Propertyware - Avis

The accounting aspect is critical and Propertyware nails it. I do wish you didn't need to be an actual accountant or bookkeeper to figure out how to make adjustments. This part is difficult and can take a lot of time to figure it out.

The Statements need to be more customized. I have several owners that are LLC's that want to see their Reserves broken out on their monthly statements.

Very robust reporting and most detailed accounting system I have come across.

User friendly inspections would be great to have and eliminate the need for 3rd party providers. Mobile app that is capable of being used would be great. Marketing reports, confirmation of listings being active and detailed analytics would be great to have.

Their "custom fields" option allows you to record just about whatever information you want or need onto every (unit/building/portfolio/contact/work order/lease/vendor/etc./etc.). On top of that, the system is robust enough to then allow you to create reports that provide, filter by, sort by, and otherwise use that custom data, which means it's useful for tracking just about everything. Which is HUGE for a big, complex mess like property management.

Also, while their support system is occasionally (not always or even often!) slow, they do always follow through, and they're tenacious about getting to the bottom of problems. Also, they do actually pay attention to and actually (occasionally) implement new-feature requests, which is really rare in my experience and alone makes them awesome.

It looks like it's from 1990...and it *acts* like it's from 1990. Which is to say there are lots of small, annoying inconsistencies in the way things are treated that add up to a significant headache without ever actually making you feel like any one thing is enough to make you switch services. For example, you can right-click on a link to any property, lease, or contact and open it in a new tab -- but you can't do that for Work Orders; for whatever reason, they're called through Javascript instead of through a URL, *despite HAVING a unique URL* that you can easily link to. So why is that one thing alone unable to be right-click opened?

For another example, you can set a pop-up message to show up whenever you view a property/contact/etc, and that works just fine IF you get to that page by clicking a link to the page. But if you've already been to that page and you use the Back button to get to it, the software deposits you at whatever point in the page you were at when you left...and the pop-up is still way back up at the top of the page, so you have to scroll all the way up to close it, then scroll all the way back down to where you actually want to read (because it greys out the whole page when the pop-up pops up.)

We are a property management company with 150 doors and have been using Propertyware for over three years. Propertyware will do an excellent job of property management, but there are numerous problems. And it is very expensive.

They have a lot of great ideas, but they only implement them to about 90%. We are so angry and frustrated with the problems in PW that we have made the difficult and costly decision to cancel service and move to another software platform.

Propertyware does have many positives, but you can research those for yourself on their website or in other reviews. You need to know its shortcomings before making a decision:

1. PW is fond of saying something new is coming. Be prepared to wait. We have been waiting three years for them to release an Android app. The iPhone app has been out that long, and is already in version 2. Their tech keeps saying the Android app is coming, but it's still not here.

2. PW launched apps for both Android and iPhone for mobile inspections. I was even a part of the beta development. The beta was a whirlwind of development over two weeks. I was amazed at how quickly the tech department was writing code and updating the software to fix problems and make it better. PW launched the apps immediately after the two-week beta, and then, no more updates! The apps are flawed to the point that they are unstable and unusable in the field. Six months later, PW has done nothing.

3. Mobile from a tenant’s perspective. PW is not compatible with web browsers on mobile phones. More and more applicants want to apply online using their smartphones. Some people have a smartphone but no computer. PW will not accept a payment for an application or for paying rent on a mobile phone. We have complained to tech support, but they have not done anything to address the problem.

4. If you pay extra, PW can host your website. This is necessary to integrate rental listings, ePayments, portals, and online applications. In theory, this would be a good thing. However, the provided templates are awful. I regularly have to explain to people how to find the online application. I have asked PW to redesign the Apply Online tab to make it more visible. No luck in three years of asking. And PW really needs to hire a graphic designer. Not just for the web templates, but also for the graphic interface of the software and the automatically generated print brochures.

5. PW is confusing and poorly laid out overall. The main tabs should be better organized for one thing. There are four tabs for accounting across the top: Money In, Money Out, Banking, and Management. Under each tab are additional functions. You might think that is good, but it's confusing. It takes a significant amount of time to learn where to go to find the information or function that you need for any accounting work.

