7 Key Characteristics of the Best Property Management Software

Mar 8, 2023

From fielding resident questions and processing package deliveries to responding to maintenance requests and keeping your stakeholders informed, managing your HOA community, condo, or multifamily property may feel like spinning a dozen plates simultaneously. Whether you’re using multiple software solutions to keep records or working with pen and paper, you know how complicated it is to manage your property. 

This is where an all-in-one property management system like BuildingLink can make a world of difference. By consolidating all your operations into one platform that everyone can access, you can simplify your day-to-day work while ensuring nothing falls through the cracks. When evaluating if a property management software is the best fit for your property or community, here are a few key characteristics to look out for. 

Tools That Empower More Effective Front Desk Operations

The front desk is the first point of contact for your residents, visitors, vendors, and deliveries. Even the most well-organized front desk can be chaotic, especially if your employees are trying to take messages and create incident reports by pen and paper. Ideally, the best property management systems combine many of your front office team’s tasks into one place that is accessible to your management team and stakeholders. 

At a bare minimum, great property management solutions should enable your team to: 

  • Create incident reports and shift logs
  • Manage visitors and parking permits 
  • Record front desk instructions

BuildingLink’s front-desk solutions go far beyond record keeping. Our platform allows your team to track incoming packages 80% faster with ImageR, a smart label reader that uses optical character recognition and AI technology to scan shipping labels via the BuildingLink mobile app. Meanwhile, KeyLink simplifies key management and minimizes the risk of lost keys and expensive retrofits by providing a complete trail of to whom keys were assigned and when. 

To offer a faster and more convenient valet service, look no further than the BuildingLink Valet App. Fully integrated with our property management system, the app notifies parking attendants when your residents or front-desk team submit a vehicle request. Each notification has all the required information (resident name, car make and model, parking space number, and more) and can be accepted by the attendant on their mobile device. The app is synced to the BuildingLink platform, so your front-desk team and managers can view pending requests at any time.  

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Improved Maintenance Management

As the saying goes, an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure. Performing routine maintenance consistently can prevent unnecessary costly repairs. Regardless of what kind of property you manage, you know how difficult it can be to stay on top of your maintenance operations. Ideally, a good property management software would help you track the items that need maintenance while enabling your residents to create work orders that you can track task status. 

With our property management maintenance solutions, you can: 

  • Efficiently manage resident maintenance requests and work orders. 
    • Residents create work orders via the BuildingLink Resident App that are then added as an internal task in the system. Work orders can be tracked by your management and maintenance teams on the web portal or the staff mobile app and can be used to coordinate with outside vendors as needed. Residents can track their work order’s status on the resident app and even through the Amazon Alexa BuildingLink skill. 
  • Schedule and assign preventative maintenance tasks in advance.
    • Preventative maintenance saves money. With BuildingLink, you can set weekly, monthly, and annual maintenance duties and allocate them to your internal maintenance team or outside vendors and contractors. 
  • Upload your equipment details, including warranty information and service history, into the BuildingLink database.
    • By making this information more easily accessible, you can say goodbye to time wasted sifting through stacks of paper documents. 
  • Create your own inspection checklists (or use one of ours) that can be completed on-site on our staff mobile app. 
    • Save time by doing away with the back-and-forth that your maintenance team must do when they conduct inspections. With BuildingLink, they can upload photos, complete inspections, and create work orders on the go.
  • Track inventory with precision. 
    • Whether it’s toilet paper or more critical items, with BuildingLink won’t have to worry about running out of stock. Track quantity, measure usage, and generate notifications when you need to order more items.

Enhanced Resident Satisfaction

Delivering great experiences for your residents is key, and a good property management solution should have the tools you need to get this done. Most offer such basic resident communication tools as building or property announcements, access to an events calendar, and the ability to make work orders without having to call the front desk. These are all helpful features, but BuildingLink takes this a step further. 

Neighbornet fosters a sense of community by helping your residents meet and find activity partners. Through the BuildingLink Resident app, they can also make and pay for amenity reservations and other services, receive package delivery notifications and preferences, review property announcements, and set visitor instructions.

