What is Digital Ticketing and How It Can Help with Property Maintenance Management?

What is digital ticketing?

Digital ticketing uses electronic systems to create, manage, and track service requests or maintenance tasks. Widely used in property management, IT support, and facilities maintenance, digital ticketing streamlines request handling by replacing traditional methods like email, phone and paper.

The key features of digital ticketing are:

1. Request submission – users/tenants submit maintenance request through a web page, email or app.
2. Ticket creation – each request is converted into a digital ticket or work order.
   
3. Assignment and tracking – digital ticketing system allows problems to be assigned to specific people or teams responsible for addressing the issue.
4. Communication – the system allows you to communicate between all involved people like supervisor, requester, contractor.
5. Workflow automation – automatically sends alerts and notifications to relevant parties.
   
6. Reporting and analytics – use reporting tools to analyse trends, track response times and measure your service quality.

Improved Efficiency

We have all experienced situations where we have so many things to plan and do, but the information is scattered across different places—your mailbox, notebook, and in your head.

You don’t know where to start or if you’ve forgotten something. With a task management system, every important unresolved issue is visible in one place.

Since most work order management softwares allow you to link emails to the system, you can set up a dedicated maintenance email. Whenever a tenant reports a problem, it goes straight into the software as a ticket.

Once you receive the issue, you can begin resolving it by setting a due date, assigning it to the appropriate person, and tracking progress.

This visibility helps prioritize tasks and provides valuable insights into maintenance performance.

Clear Communication and Better Tenant Satisfaction

A ticketing system helps to maintain clear communication between tenants, property managers, and maintenance staff. Faster response times and efficient handling of maintenance issues lead to improved tenant satisfaction.

Read our previous article about building stronger tenant relationships for long-term success > 

Automatic notifications inform tenants when:

• Their issue has been received,
• There's progress on the issue,
• The issue has been resolved.

In Hausing, you can use ticketing in kanban or table format, just as you like and is more comfortable to you. In kanban view (shown on the picture below), each ticket displays essential information in columns that represent progress, giving you a quick overview of all maintenance tasks.

“Hausing has good overview of work orders and their processes. Visually it is very easy to understand the status of a job,” said Renna, a long-time user of Hausing.

Enhanced Accountability

Property managers handle multiple tasks daily, making it challenging to address every issue promptly. Digital ticketing clarifies responsibility by assigning tasks to specific team members or contractors.

Advantages of a ticketing system, that improve accountability:

• Clear task assignment – you can assign tasks to different team members. When a problem is submitted, the system allows property managers to direct the issue to responsible person. This way you can avoid confusion that may arise, when you are using verbal or email communication.
  
• Tracking progress – team members can update tasks progress. This way everyone can stay in the loop and there is no need to ask about updates yourself. Moreover, with data analysis property managers can quickly identify any bottlenecks or delays in the workflow.
  
• Record-keeping - every time a maintenance request is updated—whether through notes, status changes, or communications with tenants—the system logs these actions. For example, you can use it to analyse the performance, if a specific technician is always on time and problems are resolved correctly, his job can be rewarded. 

“What I  like about Hausing, is the 3-way communication between client, Property manager and contractor, easy to add docs with drag'n'drop, delegating tasks, overview of all tickets etc,” said Juris from Colliers.

Data-Driven Insights

The ability to gather you data into one system and analyze it, can significantly improve property management prectices. One of the standout features of digital ticketing systems is their capability to collect valuable data on maintenance requests and work orders.

Every time a maintenance request is submitted, a digital ticketing system logs essential information, such as the type of issue, location, severity, and resolution time. Over time, this data accumulates, providing property managers with a good amount of information about the maintenance quality within their properties.

By analyzing this data, you can identify common issues that tenants frequently report. For instance, if there is a significant number of requests about plumbing problems, it could indicate a systemic issue that requires attention.

In Hausing, you can quickly see statistics about deadlines, statuses and work order categories.

Analyzing trends enables proactive maintenance planning.

For example, seasonal patterns may emerge, such as an increase in heating-related issues during the winter months or air conditioning problems in the summer. Recognizing these trends allows property managers to prepare in advance, ensuring that resources are allocated efficiently and that staff is equipped to handle anticipated surges in maintenance requests.

To avoid seasonal problems even happening, it’s a good idea to think about setting up a preventive maintenance schedule, so your devices would stay in good condition year-round. 

If you have never done it, read the preventive maintenance schedule set-by-step setting up guide here.

Conclusion

Digital ticketing systems improve property maintenance management by streamlining processes, enhancing communication, and improving accountability. As property managers face increasing demands to deliver prompt and effective service, adapting technology to automate workflows becomes essential.

The ability to collect and analyze data empowers managers to make informed decisions regarding resource allocation and preventive maintenance.

In a competitive landscape, where tenant retention is crucial, investing in digital solutions is not just a smart choice, it’s a necessary step towards ensuring operational excellence and building lasting relationships with tenants.