All the Reasons Why You Should Use a Landlord App

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Did you know that there are almost 48.5 million rental units in the U.S.?

Whether you own one single-family house or twenty multi-unit buildings, you know that maintaining a rental property is a ton of work.

Luckily, the complicated task of keeping all of your rental information straight has gotten a lot easier with the appearance of many different affordable  landlord apps.

Let’s take a look at why a landlord app is right for you and your business.

Why Mobile?

First of all, why should you choose a mobile app over a computer-based software program?

Well, think about it this way. When you own a number of rental properties, how much time do you spend with your phone at hand versus your computer?

You will likely have access to the internet or mobile data just about anywhere you go. This means that you can have your management app at hand no matter where you are.

It’s Affordable

Property management apps have become quite affordable over the years. Not only is the software affordable, but it can also save you money through streamlining business and workflow. On top of that, it can end up giving you more time to put your time into the things that matter most.

You Can Keep Track of Your Accounting

Few people are terribly excited when it comes time to deal with accounting. It is, however, a necessary aspect of any business, including being a landlord.

Being able to manage your accounting from your smartphone is a game-changer. Rather than leaving all of your accounting until the end of the tax year, landlord apps make it easy to record expenses, log payments, digitize receipts as you go. Additionally, you can use landlord apps for iPad to automate tedious and complicated accounting processes.

It Keeps Communicating Easy

landlord communicating with her tenants easily

When you’re a landlord, you have a lot of numbers to keep track of. Efficient and effective communication with tenants, contractors, maintenance workers, and others is essential.

When you use one of the best landlord apps, you can keep all of your contact information in one place. Not only that, but you can have contacts associated with the relevant properties. This is a great way to help you remember who is who when you’re dealing with a long list of units.

Another great thing about rental apps for landlords is that it makes communication a breeze. You can automate things like rental reminders, which helps ensure that you’ll be paid on time as well as saving you time and energy chasing people down for checks.

It Can Automate Repetitive Tasks

One of the most powerful capabilities of technology is its ability to automate repetitive tasks.

Landlord apps can automate reminders, which will make sure that you can keep track of all of the important tasks you need to take care of. When you own a number of properties, it can be hard to remember the timelines for each of the units. This way, you don’t have to hold that information in your head or on scraps of paper anymore.

You’ll also be able to easily produce professional reports that help you understand the essential aspects of your business finances. Things like expenses, rent collections, and profit and loss can be elegantly mapped out to help you understand where your business stands. Without this powerful software, you’d have to spend hours tediously entering data into a spreadsheet in order to compile your data visually in this way.

On top of all that, automating tasks can help remove the possibility of human error. We all make mistakes, and that’s to be expected. But when you have repetitive tasks automated through your app, you can spend a lot less time cleaning up messes caused by mistakes.

It’s Scalable

For most landlords, acquiring more property is a major goal. The problem with this is that the more properties you have, the more there is to take care of and the more there is that can go wrong.

Keeping track of all of your different properties can be stressful, to say the least. One of the best things about apps for landlords is that they compile all of your properties’ information in one place. You don’t have to search through your computer for that one excel file anymore or junk up your shelves with binders full of information.

Landlord apps are an essential tool for helping you scale your business.

Simplifies Backing Up Your Data

Backing up your data is a necessary routinized task for any business these days. While it’s easy and convenient to have all of your information digitally, it quickly turns into a disaster if you somehow lose that data. Using a landlord app makes it simple and easy to both backup your data and recover lost data.

Allows You to Analyze Your Data

It’s important for business decisions to be data-driven in order for your business to thrive. Manual data entry and analysis can be riddled with human error, however, which can have an impact on the choices you make as a landlord.

When you use a landlord app, all of your information is stored and gives you the ability to easily look through all of your data in one place. You’ll be able to see opportunities and spot inefficiencies in a way you never were able to before.

Better Customer Experience

Across the country, millions of people rent properties from landlords. As you might imagine, their experience ranges from excellent and professional to total and complete nightmare. This extreme polarization of possibilities is present both from the landlord’s perspective and from the tenant’s perspective.

Communication is key to a good landlord tenant relationship, as well as a set understanding of expectations. You expect your tenants to pay rent on time, while they expect you to take care of the property in the agreed upon ways.

One of the great things about the different apps for landlords and tenants is that they tend to offer online rental payment solutions. This means that your tenants can pay rent with a credit card or other alternative methods if they chose to. It also means that paying rent is as easy as picking up their phone, as opposed to writing out a check and driving it to the post office.

Checks are an inconvenient form of payment for both landlords and tenants. With tenants able to pay rent in just a few clicks, it makes both their lives and your life easier.

No landlord wants to chase down tenants for the rent check. When you use rental apps for landlords, the likelihood that you’ll have to do that will decrease.

Keeps Your Overhead Costs Low

A lot of your business processes can be automated through using landlord management apps. With workflow automated, you’ll be amazed at how uch of your time is freed up. Automating other aspects of your business can reduce your overhead costs.

