UPDATE (2024): [Discontinued] 360 Property Management Software is no longer offered or available for purchase.
More Harm Than Good?
It is evident that a lot property managers are still using spreadsheets and relying on them to keep track of information on their properties, tenants and leases. Although some spreadsheet programs are useful and fill in certain gaps, many will cause more problems than they fix due to their limited design and capability.
According to PropertyManager.com, an online source for property management news and resources, there are three things that spreadsheets lack when compared to credible property management software:
1) Ease of Use
In order to utilize spreadsheets as a reliable property management solution, users have to be really skilled and organized – those that aren’t will lose a lot of time trying to figure out how a spreadsheet works. However, property management software makes it easy to set up a system, requires little maintenance and provides a lot more accuracy.
2) Data Integrity and Security
The flexibility of spreadsheets can actually be detrimental to those who use them as a complete property management monitoring program. This is because users can customize data, change formulas as they see fit, delete transactions and override original entries. All of this eliminates control and data integrity. This is why property management software has become valuable to business owners because of its ability to ensure that data is accurate and secure. Spreadsheets do not offer this protection.
3) Property Management Functionality
The primary use of spreadsheets is NOT property management. Spreadsheets are limited when it comes to managing extensive portfolios that include thousands of leases and contracts. As a result, users will waste time inputting data manually, because spreadsheets do not have the capability to share or automatically update data. For example, anytime a tenant pays rent, property managers will have to record the payment in their checkbook, their accounts receivable journal, and their tenant record. The lack of a central database in spreadsheets means a lot more repetitive data entry. And each time a user has to re-enter the same data, the likelihood of making an error increases. However, with property management software, data input is done only once and automatically populates all required fields within the system.
While Excel will provide some benefits to property managers, using a proper solution will increase efficiency and accuracy. PropertyManager.com states that most software products today are “designed with the end-user in mind, and include easy system navigation, intuitive data entry screens, and system tutorials.” 360 Property Manager, powered by Microsoft Dynamics NAV, is one example of an innovative software product that is easy to use and designed with property managers in mind.