Webinar Highlights | 2019 Spring Release Webinar

November 1, 2019

It might be the tail end of the year, but there was no lack of fresh features in Console Cloud this spring...

Let’s take a quick look at what we showed off. As always, if you’d like to skip straight to the recording we won’t hold it against you.

Less reading, more watching. Show me the webinar!

 

A little about our goals for spring

This quarter we took a long look at how we could provide more for our Console Cloud customers this spring—both loyal, long-time users and newcomers to our industry-leading Property Management software.

We settled on four key goals:

  • Improve our already strong migration experience to be the most secure and comprehensive in the industry
  • Build out Console Cloud as an all-in-one platform that allows you to bring all your apps—whether from Console our one of our partners—into the same system
  • Provide powerful automation that offers greater visibility and control instead of less, so you can manage by exception and focus on what matters most
  • Ensure first-class compliance that de-risks your business, independently audited to ensure alignment with state legislation and Australasian privacy laws.

Here’s how we delivered on those this spring.

 

Compliance

Despite its crucial importance to Property Management, compliance has long been neglected by software providers, forcing the use of unwieldy systems such as spreadsheets, paper lists, and post-its. No longer.

Our newly upgraded compliance workflow makes tracking these tasks simple and seamless, eliminating the possibility of missed checks and un-sent certificates. When you open it, you’ll immediately see a list of properties with compliance items against them, so there’s no need to filter or search for them, and a handy widget that tracks which compliance tasks are expired and upcoming.

Set-up is simple. Once compliance items are added to properties, they’ll automatically start being tracked by the workflow, dropping off once they’ve been finalised. And, to save you even more time, you can bulk update compliance certificates—say if all your properties have been inspected for smoke alarms—by simply dragging and dropping certificates into Cloud. With automation activated, they’ll then be emailed to the relevant parties, too.

Workflow communications

Communications are a key part of what a property manager does, so we’ve made them a key part of Console Cloud.

Templated communications are huge time-saving assets for property managers. They make it quick and easy to send the right email every time, with contextual merge fields that pre-fill communications with all the relevant details. Not only that, but templated communications allow more consistency in tone, and keep all your email interactions with clients professional and on-brand.

The Lease Renewal workflow is the perfect example of how we’ve built communications into every aspect of the software. From start to finish—whether you’re making a rent recommendation to the landlord or forwarding on the final signed contract—there’s a templated email ready to go to save you time. As in all our workflows, depending on what stage you’re up to, the correct templates will automatically be generated, so there’s no need to hunt around, and the same goes for merge fields.

These templates can also have files attached to them, so sending on a finalised lease is as simple as a few clicks.

One of the major benefits of this approach is that all communications associated with a particular workflow are tracked as part of it, meaning it’s easy to see where each process is, no matter whether you were the last to work on it.

 

Water invoicing

This one is a major time-saver for many of our clients, especially as the administrative burden of managing water invoicing—paying out water invoices on behalf of owners and on-charging those fees to tenants—increases. Some agencies even employ a full-time staff member just to process water invoices.

This feature requires a little set-up, but it’s well worth it. Once properties and tenants are tagged, it’s quick and easy to upload water invoices and process them with the same pre-filling FlashScan technology at makes other invoices fast to pay in Console Cloud.

Creating a tenant invoice is just as simple. With all the property details, tenant information, and invoice items present, all you need to do is select a due date, and make any necessary edits to the amounts (if for example, the tenant pays 50% of water charges), and select the correct dissection. You can also add or remove line items if there are extra or fewer charges.

You can also redact, annotate or exclude pages of the invoice before sending it on to the tenant without ever having to leave Console Cloud

If you’ve ever had to process water charges before, it’s simple to see how this is a huge time-saving.

 

Inspections

We’ve heard your feedback about making inspections easier to manage.

It’s now possible to filter your inspections based on who performed the inspection, the type, as well as by status and date. Once they’re filtered, you can either select all or just some inspections from this list to edit, and change the time, date, and who they’re assigned to. For example, it’s possible to filter all routine inspections for next Wednesday, and move them all to Thursday in one simple step.

Using the same filtering system, you can also select groups of properties to issue bulk inspections notices to, saving you from having to select and send each manually.

 

Tenant App

We’ve also refreshed our Tenant App, which allows tenants to get “self-service” information about their tenancy and raise maintenance requests. It’s completely free and available for both IOS and Android, and you can easily bulk invite your tenants to download it directly from Console Cloud.

Essentially, it’s designed to cut down on unnecessary back-and-forth phone calls with tenants. Instead of having to call your office to raise a maintenance request, tenants can simply open the app, snap a few pictures, add some notes, then lodge the request. They can also check their current rent and lease expiry, and will also soon be able to receive updates on their maintenance requests through in-app notifications.

 

Task management

You asked for it, and we delivered! Console Cloud now has a task management system that allows you to create, track, and assign tasks easily.

You can view a list of all open tasks—which you can filter down to based on their completion status, and whether they were created by you or assigned to you—and associate them with properties. That means if someone checks that property’s details, they’ll see any open tasks associated with it so nothing is missed.

 

Migrations and transactions

Migrating Property Management and trust accounting software can be one of the most stressful points in an agency’s life. That’s why we’ve continued our efforts to create the most secure, seamless, and advanced migration experience in the market.

For our Gateway clients, we will soon be able to import external transactions into Console Cloud as read-only. Historically, software providers have imported these transactions in as PDFs, which aren’t searchable and can’t be used to generate an EOFY report. That means unless you migrated at that time of year, it always meant two statements for owners.

No longer. By importing these transactions into Cloud, you can provide your owners with just one EOFY statement, regardless of when you migrate. There’s a reason why we’re calling it the most comprehensive migration experience in the industry.

 

What's next for Console Cloud?

While our summer development cycle might have a Christmas holiday smack-bang in the middle, we’ve set an ambitious schedule to deliver even more improvements and fresh features to Console Cloud.

Here are the highlights:

  • Advanced Deft integration for our customers who bank with Macquarie
  • Tenant invoice improvements based on your feedback
  • Workflow enhancements with gained and lost management, and insurance and key management
  • Continued API build-out with more integrations and partners.

 

Watch the webinar

If we’ve just whet your appetite for what Console Cloud can offer your agency, then why not book a demo?

Want to know more about what Console Cloud has to offer first? Then check out the full Console Cloud Spring Release Webinar for a detailed look at everything you’ve read about here, and a taste of what’s to come next quarter.

Watch the Spring Release Webinar

Wondering what to read next? Why not check out how Console Cloud gave Professionals Lifestyle Realty Marsden the edge. Or, see how Harcourts Astute Paddington reclaimed 45% of their day with Console Cloud

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