my vote is for statements that are easier to read, so landlords don;t have so many questions.  Any ideas on how to do that?

Ellen, the best time to start to educate your owners on their statements and how payments are made would be at the sign up stage, I used to have a copy of the statment in my presentation folder and would go through it with them once they had signed up.  We also had a follow up call to new owner the first month they recieved a payment where we would call them and go through the statment with them and answered any queries they had – used to work well, really stopped those calls from them.

Also another tip would be to call your landlords proir to the end of the month run to let them know if the tenant is one week or more in arrears (I know you should have already talked to them prior if the was issued a Notice to Leave).  Mandy

do you email statements as well?  Do you find that landlords who receive their statements by email still need an explanation?

thanks Amanda. I don’t know how you do this but the whole process of end of month takes so long.  Mostly with the collation of

documents.  I try and keep my invoices up to date so every day I enter into the system the invoices that come in.  That way I can

reduce the process a little bit.  Maybe emailing statements is the way forward so you don’t have to collate…?

I would love to change the entering of council and water rates. I wish there was a way to bulk enter them as it is so time consuming to do.

this is a fantastic idea Corinne.  I am assume you mean entering the physical invoice into the system for payment.  Are you finding currently that you have to enter the same information over and over again?

Hi Emily, there is also a program you can buy that is electronic filing and this will automatically collate (property code) the files as they are scanned & then at the end of the month the owner will recieve their statements and invoice via email. This can really cut down your collating time – you will never get 100% of your landlords on email but if you can get it to 90% then that is a great outcome.  Name of the system is MANAGE EZY and I think that REST Rockend may be the people who are selling it.  Mandy

Thanks Mandy, I know of this one but it costs extra to have it.  Wouldn’t it be better if the system if it just made the process more efficent for everyone.

Hi Emily,  But you have to sit and work out how much time you are spending doing all this manually and see if the cost outweights the cost.  I know that with a rent roll of 1000 properties the time spent on collating was huge – days at the end of the month and the cost of posting etc, made our electronic filing system pay for itself over and over.  It also cut down our filing time as all documents were electronically filed and we had it set up so we could all do this from our desks.  As a PM I was very scared out not having all those peices of paper but after 6 months don’t know how you would do it any other way.  Mandy