New Property Management System
We recently selected a vendor for a new property management system. This is a SAS (Software as a Service) system and as such is completely browser based and can be used on just about any type of computer, laptop, tablet etc. We considered traditional local server based systems but soon eliminated that as an option because our properties are in many towns making it difficult to provide access to a network based system at all locations. In addition, maintaining and supporting onsite systems needs a set of skills and expertise that are in high demand, hard to find, retain, and typically expensive.
We narrowed our choice down to three systems and Steven tried out each of them by signing up for short term contracts with each. We are currently in the process of getting all our information and data ready to load onto the new system. This is easier said than done, because our growth in the last few years has caused us to ‘grandfather in’ many different procedures and systems resulting in our information stored in many different formats – from paper based ledgers, to spreadsheets, to small biz accounting software and everything in between. We already started a project to standardize all legal forms we use and implementing this new system goes hand in hand with that project. Will add more info about this from time to time.