Reduce Your Stress

There are a lot of benefits to being a landlord, but it can be an incredibly stressful job. You’re never technically off the clock, as something can go wrong in a rental unit at any time of the night. Keeping track of everything that needs to be done to each of your units can occupy your mind and keep you operating at a low level of stress all the time.

When everything you need to know about your rental business is kept in one place, you can set down your mental stress-load. All of your information is organized and in one place, so you don’t have to be constantly keeping track of every little detail for fear that something will get forgotten.

Make Fewer Mistakes

It can be hard to keep track of everything when you have a number of rental properties. Even when you do your best to avoid making accounting mistakes, it can be easy for costly mistakes to slip through the cracks. It’s common for landlords who have a large number of properties to hire someone else to deal with their accounting for them.

Having all of your financial transactions and accounts online can make it so mistakes are few and far between. It makes it easy to see the big picture of your business without breaking out your calculator. Many of the best landlord apps also allow you to link directly to accounting software, which again saves you time and minimizes mistakes.

Enhanced Security

two-factor authentication for payment

There are a number of issues when you accept cash or checks for rental payment.

Cash payments are problematic because if you lose them, then you’ve got a big problem. Missplaced cash rent payments or confusion between the landlord and the tenant about how much has been paid can cause a major headache.

Accepting cash can also be problematic because it makes your business more vulnerable to theft. If you have employees, it is of course possible and likely that they are all honest and above board. However, when you introduce cash into the equation, it opens up the window to potential theft.

When you accept checks for rent, you have to worry about check fraud, bouncing checks, or other issues having to do with stolen or misplaced personal or financial details.

On the other hand, the ability for your tenants to pay rent online doesn’t just mean you’ll have fewer late payments. It also means that the transactions are more secure.

Tenants can feel comfortable using this method of payment due to security features such as encrypted connections and two-factor authentication.

Keep Maintenance Requests Organized

As a landlord, one of your responsibilities is to deal with maintenance requests in a timely and effective manner. Nothing can sour a landlord-tenant relationship faster in the eyes of a tenant than unanswered maintenance needs.

Many landlord apps offer features like maintenance tracking and requests. This means that you can easily see which of your properties are in need of work and even have the ability to assign a plumber, builder, electrician, or handyman to deal with the job. When you take care of maintenance requests in a timely manner, it keeps your tenants much happier.

Helps Tenants Pay Easily and On-Time

The easier it is for tenants to pay, the more likely they are to pay on-time. You want a landlord-tenant relationship to run as smoothly as possible, and using a landlord app will help facilitate this.

Attract More Responsible Tenants

Tenants that have better credit scores and are less likely to end up in an eviction proceeding will be drawn to a professional landlord who isn’t stuck in the last century. People increasingly expect to be able to deal with all of their finances online, and requiring tenants to run to the post office to mail a check is simply asking for late payments.

Responsible tenants will be drawn to rentals where the process is streamlined, simple, and online. Looking at two otherwise equivalent rentals, it’s completely within the realm of possibilities that tenants would be swayed to choose the property where maintenance requests and rent payments can be easily made through their phone.

Word of mouth is still a very effective means of marketing these days. When tenants have a positive experience with you as a landlord, they are likely to recommend you to their friends, family, and co-workers. On the flip side, tenants are also very likely to bad mouth landlords they find uncommunicative and disorganized.

Whether you’re renting to college students or young families, finding responsible tenants is one of the keys to a successful rental business.

A Landlord App Can Help You Be the Best Landlord You Can Be

When you are being the best landlord you can be, you’ll be rewarded financially. You’ll be able to get better tenants and keep them longer, minimizing late payments and reducing turnover. With how much time a landlord app will save you, you’ll be able to put your energy and focus on the issues and aspects of your business that really matter.

Are you looking for property management in Northern Virginia, Washington, D.C., or even parts of Maryland? Contact us today to set up a free property management quote.

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Enhanced Reporting

Your portal includes a selection of extremely useful reports. Reports are available in the “Reports” section, and are distinct from the financial statements. Unlike financial statements which are static records, Reports are dynamic real-time records that will update with current data every time you view them. 

Scroll down to learn more about Reports:

Navigate to the "Reports" module in your portal:

Owner Portal Reports
  • Keep in mind, these reports are dynamic records. They will refresh to display current information every time you view them. 

Enhanced Rent Roll Report:

Enhanced Rent Roll Report
  • The Enhanced Rent Roll Report will show the rent amount, last payment date, move-in date, lease expiration date, and security deposit amount for each of your tenants. 
  • It will also show a portfolio summary with occupancy percentage, vacancy loss, and more!

Unit Comparison Report:

Unit Comparison Report
  • If you own multiple units (or buildings) with Nomadic, you’ll get access to the Unit Comparison Report. 
  • This report enables you to quickly compare financial performance between your units at a glance without toggling between individual reports. 

