Improving efficiency, compliance, and quality with no-code property management apps
As a property manager, it’s your job to not only help your clients preserve the value of their property, but to ensure it stays compliant with local ordinances.
In many states, a code violation multiplies every day that it goes unresolved, so a $1,000 violation, left unattended, becomes an $8,000 in just a week.
To protect your clients (and your company), you need to conduct regular inspections, respond quickly to problems, and confirm that your contractors are performing high-quality work.
Between contracts, inspection reports, and maintenance records, it’s a lot of paperwork — and paperwork is the enemy of expeditiousness.
An inspection conducted with pen and paper necessitates a series of follow-up tasks to make sure issues are resolved to your (and your client’s) satisfaction. They might include:
- Matching the right photos to the right inspection reports
- Calling your maintenance crews to schedule repairs
- Coordinating with the inhabitants to minimize disruption
- Scheduling a follow-up inspection to ensure quality
- Reporting all of the above actions to the client
Unfortunately, most property management software does little to alleviate these hassles, but rather adds another task — updating inspection and maintenance records in your database — to your to-do list.
Streamline your processes with no-code property management apps
Software that actually helps you manage your properties more efficiently needs a mobile component that leverages cloud technology to share information between the field and office quickly.
But hiring a team of software programmers — or a vendor — to build and maintain a property management app for you is prohibitively expensive.
With a no-code mobile app platform, you can create and modify property inspection checklists and build in automated workflows yourself, without involving developers or outside consultants.
Yes, really!
A no-code mobile property management app enables you to:
1. Complete inspections faster and with fewer hassles.
You can preload details about the property into a digital checklist within the app — things like address, number of stories, and building materials — so the inspector doesn’t have to spend time filling out that information on-site.
Your inspector can also take photos of areas in need of repair within the checklist, where it is automatically connected to the record of the property they’re inspecting. No need to rifle through a day’s worth of inspection photos and identify and attach them to the right report later.
As soon as an inspection is complete, the inspector can simply sync the checklist to the cloud for you to sign off on immediately, rather than having to drive it back to your office.
2. Respond to issues quickly.
Whether it’s a safety concern, a major repair, or a lightbulb that needs to be replaced, a mobile property management app helps you get it resolved faster.
With workflow automation, the app can kick off a repair process based on data that is entered into the inspection checklist. For example, if an inspection reveals a roof leak, the app can automatically send a notification to both the property owner and your roofing contractor that a repair is needed (including the address, type of roof, and extent of damage).
You don’t even have to pick up the phone.
3. Ensure quality repair work.
Once the repair is complete, your contractors can use the same property management app on the mobile device they’re already carrying to take a photo of the finished project for you (or your client) to approve. This way, you can rest assured that the job was done right the first time and not waste time (or money) on rework.
4. Create an audit trail to demonstrate compliance.
Finally, a property management app automatically creates digital documentation of every inspection and repair that demonstrates to your client (or local authorities) that you’ve done your due diligence.
And you can do it all without any coding.
Try Fulcrum
Fulcrum is a no-code mobile data collection and workflow automation program that allows you to create custom apps — without writing a line of code — to streamline your inspection and maintenance processes and deliver real-time insights into the condition of the properties you manage. Try it free for 30 days!
This post was originally published on Fulcrumapp.com.
