UK Landlord Forum / Life

I have just started working for a Landlord with a portfolio of about 80 properties ....of which about 20 are Commercial with shops above.

Can anyone recommend any relatively easy to use property management software which might enable me to put some systems and processes in place in order to streamline the business?

Thank you

Jax

Interesting question. I'll say right up front that I have no direct experience of any dedicated property management software but I can think of a number of questions I'd want answered before I chose from several packages you can buy, or rent for use on-line:
1) What else does the package need to integrate with? For instance Landlord Manager for Sage could make great sense if the rest of the accounts are based on Sage.
2) Is your new boss prepared to spend any money on this? If the answer is no, there are various free offerings, as well as some 'cloud' computing options that require only a fairly modest monthly outlay.
3) What are the skills you bring to the task? Personally, I've bad experiences with business software that theoretically does everything... providing you have the skills of a chartered accountant. So, I've tended to build my own databases using Excel and customised data entry forms. That's a good way forward for someone who 'gets' IT more than accounting, but a lousy solution for someone who is a better bookkeeper than they are database builder!

You are on the brink of needing Sage.

A spreadsheet might do it, but it is only really adding up for you.

I would just think about how you set up sage. I saw an Ad on here for BTL sage version.

It will be all about setting it up correctly, with all the back history of purchase prices etc for decent accounting, so that you can cost accounting down to the individual property, all the way through property types to the total P&L. There are simple analysis fields in Sage, and all databases for this.

Sage in effect is a Database with a front end. As the man above said, if you are proper good with databases crack on, but I find sage is really useful in that it "never" falls down, which allot of others do.