All great products offer an effective solution to a problem.Trying to have fun at an outdoor event but your drink keeps getting warm? Graba koozie! Want to snap a group selfie but your arms aren’t long enough? Connect your phone to a selfie stick!
Effective solutions improve processes, save time &money, and even reduce risk in certain situations. Good lease administration solutions are no different.
Lease administration software might not capture the world’s best selfie, or keep your beverage icy cold, but it can transform your lease management strategy in a way that improves your processes, protects your resources, and helps you make better decisions.
So, let’s take a problem and solution look at lease administration software.
Lease Administration Software Problems & Solutions
Missing critical dates, like option windows or expirations
Lease expiration dates can give you a false sense of comfort. Once the deal is done you feel like time is on your side. It’s easy to forget about the little stipulations that vary from lease to lease, like option notification windows or termination notices.
If you miss an option window, for example, you risk missing out on key benefits provided by the option and can potentially suffer consequences, like huge rent spikes. Additionally, you have to scramble to change your plans, and you may even end up paying holdover fees.
Solution: Automated critical date management
You may have all your ducks in a row on a spreadsheet, but at the end of the day, that spreadsheet can’t talk to you. Strategic lease administration means using a system that can actively communicate with you. Setting up automated date reminders in software like Quarem helps you take a proactive approach to your lease decisions rather than constantly living in a reactive world.
Juggling several key contacts for each lease
You’ve automated your critical dates, and now it’s time to take action. You have several renewal options coming up and you need to send notice to your landlord before it’s too late. You quickly realize that you haven’t talked to them in several months, or even years, and you can’t find their contact info. What should be a fairly quick task turns into hours of sifting through documents to find what you need.
Solution: Centralized contact management
These days, you probably won’t flip through a rolodex to find someone’s number. Technology has afforded us several reliable solutions for contact management, but the beauty of utilizing lease administration software is that you can tie your contacts directly to the lease they belong to. So, the next time you need to speak with someone that has anything to do with your lease, you can save yourself some time and go straight to your lease administration solution.
Problem: Maintenance responsibilities
The sink in the office break room is clogged. A green swamp water like substance is bubbling up through the drain. Yikes! No problem,you’ll just call your property manager and they’ll send the maintenance crew,right? Wrong! As per the lease, that sink isn’t their responsibility to fix.
Solution: Detailed and easily referenceable lease abstracts
Maintenance issues are inevitable so it’s important to know exactly who to turn to when you need a solution. When something goes awry, the last thing you want to do is go on a wild goose chase to determine your next steps. Lease administration software lets you organize your leases in one,searchable system. Quarem, for example, has a highly detailed lease abstract that covers over 40 key lease points. The maintenance section allows users to create a list of custom maintenance items and notate the responsible party.
Problem: Bouncing between several systems
Picture this: your coworker in accounting emails to ask you about the upcoming rent increase for one of your leases. You think it’s a simple task, but then you end up falling down a rabbit hole of spreadsheets,email chains, paper files, and shared drives. By the time you find the information, you’ve already wasted half of your morning.
Solution: Utilizing an all-in-one platform
Technology is meant to improve our processes, but when you add too many systems into the mix you can end up wasting time bouncing back and forth. Lease administration software centralizes several key components, like data organization, document storage, and communication, in one, single, easily referenceable spot that everyone on your team can access. So, next time you need to check on a key date or data point, it’s simply a few clicks away and you can go on with your day.
Problem: Lacking management resources
When starting a business, real estate leases are typically put on the back burner, while more pressing matters, like establishing a brand,hiring employees, and staying afloat, are front of mind. As the business begins to grow and expand, the leases need more and more attention. The problem,however, is that growing small or mid-sized operations are often short of a dedicated resource to keep track of the leases.
Solution: Working with an organization that gets involved
No matter if you’re big or small, software alone is not a strategic solution. Not only will you need someone to manage it, you’ll probably want someone with a little bit of real estate knowledge behind the wheel. Before you put a help wanted sign on your front door, take a look at alternative options. When vetting software, be sure to look into the support services that are available to users.
Lease Administration software and services may be the perfect solution for your portfolio management problems. Find out for yourself by scheduling a one-on-one demo of Quarem today.
