Propertyware - Avis

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.

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 reports and how to record anything using this software are very easy.

Hopefully they have better features for maintenance and text messaging.

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.)

I think 98% of your support staff is wonderful. They are patient, thorough, and always make sure you understand the solution to your questions. They never fail to say "Thank you for using Propertyware." so very important for branding and giving a lasting impression of their sincerity of helping the customer.

Learning the ins and outs of the software like when do you put a checkmark bin a box and when you do not.

It does handle multiple properties, multiple owners and multiple units fairly well

It is more than difficult to change or modify entries once entered. The program does not allow flexibility or much in the way of personal settings. I believe Propertyware developers spend too much effort on the management side of the program and not enough or any time focusing on the accounting side.

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.

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.

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.

Propertyware is easy to use and most functions can be accessed on a mobile device when you are on the road. In person, phone support is available 9am to 8pm EST. Multiple templates are available for Owner statements. Keeps Property Management paperless. No accounting background is required to use the platform, but it helps.

In order to view a Document from the administrator platform, the document must be downloaded again to your computer everytime it is opened, rather than being viewed in the platform. Tenant payments are limited as to maximum amounts and payments, which are only accepted one at a time, take up to five business days to process. Not every phone support tech is well versed in the software and sometimes more than one call is needed to get to your answer.

Online tenant portal really helps corporate office as well as the tenant

They do not have a feature that clones JE that are more than one item at a time. Example is the monthly Property Tax Accruals have to be typed in every month by hand. If you use the new recurring entries function it will only do one account per entry which is bot good when you have many properties. One monthly entry for one property can be 4 recurring JE to cover that. Just not workable. To much to have to check each month to see if its in correctly.
Many of the reports you cannot pull all information into one report. You have to use several and get them into excel takes time. If the information is all in PW wish the information flowed to all reports.

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.

I like the ease of navigating between the leases, portfolios, contacts etc. Also, the ability to attach documents to leases, property, portfolio, contact and vendor pages makes accessing bills, notes and documents quick and easy. Has eliminated searching through paper files for bills and documents which is a real time saver. The tenant portal makes online payments convenient for our tenants and staff. The owner portal keeps the owners informed of maintenance and expenses in real time.

There is nothing I don't like. Learning the system is relatively easy using the online instructional videos and the help/support tab.

The software is basically easy to learn and to use. The menu is well organized and clearly visible, in that the appropriate sectors are available from any screen. There are complete and detailed videos for learning the software as well.

What I did not like about this program is that the Report section is quite limited; you are not able to select any field and prepare a report in any manner that you might need to prepare information. For instance, you have to select a certain section of Report (Desktop, Finance, Lease, etc.); this is fine, except that not every field is available even within that section to add to a Report. It can become very constricting and difficult to find the field you want to place within a report.
There should be more flexibility in both the ability to create a report by selecting the fields you want without hunting through the sections. A complete alphabetical field list would be very helpful for people who are familiar with utilizing databases.
The calendar also needs to have more options in order of searching and printing according to user.

The integration into rent, and ledger system. It was easy to pay vendors in bulk and they have an Owner payment system that most companies don't have.

The timetable to fix community wide issues was Very POOR!!! They would have us submit requests on a Community Board and wait for votes, supposedly the ideas with most votes would be worked on. Trouble is there were SEVERAL complaints about the same issues with 1000's of votes that sat on the system for 2 years!!! Still new people would call, complain and write ideas to no avail. It seemed the tech team or development leaders would choose the easiest tasks to fix and leave the real issues alone. They'd agree to work on a simple font or logo design but ignore the bigger issue of reports or accounting. This was a constant issue and aggravating. I had to run several reports into an Excel and merge them to get the information needed.

I do think it is user friendly and the tenant and owners portals (when they work)

Tech & Epayment support is non-existent. We had a situation where $278,000 of tenants Epayments went missing and my first call to them was it wasn't on their end. After 2 days of being on the phone I finally got someone who knows what they are doing to look into it. In a business that is is heavily audited, save the stress and headache and go somewhere more reliable. For $278,000 to be missing and they don't even notice, yet when you mention it place the blame on you is unheard of.

Excellent for financial tracking and reporting

Not excellent for leasing team and property management team