Propertyware Reviews

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.

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.

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.)

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.

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.

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).

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.

This does most of what you need to property management and works well with affordable properties. It has a good selection of reports and is fairly easy to use. It does a good job of tracking prospects and creating tasks to manage your staff

Real Page seem a little clunky and not as easy to use if you manage multiple properties from the same office. It felt like we were always jumping in and out of properties and we could not easily move between the properties. Also the accounting portion was not well integrated with the rest of the system

I like that it has tabs, categories that makes finding things easier

Sometimes it lags, but other than that everything's good.

Online payments, I had a great experience with the help center they helped me with several issues until they were resolved, too bad the rest of the company didn't work this way.

Having my sales rep, [SENSITIVE CONTENT HIDDEN] lie to me and then stop responding. Didn't provide the service as described and charged me anyway. Implementation drug on from 11/15 to 1/30 and turned on live without any testing. The marketing is useless without paying Zillow. The phone app crashed constantly when trying to search. [SENSITIVE CONTENT HIDDEN] my sales rep, put in writing that I could cancel a $100/mo add on for doc u sign and maintenance but did not honor it. Extended my contract with the change that could supposedly be deleted. The call center was supposed to do pre-screening and answer the phone for $452.25/mo. Instead they took all forwarded emails and entered them into my leads without talking to the people and sent them back as another lead. When I attempted to work things out to get it working I got stonewalled and the monthly payment continued. Multiple people called when I asked to cancel and said they would take care of the issue and then they stopped responding.

Very robust reporting and most detailed accounting system I have come across.

User friendly inspections would be great to have and eliminate the need for 3rd party providers. Mobile app that is capable of being used would be great. Marketing reports, confirmation of listings being active and detailed analytics would be great to have.

I love the fact that the software is customizable. We can pretty much make it what we need it to be. To that effect sometimes can be confusing but this option is much better than anything else currently available for purchase.

I can't connect it to everything that I need. Lead generation software.

Initially, we were happy with Propertyware before it was acquired by Real Page and they stopped investing in it.

I could write an essay about what we liked least, but to name a few problems: buggy software, clunky to use, outdated interface, too customizable which rendered it ineffective for deploying across an organization.

The portals (owner & tenant - and being able to login to the portals as the owner/tenant to see what they see), ePayments (the flexibility to have recurring or one-time, the tenant can process them or you can process them in the office), rent and late fees post automatically, recurring payables (you can set them up as paid so you don't have to post payments each month), cloning invoices (never seen this feature before and it is a huge time-saver), scheduled reports (you can send as Excel or PDF), the custom fields (you can pretty much add them anywhere), attaching documents (you can upload docs to just about every page).

Many of the bells and whistles they sold us on don't work for us. We never used the online application (one of the items we were most excited about) because it did not have an electronic signature so the applicant had to fax that page in. They now offer eSignatures but want an additional $1/unit which would basically double our price. The app that comes with the system is very limited and the new maintenance app is another add-on for an additional $1/unit. Maintenance time can be entered on a work order but it is invoiced one entry at a time instead of creating consolidated invoices (so we don't use it). They say the system handles fiscal months that aren't calendar based but your reporting and budgeting options are limited (the budget and any month based reports only pull calendar month data which makes them useless to us). Any reports you customize have to be customized again in order to "update" the template when they make changes to it which is hugely time consuming (the report defaults to the original report settings). Changes they made to the system affected our mail merge templates resulting in broken links and formatting issues (I have had to re-do most templates twice because of this - again a huge time suck). System glitches or issues (like a problem I have right now with a tenant ledger being out of balance) take months to be resolved once you finally get it escalated to development... and they often close the ticket even when the problem is not resolved so you have to call and spend more time trying to convince them that it is not fixed. The prospect area is incredibly "chunky" and not very helpful. I've yet to find a traffic report so we are using excel. The journal entries leave a lot to be desired- no recurring, can't code to a unit, and you have to book them from either the tenant ledger, owner ledger or bank ledger instead of one centralized place.

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.

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.

The Propertyware program is very user friendly. Not just that, but the support you receive if you have any questions or concerns is top notch! I occasionally run into some sort of problem and just about every time I've ever called Support, the representative I speak with solves my problem with very little effort. Two times in the 9 years I've been using this program, I have run into a problem that could't be solved by the rep that I speak with. They try to the best of their ability, but then let me know that it needs to be escalated to someone else. Both times, I received a call the next morning with the solution! The reps are always friendly, respectful and no question is treated as "stupid"! Tney are great!