6. Generally speaking, PW has too many layers. It can take five or six clicks to drill down to the layer that has the information you need. Not only does this slow productivity, but it can be frustrating when you are on the phone with a tenant or owner. You have to pay careful attention to which layer you are on, especially before uploading a file. Place the file in the wrong screen, and it will be difficult to find later. Notes and Documents can be posted at every level. That means you have to open multiple levels to make sure you find the documents you need.

7. The search box is supposed to be universal, meaning that you can search for any information within PW very quickly. Just not vendors. If you need to find vendor information, don’t go to search, and don’t go to Contacts. That would be too easy. You have to go to Money Out, and scroll down the long list of vendors.

8. PW had a brilliant idea for training. They decided to create modules and track how far an individual completed each module. They even have tests at the end of each module to make sure the person understood what they learned. This is great for employers tracking employee training progress. The training is on a basic level in PowerPoint format. I'm not against PowerPoint, but the problem is that PW originally had an amazing and deep selection of videos and recorded webinars that explained PW’s functions clearly and extensively. They even had them grouped into categories. It was awesome! But when they launched the PowerPoint training, they removed the videos. We requested links to the videos, and even asked if the videos were on youtube. PW refused to give us any access to the videos.

9. There are no digital signatures, not even on the applications. So when getting referrals from other landlords who require a signature from the applicant, we must use Docusign as an extra step. The development team at PW is finally beginning to talk about implementing digital signature. However, they have made it clear that you will have to pay extra for that option.

10. Be prepared to pay extra for everything. It costs extra for more than 1 GB of storage for rental agreements and other documentation, inspections, or the upcoming eSignatures.

11. PW has an alert page, which we use regularly like a to-do list. Once again, it's great idea that is poorly executed. The alerts come in randomly instead of by date. We have to look very carefully to make sure we do not miss an important alert because it could have been buried in the long list. We would like to see the option to group the alerts by type or even importance into folders. Right now, it is a hodgepodge of chaos with only tiny symbols to show what type each alert is. And we would like the ability to select multiple alerts to delete at one time, instead of having to delete each one individually.

12. Move out procedure. The move out procedure could be better. It would be nice to have a move out checklist similar to other systems. Also, PW does not allow you to enter a forwarding address without doing the final accounting. We don’t want to refund a deposit until all the expenses and repair bills have come in, yet we can’t enter the forwarding address until the deposit is refunded.

The portals (owner & tenant - and being able to login to the portals as the owner/tenant to see what they see), ePayments (the flexibility to have recurring or one-time, the tenant can process them or you can process them in the office), rent and late fees post automatically, recurring payables (you can set them up as paid so you don't have to post payments each month), cloning invoices (never seen this feature before and it is a huge time-saver), scheduled reports (you can send as Excel or PDF), the custom fields (you can pretty much add them anywhere), attaching documents (you can upload docs to just about every page).

Many of the bells and whistles they sold us on don't work for us. We never used the online application (one of the items we were most excited about) because it did not have an electronic signature so the applicant had to fax that page in. They now offer eSignatures but want an additional $1/unit which would basically double our price. The app that comes with the system is very limited and the new maintenance app is another add-on for an additional $1/unit. Maintenance time can be entered on a work order but it is invoiced one entry at a time instead of creating consolidated invoices (so we don't use it). They say the system handles fiscal months that aren't calendar based but your reporting and budgeting options are limited (the budget and any month based reports only pull calendar month data which makes them useless to us). Any reports you customize have to be customized again in order to "update" the template when they make changes to it which is hugely time consuming (the report defaults to the original report settings). Changes they made to the system affected our mail merge templates resulting in broken links and formatting issues (I have had to re-do most templates twice because of this - again a huge time suck). System glitches or issues (like a problem I have right now with a tenant ledger being out of balance) take months to be resolved once you finally get it escalated to development... and they often close the ticket even when the problem is not resolved so you have to call and spend more time trying to convince them that it is not fixed. The prospect area is incredibly "chunky" and not very helpful. I've yet to find a traffic report so we are using excel. The journal entries leave a lot to be desired- no recurring, can't code to a unit, and you have to book them from either the tenant ledger, owner ledger or bank ledger instead of one centralized place.

Support team is great. Every time I called all my issue were resolved regardless of the issues complexity.

There is some functionality that is missing making some of my task harder with manual overhead. My suggestion have been noted as future development that may or may not get implemented.

Initially, we were happy with Propertyware before it was acquired by Real Page and they stopped investing in it.

