Assigning team members to their tasks is a duty which is as vital as it is tedious.

Everyone pretty much knows what they should be doing, so there’s no need to directly assign them to everything when you could be spending time on more important tasks, right?

Wrong.

Human error (of which memory plays a huge part) affects 1/100 routine tasks where care is needed. This means that the people responsible either makes a mistake or forgets what they need to do (hence why documented processes are so important).

That’s why we here at Process Street have a role assignment feature in our checklists.

Role assignments let you dictate who each task in your process checklists needs to be assigned to without fail every time. All you need to do is set up the role which will have the task assigned, then Process Street does the rest.

Ready to assign your tasks without fail, fuss or tedious fiddling? Then let’s dive right in.

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This is our third template pack composed of checklists that are designed to be worked through in conjunction with a specific property management tool.

We did a pack for Appfolio, Propertyware, and now here are 5 checklist templates for property managers out there who use Buildium to help them run their business.

Buildium is a powerful tool that addresses all aspects of property management.

The platform has built a stellar reputation largely due to its ability to facilitate the tenant-rental owner relationship by offering customizable rental applications, tenant screening, lease tracking, automated rent collection, and other handy features including a full general ledger for accounting.

It’s truly an end-to-end solution for property management firms of all sizes.

The software is entirely cloud-based, so requires no additional hardware or software installations and can be accessed from anywhere.

The platform is currently used by over 12,000 property managers and 175,000 property owners; numbers that will surely continue to rise as they gain popularity and look to bring in more enterprise-level customers.

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We recently released 5 checklist templates designed specifically to help Appfolio users manage a handful of core property management workflows more effectively.

The following templates are a continuation of our effort to support property managers who are already using a software tool to manage their processes.

This time we’ve customized the templates for Propertyware users, and in the following weeks, we will release another set of templates designed for property managers who use Buildium.

Propertyware, a subsidiary of RealPage, is a cloud-based, end-to-end property management platform that helps you manage the entire renter life-cycle, from online payment processing to customer portals and work order management tools.

Based in San Francisco, California, Propertyware is one of the oldest full-service property management platforms out there, and has built a loyal customer base of over 2,000 companies.

If you are one of those companies, we hope you will find these checklists useful and integrate them to improve productivity and overall business performance.

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There is a need for digital transformation in property management

There is no easy way to summarize the role of a property manager in a way that really captures the wide range of responsibilities they have.

In essence, it’s all about communication. Interactions with property owners, tenants, and employees all need to be coordinated with efficiency and professionalism in order to keep all parties satisfied, establish a loyal customer base and enable future growth in a tough market.

Basically, managing properties isn’t just about real estate — it’s just as much about relationships.

You have to track conversations and deal statuses across multiple landlords, tenants, and applicants in addition to managing the properties themselves. It’s high-touch, high-urgency, and high-stress work.

“Communication can easily become chaos if not handled correctly. Between phone calls, text messages, emails, and walk-in traffic, it can be hard to keep tenants, owners, and staff on the same page. Documentation is very important to avoid miscommunication.” – Nick D’Agnillo, CEO & Founder of Nexus Property Management

The extent of human interaction that is integral to property management creates a large margin for human error. Poor lead management, documentation of calls/emails, inspection coordination, tenant screening, and maintenance work orders are just a few examples of tasks/processes that are difficult to execute consistently without the assistance of workflow software running in the background.

As a result, property management firms are beginning to place a greater focus on improving business efficiency by formally documenting their processes and integrating workflow software, because it enables them to deliver their clients a superior service, while also providing employees with the tools they need to perform at their best.

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Firstly, I should clarify that these are not checklists created by Appfolio, as the title may suggest. They are, rather, checklists created by the team here at Process Street (with some help from customers) that are designed to be used by property management firms who use Appfolio.

Appfolio is one of the most popular property management software tools currently on offer, enabling more efficient management of all kinds of properties including apartments, residences, and commercial real estate.

It is an all-in-one solution that includes features such as online owner and renter portals, online applications and leases, online payments, built-in screening, maintenance requests, mobile inspections, bulk text messaging, accounting, reporting, and a mobile app.

The software’s rich feature set, intuitive UI, and automation capabilities have received excellent feedback from its users, making it a popular choice amongst property management firms of all sizes, particularly those that are growing at a fast rate and are looking for a tool that will enable them to scale while minimizing growing pains.

