Time. Donโt you wish you had more of it?
Everyoneโs time is limited. It doesnโt matter who you are or what you do; we all have the same number of hours and minutes in our day, and itโs a constant battle against the clock to get everything done.
Unless you have PropertyTree. The team at Rockend is committed to helping property managers create efficiencies and, in so doing, save time.
โPropertyTree was launched back in 2012 and was Australiaโs first true cloud property management software solution,โ says Rockend CEO Alister Maple-Brown. โWe now see PropertyTree as an ecosystem that combines new product innovation built and supported by Rockend, together with 13 integration partners and growing, based on our customers’ feedback. Today that commitment remains strong. We invest 10 per cent of revenue back into product development, and are constantly looking for new partners to join our ecosystem.โ
INVOICE GENIUS BULK APPROVALS
When PropertyTreeโs Invoice Genius was launched in late 2017, there were cheers from property managers across Australia and New Zealand.
โManually entering invoices is an incredibly mundane and repetitive, albeit important, task โ one that most property managers view with dread,โ says Andrew Emanuelli, Product Owner of Invoice Genius.
“Manually entering invoices is an incredibly mundane and repetitive task – one that most property managers view with dread.”
โThat all changed with Invoice Genius. Simultaneously automating the processing of creditor invoices and eliminating the laborious task of manual entry, Invoice Genius has seen agencies experience significant savings in terms of both time and costs.โ
Property managers are now set to reap even more benefits with the introduction of Invoice Geniusโ Bulk Approvals function.
โOur goal is to make it faster and easier for property managers to process their invoices, as well as provide them with a better understanding of the status of all invoices being processed,โ Andrew says.
โThe new Creditor Invoices Bulk Approvals function will save property managers more time by allowing to them to create invoices en masse. If all the fields required for validation have been prefilled by either a barcode or QR code, and all mandatory creditor information is correct, the invoice will be available for bulk approval.โ
Andrew explains that the addition of the Bulk Approvals function in Invoice Genius means the feature now surpasses the functionality in Rockendโs legacy product, fileSMART, as well as any other document management software in the real estate space. This is because it provides users with upfront real-time alerts using machine intelligence โ for example, when a duplicate invoice is entered or if an invoice canโt be processed via bulk approval.
โBeyond real-time notifications, enhancing process efficiency and saving time by being able to process hundreds of invoices in under 20 minutes, the Bulk Approvals function also brings one-click processing to users,โ Andrew says.
“Rather than having to open and click to process each and every invoice, users are able to click once for the selection of all invoices and once more to process them all. It’s that simple.”
TENANT DOWNLOAD
Property managers know how tedious manually entering tenant funds can be. But it will be a thing of the past with PropertyTreeโs Tenant Download function.
โDesigned specifically for funds directly deposited into the agencyโs trust account, the Tenant Download function will automatically match transactions with a tenancy, allocate the funds and then receipt the matched transactions,โ Tenant Download Product Owner Jasmina Cahill explains.
โOur goal with PropertyTree is to take tasks that are tedious and time consuming, and automate them. Tenant Download is just one of the steps weโre taking in the payments area to significantly reduce the amount of time users spend creating each receipt and reconciling every payment.โ
According to Jasmina, with Tenant Download agencies can also say goodbye to human errors.
โWith Tenant Downloadโs automation, the risk of transcription errors when creating a tenancy receipt is significantly reduced. This in turn reduces the risk of funds being assigned incorrectly and the additional time and effort it takes to rectify any mistakes.โ
PropertyTreeโs Tenant Download feature will support the majority of its users by integrating with major banks, including Bank of New Zealand, CBA, NAB, ANZ, Westpac and Macquarie.
ONLINE ADVERTISING
If creating and managing online advertising for properties is a chore, then the new Online Advertising feature is for you.
โThe Online Advertising feature will allow PropertyTree users to push ads to online portals such as domain.com.au, realestate.com.au, realestate.co.nz and trademe.co.nz,โ Riasat Azim, the Online Advertising Product Owner, explains.
โBy leveraging the information about a property already held in PropertyTree, many of the fields required by the portals can be prefilled. This means there is no duplication in data entry and, importantly, preserves PropertyTree as the โsource of truthโ for any property-related information.โ
Users can create a single ad through the Online Advertising feature and then push it to multiple portals, saving time and effort by not having to visit individual portals to manually upload each ad. Ads can also be saved for future use.
โBeing able to manage all your property ads from a single interface has obvious benefits when it comes to time savings,โ Riasat says. โThe visibility the Online Advertising feature provides is where further value lies. PropertyTree users can see where and when each ad has appeared and its status.โ
“Our goal with PropertyTree is to take tasks that are tedious and time consuming, and automate them.”
The new feature will inevitably give PropertyTree users a competitive edge, according to Riasat.
โNo other property management cloud solution offers integration with online portals. This underlines our commitment to understanding the needs of property managers and creating solutions that are flexible and meet their specific needs,โ he says.
MOBILE
These days property management is an โanywhere, any timeโ business. Out of the office, out on the road and out of business hours, property managers need the right technology solutions at their fingertips to get the job done.
โBased on the valuable insights provided by our customers, we identified that that one of their biggest pain points was being out of the office for the majority of their working days and not being able to access and communicate with tenants and landlords efficiently and securely,โ explains Product Owner Michael Momdjian.
โIn order to create a fast and consistent customer experience on mobile, we are adapting our application to match the visual language of the userโs operating system โ providing customers with a look and feel thatโs natural and intuitive,โ Michael says.
As new contacts are added to PropertyTree, this information will be immediately available to customers on the go. The mobile application currently in development will minimise the need to call the office to clarify contact details, and time spent manually adding contact details will increasingly become a thing of the past.
All applications Rockend builds from now on will be iOS and Android device-compatible to ensure they meet the needs of their customers today and in the future. Leveraging built-in components that are readily available on smartphones โ such as face recognition, geolocation, touch-ID and more โ will also be part of the Mobile featureโs development to ensure access is fast and secure.
Further details about the specifics of the mobile application will be available shortly โ watch this space!
GIVING YOU MORE TIME
Property managers are experts at what they do. Landlords rely on them to manage one of their biggest investments. Tenants rely on them to keep a roof over their heads. There are a multitude of tasks and responsibilities that come with managing a residential property, which means the value of a property manager is significant.
Thatโs why using a comprehensive solution like PropertyTree is so important. It saves time.
New features like Invoice Genius Bulk Approvals, Tenant Download, Online Advertising and Mobile create efficiencies and save you time โ freeing you up to spend it on what matters most.
Invoice Geniusโ Bulk Approvals are available for PropertyTree users now. The other features outlined in this article will be available in the coming months.