Maintenance is one of the most critical elements of resident satisfaction, and our property management solution is key to maintaining this relationship. Your residents can create and track the status of maintenance requests in the resident app, which enables you to offer a greater degree of transparency while also saving your front-office team time on answering multiple phone calls about the same task. 

Any property management solution should help you deliver superior resident experiences. Our Resident Experience Solutions make living in your community satisfying and engaging.

Ease Of Access For All Stakeholders

Resident complaints about a lack of transparency, information spread across multiple platforms that aren’t synced together, and the inevitable uncertainty that occurs when property managers are working offsite. Communication between residents and staff members is paramount; if information is hard to find for staff members or residents, that can lead to operational inefficiencies and a loss in revenue. A core purpose of a property management system is to remove all the roadblocks by consolidating all the critical information into one place, allowing broad access to all who need it. 

Our Record Keeping & Administration modules keep everyone informed. Analytics & Reports and Employee Time Tracking provides operational transparency for property managers and board members, while your front desk team will likely utilize the Amenity Reservations and Vehicle Management functionalities to manage amenity availability, assign parking spots, and more. Our Communications tools allow for effective resident outreach through Announcements, SMS & Voice Broadcasting, Surveys, and email distribution to individual or custom groups of residents (with preset designs included). 

Additionally, BuildingLink facilities the needs of all constituents with access based on your preferences. For example, users on the concierge team will use the Front Desk & Staff Operations, Resident Experience, and Record Keeping & Administration modules to look up essential resident information, log visitors and package deliveries, and manage access to keys via KeyLink. Suppliers and vendors can receive work orders directly from BuildingLink with the Maintenance and Aware IoT modules, while superintendents and property managers can review work order logs, communicate building issues with residents, and more with access to all modules. 

Bringing all your property’s information into one platform that users can access at different levels based on your preferences creates more transparency for all while making communication far more effective. 

Broad Customization Options

Every property has its own needs, which is why using a property management solution that can be tailored to fit your needs is key. When you onboard with BuildingLink, you’ll complete a survey that outlines your property’s specific needs, starting with if you need to order webcams or other equipment, your number of employees and the training they’ll need, and who should receive incident reports and shift logs. Once this brief survey is completed, we set up a call to continue tailoring the functionality to your needs while also covering the level of access you want to provide to the various departments within your property. 

When it comes to property management software, one size certainly does not fit all properties. That’s why we also offer customization and design options based on your property or organization’s branding on our web platform and mobile app. 

Robust Training & Continued Support

While a property management solution’s features are important, support is just as critical. A good platform should provide in-depth training and continued support by email or within a knowledge database. At BuildingLink, our experienced and professional team members provide best-in-class support from day one and beyond. Choose which of your staff gets the level of required training and we will get them up to speed quickly. Your BuildingLink subscription also covers unlimited emails, text messages, video training, and phone broadcasts, as well as access to our support library 24 hours a day, seven days a week. 

Functionality For HOA, Condo & Multifamily Properties

Great property management solutions are adaptable, providing a wide array of solutions that are optimized for HOA and condominium communities and multifamily properties alike. This flexibility makes BuildingLink a standout option since our platform offers modules for resident engagement, maintenance management, record keeping, and front desk operations that are a great fit for communities small and large.

For condos and co-ops, we offer reporting and oversight functionality for board members and convenient access to services for residents, all through our mobile app, online portal, or popular smart home devices. For multi-family properties, our software consolidates access to data in a way that can streamline your management team’s operations. 

Data is powerful, but it needs to be accessible to help you run your property well. That’s where BuildingLink can help. 

From answering resident questions and managing your front-office and maintenance staff to ensuring that your inventory is properly accounted for, you know how much work goes into managing an HOA community or a condominium or multifamily property. That’s why choosing the right property management system is one of the most important decisions you’ll make. 

Used by property managers at more than 6,200 communities around the world, BuildingLink offers best-in-class technology and industry-leading support. Powerful solutions that make happier residents and better-run properties. Set yourself up for success with BuildingLink. Book your demo today.

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