I could write an essay about what we liked least, but to name a few problems: buggy software, clunky to use, outdated interface, too customizable which rendered it ineffective for deploying across an organization.

Propertyware is a software with vast capabilities. We have used the majority of these options in our business. We are pleased in general with the software and continue to learn more about the software on a daily basis. We would recommend Propertyware to other real estate property management companies.

The support team is very helpful, but we have had a few issues that were not resolved in a timely manner. We have had issues with the maintenance application that was updated in February 2019 and we received notification from the support team on May 24, 2019 that the issue had finally been resolved. This issue caused us a lot of frustration and extra work when we feel that the update on the app should not have been done until it had been completely tested and debugged properly. We encourage Propertyware to notify its clients as frequently as possible on upcoming changes and to take into consideration all of their clients before making drastic changes to the software. In the past, we had issues with the check scanner not being compatible with our firm's policy of the collection of funds and move-in procedures. This caused issues for about a month and half before we had to stop using the check scanner through Propertyware.

Propertyware system is easy to use.
Being web based, access anywhere

At first the training was difficult, we found little help in calling customer service. We had a new account Representative reach out to us, she was able to guide us to all the new training Propertyware has to offer. We are now on a better road to fully using all the tools. I know the system was build for the smaller multifamily property and has all the custom features, but this requires us to manually enter all of the information. I wish we had a training like before, come in and set up the system for us when we first started. After 7 years of using the system we are just now setting up all the Marketing settings, we have not even started using the widgets yet. To break it down, 7 years ago we didn't have the training needed to transfer to this system, now I feel we are getting the help we need.

Good product but improvements could be made. Overall I do like this product. I have not used other PM products so I can't really say what I like best.

Customization and automation.
In 2022 I believe automation is becoming very important. There are some tedious tasks that I believe could be reduced or completely removed by adding automation. Setting up custom auto emails and alerts would be tremendously helpful to our business.
We loved the idea of the docusign integration but it had some limitations to we removed the feature. It would not allow us to add/edit certain things before sending (without going and editing the whole template. Not all leases are the same so we need a little flexibility) so I think this could be an incredible feature with some improvements.
Text message feature was a good idea but had no mass text functions at the time so we got rid of it. This would also be a good spot for auto texts.
CONDITIONAL LOGIC would also be an amazing addition.

Not a whole lot. It is very clunky, archaic.

No ability to text from the site, vendors cannot attach picture to work orders. No ability for inspections on each property. The list goes on.

In my opinion, this software excels in ease of use and easy adoption for new users. Our tenants also comment on how easy the process is from application, thru initial payments, onto lease signing.

Often times when contacting support, it takes several phone calls/emails to get a solution. However, it has improved significantly recently.

For getting basic information Propertyware is okay.

When there are several other softwares with much better rating why choose Propertyware? It is no wonder it has only 3.5/5 whereas there are several others with 4.5+ ratings.

* Not user friendly. Not intuitive at all. I had to struggle to get to the right page or right report.
*When you view the bills where do you normally look to see to pay off those bills? I normally skim the same page. But here there is no Pay button. I could not locate it on other pages too! So frustrating. When I contacted Support they said it is on Dashboard. I still could not locate it. Why? They have a button with NEW CONTRIBUTION !!! I don't understand why make it so hard?
* I do not get notifications for all the activities. They send only for very selective activities. When I contacted the Support all they said was they are working on it.
* When I requested to combine my 2 different properties (same PM company) they steps they have given are so cumbersome.
* Old tax reports are not readily available. They had only for the previous year. When I my accountant wanted for the earlier years it is not available. I had to again contact the Support. They had deleted it!

We have used Propertyware since 2013. Every year we are required to issue tenants CRP's by January 31. This never changes. Last year they did not have the CRP function available until the 9th. This year it is still not available and they hope to have it ready by the 24th!!!! Unacceptable. This system is expensive and this is nothing new. There are some features it offers but quite frankly none others don't so changing systems is likely for me in 2022.

The move out inspection is not user friendly

Propertyware is very customizable and feature rich. The customer support is excellent and is invaluable.

Email application is weak - would prefer a more modern interface.

The ability to keep everything in one place for all staff to access, such as communications with tenants/landlords.

The lack of an app for mobile use and the constant crashing of the maintenance app.