Trying to improve maintenance, HELP ME

[Will Gordon]

Hey guys, I'm currently working on a project to help tenants be able to submit work orders for individual landlords who don't want to deal with maintenance It would have a call center that they can refer their tenants to (I would staff it) so that work can begin immediately within budget limits also, people could just pay their vendors directly through us just like PayPal making it easy. Recently I've working on being able to submit a PDF of all interactions between all parties for the sake of documentation. Everyone at the end of a job can be kept up to date without tenants waiting or landlords worrying about delaying on a work order Really want to know what else you guys would like from something like this?

[Will Gordon]

Originally posted by @Ryan Murdock:

@Will Gordon How are you ensuring you get paid? Are you floating payments to vendors in the hopes that the property owner will agrees you made the right call and be willing to pay you back? Or are you collecting an upfront retainer? Or will your subs be agreeable to having their bills go right to the owner and hope they get paid? Let a few of those owners burn your vendors and you will quickly see your vendors lose motivation to respond to your requests. 

Sounds like you are straddling the line between PM and simple handyman service. It's going to be tough to stay centered.

 Well, we can set base budget limits and we do basic troubleshooting. So for clogs, circuit breakers, or garbage disposals, we will walk tenants through it. As you become more confident with the company you could set automatic budget limits. 

I'm thinking there would be 2 types of customer set ups Landlords are customers not the tenants, so we won't just work on stuff a tenant submits without owner consent.

Monthly subscription- People who don't want to deal with maintenance period and want to use our call center and are willing to give a blanket budget limit approval of 100-200 dollars for casual repairs (leaking faucet, fan repairs, etc) or for scheduling preventative and restorative maintenance (landscaping, drain cleaning, etc). We can track the quantity of work orders submitted and assist with troubleshooting anything a tenant submits to avoid any unnecessary repairs.

By the work order- You submit a work order and put down a deposit for the job (varies by job). You set budget limits and as long as everything is within budget limits you can pay the rest automatically through our system directly to the vendor if it's over budget we have contracts with our vendors that say they are not to begin work if it's over budget because they won't get paid for it. We reach out to you and see if you wanna keep moving ahead or find someone else. You are also refunded the difference if the job is under the deposit limit.

I agree owners burning vendors would definitely be unfortunate. Hopefully, with a deposit and the level of communication we provide, we can avoid this as much as possible. That being said it would be the same as if an owner burned a vendor regardless of our involvement. The owners are still 100% responsible for paying and if they don't we will pass on any pieces of information necessary for vendors to begin a collections process on nonpaying owners. We essentially just seek out vendors that want work, they are not OUR vendors and we do not hold any financial responsibility in the process.

I don't think we are worried about being centered, this company is 100% a maintenance-focused business. Everything we do will be to improve that experience. Whether it be for property managers or tenants that is the goal of my company. Any suggestions or questions you all have will help that process!