To help you get the most out of Process Street while using Appfolio to manage your property management workflows, we’ve created a set of 5 templates to bring the two applications closer together.

We chose to create the following checklists because they are core workflows in the field of property management, and are common uses cases amongst a number of our customers that use Appfolio on a daily basis.

If you want to dive in and go straight to the checklists, there are quick links right below. Otherwise, scroll down for a brief intro to each one.

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I have a riddle for you:

What has four sides, often goes missing, comes from trees, and can be expensive to reproduce?

I’ll give you a hint.

It wastes up to 40% of on-the-job time, and about $120 billion per year in the US alone.

Need another?

Around 7.5% of them will be lost or misplaced each year (about one lost every 12 seconds), and for each that gets lost you’re looking at a loss of between $350 to $700 in employee time.

Did you get it yet?

Condescending sarcasm aside, I am of course talking about paper forms. But this article isn’t about paper forms, per se; it’s about how you can get rid of paper forms in your business with form automation software.

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Alarca Realty is a property management firm based in Charlotte, North Carolina, specializing in the full-service management of family homes, condominiums, townhouses, duplexes, and small multi-family developments.

We spoke with owner and CEO Bob Abbott to discuss how Alarca uses Process Street to improve the management and execution of property management workflows that keep their growing business running smoothly.

The Alarca Story

Founded in 2005, Alarca began with the mission of delivering world-class property management services in Charlotte and other locations in southwestern North Carolina.

Their focus on customer service and providing the highest return for clients has resulted in them achieving industry-leading client retention levels.

For many years, the company used a large library of spreadsheets to manage internal processes and track communication with clients.

As the company grew, so did their spreadsheets, and it soon became incredibly difficult and time-consuming to execute tasks as efficiently as they would like.

Bob identified this bottleneck, and after a period of significant research and testing, decided to go with Process Street to improve the way his team complete their day-to-day tasks and for him, as the manager, to gain greater insight into the progress of workflows.

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This is not just another blog post on workflow software, describing what it is and why it’s important.

Nevertheless, I will quickly mention for those of you who doubt its importance, that the global market size of workflow management systems is estimated to grow at a staggering rate of 23% from 2016 to 2021, shooting up in value from $3.5 billion to just under $10 billion.

In short, it has already begun to establish itself as a key competitive battleground for years to come.

The intent of this post is to provide a comprehensive evaluation of the purpose and use of workflow software, its application in various industries, the role of automation, methods for continuous improvement, and top tips for getting started in a fast, high-impact fashion.

It’s long, it’s heavy, it’s everything you need to know.

Ultimately, I am aiming to provide a practical guide to help you get the most out of the software you use for workflow management.

If you don’t currently use software to manage your workflows, then you must be at least considering it, otherwise you wouldn’t be spending valuable minutes of your day reading this.

In any case, skim through, extract any nuggets of information you find useful, think about your internal business processes and how getting started could improve your team’s productivity and forward strategic goals. It really is surprisingly easy (and affordable) to get the ball rolling.

The goal of this post is to provide you with clear information you need to:

• Understand what workflow software is, how it works and key features
• Evaluate whether or not you need workflow software right now
• Understand the benefits of utilizing workflow software
• Know how you can get started quickly and with minimal stress
• Implement workflows effectively with a 5-step process
• Have a solid understanding of how to set up automation for even greater efficiency
• Set yourself up to achieve both short-term and long-term strategic goals

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PocketSuite is a smartphone-based booking, payment, and client management toolset for solopreneurs, which seeks to empower business owners while streamlining the customer experience via SMS communication.

We spoke to Ilya Ornatov, head of growth marketing at PocketSuite to find out how they use Process Street every day to drive down costs, save time, and grow business.

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NW Maids is a maid and cleaning company based in Seattle, WA with over 600 5-star customer reviews and a dedication to the highest standards.

We spoke with founder Ilya Ornatov about how NW Maids uses Process Street daily to drive success rate, boost lifetime customer value (LCV), and reduce employee errors.

The NW Maids story

It was in 2014 that Ilya set sights on the cleaning business and quit his job as a VP of Sales to focus on making the NW Maids vision a reality.

Business is currently booming, with 10 teams operating across the city of Seattle.

As the company has grown, they’ve managed to overcome various obstacles in their mission to simplify the home cleaning experience.

Let’s look at some of the insights they’ve gained, and problems they’ve solved with Process Street.

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