Time is a precious commodity, especially for strata managers...
A strata manager’s time is often split between operations and relationship nurturing with existing clients, new business development, and providing other value-added services. Looking after urgent day-to-day matters that require immediate attention also adds extra pressure to the already time-poor strata manager.
Having more staff can certainly assist with the workload, however, finding and retaining the right people in this competitive labour landscape can be challenging and time consuming.
With recent innovations in technology and automation, the average strata manager and support team members have become much more efficient now compared to 20 years ago. Simple tasks such as sending notices or processing invoices in bulk are no longer the time intensive and manual processes they once were.
With innovative leading-edge strata management software platforms, your data sits in the cloud, allowing real-time access to remote team members and clients. Customised configurations also give you full control over your team member’s access level, making remote working easy to set up and efficient, whilst protecting sensitive business data.
At its core, the Urbanise Strata solution is a sophisticated strata accounting and operations platform which allows strata managers to automate their work and optimise efficiency. It is provided as Software as a Service (SaaS) offering to clients.
Here are some examples of automation for the strata manager using the Urbanise Strata SaaS cloud platform:
Invoice processing
A number of providers offer support services for invoice processing (either at piecemeal or per hour rates) for what is effectively basic data entry. This work has become particularly cost effective with bulk Account Payable processing software using learning algorithms capable of data entry.
With Urbanise Strata, clients can turn on the QuickAP integration which automatically digitises the data from invoices received and begins processing them. Below is a quick snapshot of how QuickAP works.
Collections
With a solid policy and process in place, an outsourced provider can handle this for you by accessing the data directly from Urbanise Strata and updating the records without any need to send or receive/reconcile data with the strata manager. Inbuilt auto-escalation tools allow the platform to handle escalation communication automatically, allowing your team to better utilise their time on other collection activities.
Accounting
You may not need a full-time accountant in most strata businesses. There are accountants and former strata specialists that can access your system remotely and assist with this. There are also tools such as an auto-journaling tool that automatically divides a multi-period invoice across the respective months. Simply select a start and end date when uploading an invoice and this tool automatically works in the background.
Personal assistance and general administration
There are many tasks that can best be described as general. Everything from digitising copies of files to updating supplier records and responding to simple email enquiries.
Software has automated many processes and requires only the occasional check by a person while everything else is done automatically. Processes including Business Activity Statements, client invoicing, levy generation, meeting agenda and minutes creation, task generation, report creation and issuance, and many other processes/tasks can be set up to be done automatically.
StrataVote meeting module
By fully integrating with the industry leader in meeting management, StrataVote Agendas, minutes and other important meeting documents can be generated automatically with minimal risk of human error. Owners can vote electronically and tally tools to ensure that there is no wait while poll votes are counted.
Mail room
Integrated solutions such as ePost can remove the need for any user involvement other than setting the system up. Invoices, reports and the like can be checked in the event of an email bounce. If there is no email, an automatic instruction is sent to the mail room to send a physical piece of mail. After set-up, this can be done 100% automatic with no human involvement in the process.
To see how the Urbanise Strata platform can help you increase efficiency so you can focus on delivering excellent client service, sign up for a demo below.