default repairs and maintenance contact, and even allow them to approve invoices via the portal using Online Invoice Approval.

And a whole lot more!

Help levy contacts stay on top of levy payments by automatically SMSing them when levy notices are issued.
Highlight important information about the buildings in your portfolio with the ability to copy and paste text with different fonts, size and colour in the Notes section on the Building Card and the new Building Manager tab.
Entering and updating insurance details will be much easier after we build plus, delete, up and down buttons into the insurance tab.
Improve communication transparency with the addition of the CC field on top of the existing BCC field for all agency correspondence. You will no longer need to confirm to the main contact that the additional contacts were included!
To avoid any confusion when a levy notice is issued to a lot with arrears or interest outstanding levy notices will now display when the levy payment is due and will also state that any arrears and interest is due immediately.
It’s easy to find and share the CRN and Biller code with contacts, as they have been added to the levies tab.
Avoid the double up of page numbers when including Interim Reports in meeting agendas, as an option is now available to remove page numbers from both the reports and table of contents page.
It’ll be easier for your contractors to see that something requires urgent attention once the work order and quote request email templates are updated to include the work order or quote request subject.
Non-lot owners can now be added as Approvers for Online Invoice Approval if they have been elected to the committee.

Keep an eye out for all this and more, coming to Strata Master in 2021.

Book a demo today to find out how you can get access to all these upcoming features to kickstart your strata management business.

What’s new in Property Tree this December

Posted on December 16, 2020December 17, 2020 by kestoesta

We understand property inspections play an integral role for any agency so to help make it a little easier, we made improvements to the way you do inspections in your property management software. Let’s take a look at these enhancements plus other great new features available for you starting this month in Property Tree.

Inspections enhancements

You can now enjoy better inspections with these updates:

New inspection contact role added
Option to define default settings as tentative, proposed or confirmed
There are now three inspection types: ingoing, routine and outgoing
New Inspection reporting and bulk assignment options
Enhanced integrations with all our inspection partners

Profile Communication History Tab

As voted by you (over 500 user votes) the Communications tab is now enabled to show the full communication history across each of the Ownership, Tenancy, Creditor and Conveyancer profile screens!

New Banking partner: Challenger Pay

Challenger Pay rent payments are now accepted and can be imported into Property Tree’s Tenant Download.

‘Properties’ tab removed from Sales profiles

The ‘Properties’ tab has been removed from all Sales profiles including Vendor, Buyer and Conveyancer for easier access to information. The Property information will now be located on the 1st tab of each profile.

User Profiles removed from MRI Property Connect

Based on your feedback, the user profile in the Property Connect app will be removed to encourage tenants to contact you directly rather than via the app. This will also improve consistency between the app and portals.

Sale of Rent Roll

The Sale of Rent Roll tool has been updated to improve data migrated out of and into Property Tree companies. Data migrated will now include unpaid Tenant Invoices.