I don't use all of the features because I'm a Tenant Relations Supervisor and do not work with the maintenance or owner features. I don't feel there are any cons to the part of the program that I use.

The software is pretty intuitive and doesn't need a lot of training to get started. I like that the reports are very customizable.

The look of the pages seem antiquated. I heard that a new cleaner look was coming, so I am excited to see it. I wish the reports would refresh automatically as I sometimes forget to look to see if the report is up to date.

Not a whole lot. It is very clunky, archaic.

No ability to text from the site, vendors cannot attach picture to work orders. No ability for inspections on each property. The list goes on.

The software is basically easy to learn and to use. The menu is well organized and clearly visible, in that the appropriate sectors are available from any screen. There are complete and detailed videos for learning the software as well.

What I did not like about this program is that the Report section is quite limited; you are not able to select any field and prepare a report in any manner that you might need to prepare information. For instance, you have to select a certain section of Report (Desktop, Finance, Lease, etc.); this is fine, except that not every field is available even within that section to add to a Report. It can become very constricting and difficult to find the field you want to place within a report.
There should be more flexibility in both the ability to create a report by selecting the fields you want without hunting through the sections. A complete alphabetical field list would be very helpful for people who are familiar with utilizing databases.
The calendar also needs to have more options in order of searching and printing according to user.

It really does it all, and does a very good job. It is a well done software, that runs completely online. It integrates everything, and produces great looking reports

Customer Support.
The above problem is not the worst part. That would be the ePayments!!! For the love of God do not subscribe, as we did, for three nightmarish months. We scrambled trying to fix all of the errors it created, Our work increased ten fold, and we found out that tech support was even worse when it came to ePayments. We've long since canceled the ePayments, but still find problems to fix. It's a nightmare and Propertyware has charged us and admitted the ePayments aren't working. Their customer support is crap, but what they did with the ePayments, makes me regret the day I started using Propertyware. I probably will find someone else to use in the near future. We currently have 200 units with them, so I'm not looking forward to the hassle of transferring. If they only had customer support I would be fine with all the problems.

The integration into rent, and ledger system. It was easy to pay vendors in bulk and they have an Owner payment system that most companies don't have.

The timetable to fix community wide issues was Very POOR!!! They would have us submit requests on a Community Board and wait for votes, supposedly the ideas with most votes would be worked on. Trouble is there were SEVERAL complaints about the same issues with 1000's of votes that sat on the system for 2 years!!! Still new people would call, complain and write ideas to no avail. It seemed the tech team or development leaders would choose the easiest tasks to fix and leave the real issues alone. They'd agree to work on a simple font or logo design but ignore the bigger issue of reports or accounting. This was a constant issue and aggravating. I had to run several reports into an Excel and merge them to get the information needed.

It is an improvement over using Excel spreadsheets as our repository for tenant activity and maintenance requests.

Process from the get-go signing the contract until now as users has been a huge pain. Their contract is very unclear and uses terms only they understand. They kept making errors in the contracts and had to re-send multiple times. Implementation was very high level and they push you to take training courses on your own time to learn the software. Set up process did not go smoothly. Couldn't get check scanner to work even after hours on the phone with Support. One key reason we chose this software was because of its ability to sync with QuickBooks. But they provided incorrect training materials on the sync to QuickBooks and also gave conflicting answers on other questions I had about the sync so I ultimately lost confidence in trusting the data to sync with QuickBooks accurately. Some Support reps cannot answer basic questions about the software nevertheless technical questions. Software is not intuitive. Reports are not user-friendly. Biggest frustration though is the constant billing errors. Each time I look at our billing history there is a new surprise. They will charge our account and provide no supporting details for the charges. Most of the time it's been due to an error that I have to bring to their attention to get reversed. It has been an extremely frustrating process from beginning to end. Look forward to investigating other software programs as we getting closer to our contract expiration.

We just signed with PW. It was a bit of a rough conversion but the support from PropertyWare was amazing! We've had a lot of blood, sweat and tears but felt that the team assigned to us was right there beside us. The creation of reports adds a lot of benefit to our clients.

Having to go through different links to get to something. On the Association side- the fact that it calls owners tenants causes heartburn with our Association owners.