Property Tracking Software

[Dan Tutolo]

The closest thread I could find that discussed a topic similar to this is: 

I have been reading a lot in the discussions about property management platforms and for accounting, for example, this thread: 

https://www.biggerpockets.com/forums/52/topics/206...

In other threads I have seen Buildium receive good feedback and in the thread mentioned above Quickbooks seemed to be used by a lot of investors for accounting.  But I am curious what those of you are doing that have property being managed by multiple managers at multiple sites and also want to keep track of prospects and deals in progress as well as all property rented out. 

So, because I don't manage myself I don't need:
- tenant screening
- a way to accept rents online
- a way to advertise vacancies
- a way electronically sign leases

But, what I do need is:

- a single platform that can ingest the data of the various platforms my managers are using (appfolio, buildium, rent manager, propertyware, etc) so that I can keep track of everything in one place and add in the various expenses that aren't on the property managers statements
- a platform that can generate reports for lenders and accountants (quickbooks, Buildium)
- a platform that can help me keep track of my prospects and deals in progress before they are handed over to property management.

Currently I am getting by with Google Sheets and importing those sheets into Google Maps, etc and everything is working great, its just 1) it is labor intensive 2) it is not really scalable and 3) it doesn't work well with virtual assistants.

So I am curious what platforms you have all found that fit this scenario the best and have any of you had good experiences with real estate virtual assistants?

My company is growing and I need to get everything standardized so I can grow peacefully. Thanks in advance for your opinions and experience. 

[Dan Tutolo]

@Gabe Meikle sorry I was involved in other things for a while and missed your pm. I have since sent you a pm. 

So I couldn't find anything that did what I needed. I ended up going with Buildium with for managing the properties that I was directly involved that did require screening, lease generation and payments. I found their interface to be pretty intuitive. 

But for everything else, I ended up concentrating on Google's free tools and have ended up pretty much organizing my browser as my own personal website using bookmarks to link to various google folders. And by organizing folders a certain way and using universal naming conventions for all files, it makes it easier to retrieve documents when I need them. For example. I now keep all leases for one property manager in one folder whereas I used to keep the lease in each tenant folder. When a lender needed leases I would have to go into each tenants folder to get them and now I just go to one for each property manager. Making small changes like that has turned out to save tons of time when prepping for loans or shopping for insurance.   

I also learned Google Apps Script and have automated a lot of functionality like pulling pdfs off of emails and throwing them in certain folders automatically while kicking out email reports, as well as building a spreadsheet of all utility activity based on email notices that get sent out by providers. I can even generate importable tenant charges spreadsheets using that technique so I only have one spreadsheet of utility charges to import at the end of each month rather than doing them one by one. 

Unfortunately not all of this is something that is easily shareable but I am working on ways that I can convert this functionally into online tools. I am working on some video presentations to at least share some of the techniques that don't require coding and increase productivity. 

So long story short, I am still in the world of spreadsheets but working much more productively.