Income Statement Month-Over-Month:

Income Statement by Month Report
  • The Income Statement Detail – Monthly Report serves as a month-over-month record of portfolio performance. You’ll see itemized income and expense categories and can track monthly. This report will update with fresh data every time you view it. 

Financial Statements

Financial statements will be published to your portal on a monthly basis. The statements are found in your Documents library, and provide a historical record of all financial performance. The statements serve as a snapshot of financial performance over a given period, and are static documents (unlike Reports, the statements do not update/change in real-time). 

Scroll down for more info about the Financial Statements in your Documents library:

The Documents area contains monthly financial statements:

Owner Portal Documents
  • The statements in the Documents are are static documents. They are posted to the portal once a month to serve as a historical record of financial performance. 

Download a statement to see month and YTD financials:

Owner Portal Property Statement

You'll also find a month-over-month operating statement:

Month over Month Statement

Portal Communication Tool

You can use your owner portal to communicate with our team. Any messages you send through the portal will go straight to your Account Manager. When we reply, you’ll get an email notification and you’ll also see the message in your portal next time you log in. 

Here’s an overview of using the communication platform:

Click "Communications" and navigate to "Conversations":

Commincation Dashboard Screenshot
  • The communications module will contain a record of all messages that you create through the portal. 

Click the "New Message" button and send your message:

Owner Portal New Message Screenshot

Responses will show up in the conversation ticket:

Portal Conversation Response Screenshot
  • You’ll get an email notification whenever you get a response, and you’ll also see the message in your portal next time you log in. 

You can reply in-line using the comment box:

Owner Portal Comment

Each conversation will be logged in its entirety:

Portal Conversation Snapshot

Understanding the Ledger

Your portal includes a ledger with all transactions. The ledger is populated with data in real-time as transactions flow through our accounting software. Much of this information is also available in the Reports area, as well as the Statements in your Documents library, but the ledger is the most comprehensive resource for diving into the details. 

Please scroll through the sections below to get a better understanding of how to interpret the ledger. 

By default, transactions are sorted chronologically:

Owner Ledger Dates
  • The date reflected in the lefthand column is the actual transaction date, not the “bill date”. This is the date the transaction was actually processed. 

If you have multiple properties with Nomadic, you'll see the address for each transaction in the "Location" column:

Ledger Property Column
  • You can filter the ledger to look at just one property, all properties, or specific sets of properties. 
  • If you only have one property with us, you’ll just see the ledger for that property. 

The Description column displays the transaction type:

Owner Ledger Description Column
  • BILL: this is an expense transaction, such as for repair costs or management fees.
  • CHARGE: this is a transaction  billed to the tenant, most typically a rent payment. 
  • NACHA EXPORT: this is a credit we processed to your distribution account. This type of transaction is how you get paid! 

The Amount column shows the dollar value of each transaction:

Owner Ledger Amount Column
  • Positive Amounts: if an amount is positive, it reflects a transaction that is payable to you. Typically, this will be a rent payment that we collected from your tenants. On occasion, a positive number could also signify a journal entry or credit adjustment. 
  • Negative Amounts:  if an amount is negative, this is a transaction that is either payable to Nomadic or is an amount that has already been paid to you. Typically this will be for repair costs or management/leasing fees. Owner draws (net distributions into your checking/savings account) also reflect as negative amounts, since they have already been paid to you. 

The Account Balance column shows a sum of positive/negative transactions at a given point in time:

Owner Ledger Account Balance Column
  • Account Balance should always equal zero after a net distribution has been processed. When the balance is zero, this means that all expenses have been paid and you’ve received the remainder as net operating income, leaving a balance of zero (meaning: no one is due any money, as all funds have been distributed appropriately). 

Navigating the Propertyware Owner Portal

Your portal includes some extremely useful features that help you understand your property’s financial performance at a new level, with real-time transparency into every transaction.

Scroll through the snapshots below for an overview of portal navigation! If you need more help or have specific questions about using the portal, you can reach out to your Account Manager any time for a screen share. 

You can filter all info by date range or property:

PW Portal Filters

View a snapshot of income and expenses on your dashboard:

PW Owner Dashboard View

See every transaction in real-time on your ledger:

Owner Portal Ledger View

Statements and forms will be posted to your documents library:

Owner Portal Document Library

View a suite of real-time financial reports:

Portal Reports View

See a running list of all bills, and drill down for more detail:

Owner Portal Bills View

Under Bill Details, you'll find dates/descriptions/amounts and more:

Portal Bill Details

You can also communicate with your Account Manager through the portal:

Owner Portal Communication Tools

How do net distributions work?

Net distributions keep your accounting clean and simple. Each month we’ll collect rent from the tenants, deduct any repair expenses for the previous month and any management/leasing fees for the current month, and credit the remaining net operating income to your account. 

Net Distribution

You’ll receive a statement via email each time a net distribution is processed, and can view all transaction details in your Propertyware owner portal.