Propertyware Reviews

I like social collaboration between property managers, landlords and tenants. Digital marketing functionality is very full of digital marketing. The training process is and implementation can be done in a very short time.

The downside is that it is not aimed at commercial or large properties. The software can not be installed on computers either, it can only be done through the cloud.

We onboarded about 800 units and while that involved a lot of work, the PropertyWare staff were very helpful and made the process easy. We like that staff across the board can use the software and we can tailor their experience based on what position they are in.

My company now manages over 1100 units for 16 different portfolios. PropertyWare isn't the most intuitive for handling that many units or portfolios. Also I struggle with reports, often times there are fields that aren't options to pull into reports.

This product has the basic typical platform that most PM Tools provide. Input information into a database is alright.

To All BeWare !!

Problem: Out PM Company was seeing that when a Tenant pays rent via the Tenant Portal ACH Payment (EPay Status: Pending, PW Cycle: Approved, Processed, Originated) the Epay Status would go from Settled one day to Returned the next. Heven forbid the PM Company paid their Owners based upon this FALSE information (EPay Status: Settled, PW Cycle: Pending, No Reply from Bank).

Property Ware (PW) Process is Tenant submits a payment via Tenant Portal EPay (PM sees in PW Tool: Pending). PW goes through many cycles (PW Cycles: Approved, Processed, Originated, but still the PM sees in PW Tool: Pending). PW states that it can take up to 3 to 5 business days to process the payment (FALSE Info). Within 3-5 business days if PW does not hear back from Bank that Tenant funds are approved, then PW on its own will change the status to Settled (PM see in PW Tool: Settled, PW Cycle: Settled (False Info)).

You as the PM Company pay your Owners based upon this PW Status: Settled (False Info).

Solution: PW needs to place in their tool a trigger that if Bank does NOT reply within the 5th business day with Funds Transmitted, then Transaction is DECLINED. Currently, there is no such trigger. PM BEWARE !!

It would be nice to have a PW Tool that was looking out for the USERs best interest (PM User) vs the Tenant's best interest (False Info).

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.

The transparency it allows our company to have. With great communication tools such as owner/tenant portals, automatic email alerts on numerous activities on a property, text messaging, email and more. Powerful reporting features allows us to satisfy the demands of large investors as well as a single property owner. Support is excellent from our local sales rep to the phone support center.

Not a very user friendly and intuitive interface. Slow to roll out new features and upgrades.

It is customizable to an extent and allows us to have a one-stop shop for our property management division. The customer service is great, so many times they are able to troubleshoot any tech issues on the backend and/or explain how to accomplish a goal we are seeking from the product.

There are technology issues on the backend at times and we have encountered various backend issues since we started using the product. However, I do see improvements over time so this shows that the Propertyware team is actively working on solutions, which is great!

Its flexibility to my needs. Easy to add adjust and customize

there are some restrictions within the reports that make it less effective an

I really like their customer support. Im consistently on the phone with them, because its such a bad software, but at least theres people to help solve issues.

Lots of things I hate about this software... Its clunky, its not intuitive at all, PW slow payments and make their money through interest. Imagine billions running through their bank accounts and they hold tenants and owners moneys for on average 7 business days per month. Tenants and Owners all hate using their portals.

I enjoy the simple processes of generating leases and setting up a reidents profile.

I dislike the renewal process. There are too many steps to process a renewal.

I like how everything is so easy and intuitive to use. I can see all my properties, and know what I have to do for the month!

Can be intimidating to use at first, but gets much easier with use.

We find we use this product in many ways. Just a few ways would be keeping up with leases, reports for our owners, tracking maintenance needs, collection of funds and staying on top of late paying tenants, keeping track of security deposits held, keeping and balancing checking accounts and invoicing tenants . We find most times this product is easy to use and when we have a problem, tech support is very good. We love Propertyware.

We cannot minimize when sending an email from Propertyware. Sometimes we need to view the tenants summary or ledger to get information to complete the email to the tenant. This causes us to have to either close the email and start over from scratch or open Propertyware in another tab so we can see the tenants information needed to write the email. Having Propertyware open under two tabs can be dangerous when you perform certain tasks.

The body of the email you are trying to send does not have spell check. This causes us to have to copy and paste the email to a word processer to spell check it and then copy and paste back to the email if any corrections were made. The subject line of the email has spell check and we do not understand why the body of the email cannot have it as well to stream line the process.
We would love to see a way Propertyware could take into consideration the owner owes a commission when paying bills. Presently we have to post management fees, edit the checks produced by entering the word Delete as the check number and then we can pay bills and not use all money in the portfolio, leaving money to be able to pay the commission owed. The next week we have to delete the checks produced, post management fees again, edit the checks again before we can pay bills again. It is a work around but it would be nice not to have to use it.

