IndustriesReal estate
A building is a book. Most of them are kept in four places at once.
The units are in one file. The leases are in another. Rent goes out from a spreadsheet, arrears live in somebody's head, and maintenance is a WhatsApp group. At the end of the month one person pulls all of that together into a statement for the owner, in a hurry, and nobody can check any figure in it.
We build the running book. A unit has a tenant, a tenant has a lease, a lease raises a charge, and that charge is either settled or it is not. Arrears are on screen today. The owner statement comes out of the same records the rest of it runs on.
A tenant reported a leak last month. Can you say who it went to, how long it took, and what it cost?
What usually breaks
Not a list of features missing. A list of the places the work actually falls over, in this sector, in this market.
- 01
Rent is invoiced from a spreadsheet
So it goes out late whenever somebody is on leave, and the version that reached the tenant is not always the version that was kept.
- 02
You find out about arrears by accident
A tenant is three months behind and you learn it because somebody happened to look. By then the conversation is much harder than it needed to be.
- 03
Service charge is worked out by hand
Recalculated every period, and only the person who did it can explain it. The first tenant who challenges the figure costs you a week.
- 04
Lease dates arrive without warning
Renewals, rent increases and expiries all turn up on the day. An increase you forgot to put through for a year is money that is simply gone.
- 05
Maintenance lives in WhatsApp
Reported to whoever the tenant happens to have a number for, done if that person is free, and never costed against the unit that caused it.
- 06
The owner statement is built from scratch every month
Somebody spends days pulling it together out of four places, and the owner has no way to check a single line of it.
- 07
Deposits and utilities are settled from memory when a tenant leaves
Which is where most tenant disputes start, and almost all of them would have been avoided by a record.
What we build
Real estate is a sector where we have a product to point at, built alongside a firm that manages more than five hundred units.
- 01
Every property, unit and tenant in one place
The spine of everything else. Each unit knows its tenant, its lease, its history and what has been spent on it.
- 02
Leases and their dates
Terms, rent increases, renewal, notice and expiry, with every date reaching you while there is still time to act on it.
- 03
Billing
Rent, service charge, utilities and VAT raised on a schedule, in the right currency, without anybody opening a spreadsheet.
- 04
Collections and arrears
Aged and on screen, with reminders going out on their own before a balance turns into a legal problem.
- 05
Maintenance
Reported, assigned, completed and costed, against the unit and against the contractor, so a unit that keeps eating money can be seen doing it.
- 06
Owner statements
Produced from the book, with every line traceable back to the charge or the cost behind it.
- 07
What your own numbers are telling you
What your units actually let for, how long they sit empty between tenants, which ones cost the most to keep running and which contractors take the longest. Read out of the records the system is already keeping.
What it has to live with
Nothing here runs on its own. These are the systems your business already answers to, and a system that ignores them is a system somebody has to work around.
- 01
Collecting rent by mobile money
Tenants pay in odd amounts, in instalments, and often from a number that is not their own. Each payment is recorded against the invoices it covers, and an invoice can sit part paid until the rest of it arrives.
- 02
WhatsApp
Where your tenants already report a leak and ask what they owe. The same messages become a maintenance job and a statement request, with a record behind each one.
- 03
AI on the paperwork
Leases, utility bills and contractor invoices read, so the numbers come off them without somebody working through each one by hand.
What changes
The reason to do any of it, in the language of the person signing for it.
- Arrears on screen today, aged, without anybody preparing a report first
- Renewals and rent increases that reach you before the date
- A service charge figure you can explain to the tenant asking about it
- Maintenance costed against the unit and the contractor that caused it
- Payments matched to the right unit automatically, including the awkward ones
- An owner statement that comes straight out of the book
Where this usually starts
Most companies in this sector begin with one of these and add the rest later.
- Business systems (ERP)One system your company runs on, built around the way it already works.
- AutomationThe repetitive work that eats a week, done without anyone doing it.
- WhatsApp business systemsYour business operated from the app your staff and customers already use.
- Data analysis and reportingThe patterns your day-to-day numbers hide, and what to do about each one.
Questions you probably have
The ones we are actually asked, answered the way we answer them on a call.
- Our portfolio is mixed, residential and commercial.
- That is normal and the system is built for it. The billing, the lease structure and the rent increases differ; the book underneath is the same one. Both run side by side, with the differences configured.
- Tenants pay by mobile money, in odd amounts, often late. Can it cope?
- Yes. A payment is recorded against whichever invoices it covers, and an invoice can be marked as part paid. A tenant who sends half the rent now and the rest in a fortnight leaves a clean record either way, and you can see at a glance what is still outstanding on that unit.
- Can tenants see their own statement?
- Yes, and it takes away a large share of the incoming calls. Most tenant questions are about a balance the tenant could have checked, and most disputes come from a balance nobody could see.
- Do you actually know this business, or only the software?
- Our property management arm is Belcol PMS, built together with an established property management firm here who have more than five hundred units under management. The system was designed around how they actually run those units, on the problems they have every month.
- We manage for third party owners. Can they be given their own access?
- Yes. Owners see their own properties and their own statements, and nothing else. It saves emailing a document and then answering questions about it for a week.