Effective property management

How managing your commercial property manually in Excel can hurt your business?

Excel is a powerful tool, that many property managers use to keep track of tenant’s data, leases and to calculate utility costs for every tenant. While it’s a powerful program, it still has it’s limitations and can be prone to errors. Excel is prone to calculating errors and this in turn can have a massive influence on your business financially.

In this article, we will explore the most common mistakes made with Excel and how you can avoid them by implementing a software made for property management.
  • Lot of options, but people’s Excel skills vary
Excel has a lot of functions and is very customizable. You can create a table just for your liking. But not all of us are Excel-experts. People have very different skill-levels of understanding and creating different formulas. It may cause problems, when it’s time to hand over your job to someone, or even take a vacation. Other person taking over may not entirely understand the spreadsheet you have created, and this can cause unnecessary interruptions in everyday work. 


Read an inteview with one of Hausing’s clients here, where only one person understood the Excel sheet and the problems it created.  

“She had done this job alone for so many years and had great systems for herself, but others had a hard time taking it over. There were many Excel sheets, but it was overwhelming to comprehend them, and it was clear that a new system was needed,” said BLRT-s property manager Ergo Eelmäe. 
  • Simple error in a formula can lead to financial loss
Once an Excel sheet with it’s formulas is created, people don’t tend to overcheck it. So, a critical error can be there for a long time, and often times you might not even realise that the error is even there!  

Hausing’s team has encountered many of these cases, where we are helping new clients to transfer from Excel to Hausing and we find mistakes, that are accidentally missed. For example, some room’s square meters are off, and you calculate utility costs according to wrong parameters. It’s not fair to a tenant and you can suffer a financial loss or even worse – lose a tenant.

 

  • Must remember to keep track of changes
If there are tenant changes, then property management software makes them happen automatically. In Excel, you must remember to change the rules and formulas yourself. And must remember to change them back.

It is complicated to keep track of proportional costs (if tenant was not renting a room the whole month) and they need separate calculations. 
For example, Hausing software makes it extremely easy to keep track of changes. 

If a tenant is leaving, it is automatically calculated according to rented days:
  1. How much rent they pay,
  2. How much utility costs they pay,
  3. How much they consumed electricity, water, heating etc. 
  • It’s only in your computer (Excel_final_final_final_version3.xls)
If you are not using a cloud system, then the Excel spreadsheet is only in your computer and if you need to send it to someone, and need to make changes, then you must send it over and over again. This takes up a lot of valuable time, is confusing for both sides and can lead to missed information.

With a property management tool, like Hausing, all the data is securely on a platform, that is updated in real time and accessible for everyone at the same time. No need for back-and-forth sending each other vital information.

"Before Hausing we were using multiple Excel tables and the data was different in file. It was hard to understand how well our rental business was going and which data was correct," said Merle from Palmgrupp.  
  • Once it’s deleted, there is no turning back
If you are not using some back-up system or keeping your files in a cloud, you may accidentally delete the file and it’s gone. This means, that years of important data is lost, and you must start everything all over again. With a property management software, this problem is eliminated. Everything is backed-up, traceable and it’s very hard to delete something forever, since it’s not always even an option to delete data.

 

  • Poor data security
It is fairly easy to duplicate an Excel file and to distribute it to people, that don’t need it. Or send an email to a wrong person, containing a spreadsheet with delicate information. If it gets in the hands of malicious people, it can end in a bad data leak. Not only can your business financial numbers leak, but also sensitive information regarding your tenants.  

Property management software’s guarantee that your data is safe and secure and you can instantly forbid access to a malicious person.  


  • Excel is not your calendar

Yes, you can use Excel as a calendar, but you still have to remember to set up notifications in some other medium, it doesn’t send you automatic notifications:
  1. If a lease is ending,
  2. If you need to do rental price indexations,
  3. If invoices are overdue.
All of the above is possible with Hausing.

Setting up notifications ensures, that no important date is missed.

  • Limited integration possibilities with other systems
You can use Excel for data source and upload it to other programs for importing data, but usually not the other way around. Manual data transfer can lead to errors in your data and things can be missed.

You can integrate Hausing with tools you already use:

  1. Accounting software,
  2. Automatic meter readings system,
  3. E-invoices systems.  
Send invoices to accounting with just one click and check invoice balance with integration. Get meter readings into Hausing automatically and save time by manually taking and entering them.

Don’t waste your time copy-pasting information from one tool to another. With today’s digital possibilities, look for ways to make different softwares communicate and benefit from one another.

 

In conclusion

While Excel can be a highly capable tool, consider the pros and cons of using it.

  • Have you made it understandable for everyone involved?
  • Eliminated errors?
  • Is it safe to store your data this way?
  • Is it making your everyday work processes easier?
We believe that every property manager wants to provide quality service for their tenants, but to do it, you must have proper tools in use.

Explore different use cases of Hausing, and if you want a closer look, then book a call with us and we can discuss how you can solve the problems you have in Excel with another software.

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