It is a good database and syncs financial information with QuickBooks

It's reporting features are limited. Sometimes the engineers will disable a feature while making other improvements.

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.

Unlike most software in this space, Propertyware is highly customizable, even having an open API available in its top-tier package. This makes the software flexible based upon your individual processes, rather than having to tailor your processes to work within the software, as is the case with Propertyware's competitors.

Technical support has improved over the years, but it is still not to the level I would like. No one likes calling tech support and getting someone halfway around the planet reading from a script. This is really my only complaint with Propertyware.

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.)

The tenant/owner online accessibility is great!! They can view their ledgers and access their accounts at anytime. I also like how mistakes can be corrected, maybe not always easily, but that is solely based on my experience and how the software was presented to me as I joined the company. I enjoy how easily you can search for a lease or owner in the global search bar, and how in the left hand column it lists the recent places you were for easier access. Move ins and Move outs are seamless, granted the correct information is input into the software. The amount of reports that can be ran is endless, and feel as though I could have this software for years and still never have ran each report with all its options/filters. The management tab is designed (ideally) to create owner draws all at once, and for a multifamily property this is fantastic. With each tab, when creating something new, there are important details included. When used properly, it can make your reports a dream!!

Tenant/Owner ledgers are not very user friendly (in my experience) They reflect very much of an accountants bookkeeping, and not all tenants/owners are "CPAs" so at times it can become difficult to explain debits/credits or income/expenses. On only a few occasions have I had to call customer service and they did not have an answer for me, or a resolution. In their defense, these requests were quite specific and not something that was frequently asked. Sometimes the amount of options for reports can be a bit overkill. Owner draws were started with custom date ranges, and generated individually, which in turn makes it a bit more time consuming for me to create them. In addition, because of the custom date ranges, the owner statements are very time sensitive and if a mistake is made and not corrected with the same dates, it creates confusion for the owners when they review their statements at the end of the year.

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 software has many useful features for example Custom fields, customized reporting, and automated scheduling of reports. Integration with DocuSign is a huge time saver. The support is awesome. I always get a response from my initial phone call to support.

I think there is room for improvement on the mobile app other than that I am extremely happy with the software.

The software is built to grow with your company. With the flexibility of the system's customization, including the reporting, custom views, and custom fields, your company can record, track, and analyze business short term and long term business trends.

The system experiences glitches at times and can slow down based on usage.

It's difficult to determine what I like most about this software as there are many features that I find essential. I guess I would say the bookkeeping aspect is what I like most. If used properly, it will help you keep track of all funds, in and out and who/where they came from or where they are going. The reports feature is a close second as everything is made pretty clear for accounting purposes.

I find the learning curve to be what I like least about this software, but I don't fault the software for it. Bookkeeping is not my forte, but I know how important it is for the job. Propertyware made it as easy as possible for someone who is not savvy to accounting. It just takes a while and can be stressful as you're often dealing with other peoples' money.

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.

I appreciate the ability to add custom fields, which I have learned can be invaluable to housing information and pulling into reports.

I came from the multifamily industry where Onesite has detailed reporting. Propertyware follows the same professional reporting formats, which my mom and pop owners as well as seasoned investors can follow and appreciate.

I would like to see improvement to the client text messaging feature and client communication features. I would like to see the conversation housed within the client's personal page, and not a community page. For example, if I am talking to John Smith who leases a house, then I would like to see the text messages and email conversation history within his lease tab. Same with an owner. The way that messages are currently handled is cluttered and difficult to find historicals. Email history is lost.

It was easy to setup and perform needed tasks on day 1

The transfer of properties/owners integration was difficult and did not go smoothly.

I have used other software in Property Management and I like this one the most. I work in the Accounting Dept. The payment ledgers are very easy to read and explain to tenants. Posting rent is very simple. But, the BEST thing I like about Propertyware is the assistance that is provided when I don't know how to conduct a particular task. The support that is provided is EXCELLENT! The supporters are so helpful and most of all KIND! They are not impatient. I don't have to stress about not understanding how to do anything, I have that peace of mind knowing that help is just a phone call away!

I don't understand the difference between a new journal entry and an adjustment. I am confused about which one to use.

Propertyware tracks everything that a property manager needs for managing their properties. It holds owner contact information, bank accounts for direct deposits, insurance on the property, and the property(s) that the owner has. It has leases for all the properties and gives us a tenant ledger to track rents and contact information for each tenant. It has owner/tenant portals that is a tremendous help when it comes to tenant payments or owner contributions and gives the owner all the information they need on paid invoices and tenant receipts. It also keeps track of emails sent to owners and tenants so you have a record.

The software in the beginning is a little hard to use as it is not very intuitive. When a property manager was not getting the maintenance requests I called support and there were a couple of different areas that needed to be looked at and corrected before she started receiving them. I would not have known that if not for support.