As a property management professional, your personal goal should be to have any information that you may need readily available – anywhere, at any hour! To accomplish this, organization is key. With the explosion of the mobile app marketplace in recent years, there are a number of great options to keep busy property management professionals organized and on-track for success.
1. Evernote
Evernote is not just a note-taking tool. It is all of your sticky notes, notebooks, magazine cutouts, pictures, etc. organized in one place. You can create various notebooks and organize different notes, files, and pictures in each one, with tagging capabilities. It is easy to get out of control, so think big picture to start. Tagging each item seems to be the most helpful feature. When you need to go back to “that thing that person said at that place,” you can. In almost every conversation I have with people, I politely tell them that I am not ignoring them by looking at my phone, but rather, I am intently taking notes. So at the end of each conversation, I can summarize it.
Property Management Tip: Use Evernote to take notes each time you visit a property. Take detailed notes (ditching the clipboard) and tag it with a tenant’s company name. When you go to compile your monthly report for your client, you can quickly copy and paste the notes in.
2. Dropbox
Dropbox is amazing because of its sharing features. At the end of the day, you can treat it as your hard drive in the cloud. I love this app because you can download it on your desktop, laptop, iPad, iPhone, or Android device and it will sync all of your files across all devices. If I need to reference something while I’m at a property, I can simply go through the Dropbox files on my phone, rather than sort through emails or notes while carrying around a laptop and relying on spotty WiFi.
Property Management Tip: Create a file folder for each property and share it with your client. Drag and drop reports, inspections, etc. in there. That way, if they have a question when they are on a call with their lender, partner, or colleague, they can quickly look at the neatly organized files to find what they need.
3. Picasa
Sperry Van Ness International Corporation (SVNIC) uses Google Apps, which always functions well. You can very easily use other photo organization apps, such as Flickr, but I prefer Picasa. As a property manager, you are always taking photos. Whether it is the landscaping, the condition of a unit post-move out, or just the overall condition of the property, these images can easily get disorganized. By using Picasa, you can edit, organize, and manage them with ease. You have the ability to group them by property, tag them, and share them with your clients.
Property Management Tip: Much like the previous tips, keeping photos organized is a key to becoming more efficient as a property manager. Use this app to add images to your monthly reports.