Why should you buy Property Management Software?
Property management software lets you organize and manage information about all aspects of residential or commercial rental property. The software lets you do away with overstuffed folders and spreadsheets and gets you more organized. Property management software keeps track of rental payments, vacancies, legal notifications, maintenance requests, lease terms, security deposits, profits, and more. The information is presented in a clean and concise manner. The software enables fast and accurate reporting and printing of data like rent receipts and keeps precise records of income and expense. It will help you to improve your productivity and ensure better compliance to landlord or tenant regulations.

Buying Considerations
Evaluate your needs carefully. Software package you go for will depend on types of rental property under management (residential, commercial or both), number of units and terms of the rental (long term or short term lease). Determine what features are most essential to you and select a package that gives maximum emphasis to those features.

• Software Modules: Good property manager software is divided into individual modules that address specific property needs for easy management. The software should provide effective management of real estate data including property improvements and repair, mortgage payments, appliance purchases etc. It should also enable easy viewing of current vacancies and pending maintenance requests.
• Accounting features: Good accounting features are central to the software. In addition to keeping track of all tenant expenses and payments, it should print accurate records for tax payments. Some software also includes an online payment option.
• Tenant Data: Property manager software should handle all tenant information including contact details, payment history, security deposits, partial payments, late fees, vehicles, and incidents. Some systems also provide templates for applications, leases, late fee reminders, lease expiration notices and the like.
• Compatibility with other software: For ease of operation, select packages that are compatible with your business software like Word and Excel. The software should at the least be able to export data to .doc and .xls formats.
• Database: Since a database handles the bulk of data, it affects the overall performance of the software. Take time to investigate the database for things like the amount of data it can handle, and speed of storage and retrieval. If you are not a database expert, get some help for evaluation.
• Reporting: The reports generated by the software should be easy to understand and must provide all the required information.
• Legal Regulations: Look for software packages that give you notifications of legal regulations and helping you to abide by the law.
• Common Area Maintenance (CAMS): If you charge CAMS to your tenants, ensure that your software supports CAMS calculation.
• ASP or Locally hosted software:  Locally hosted software stores all property details on your office servers and gives your employees full-time access to the data. Installation and maintenance requires technical skill and expertise. Locally hosted software may also provide more features than ASP- based solutions. Application Service provider (ASP) software or Software as a Service solution stores property information on the vendor’s servers. The vendor’s team ensures security, reliability, and 24-hour availability. Information is accessed via the internet and quality of service may depend upon network failure and congestion. It however, needs lower initial investment and is a better solution if you need to provide remote access to your employees.
• Ease of use: Finally make sure the software is intuitive and easy to use. Ask for a short free trial to test it out. 

Choosing a Property Management Software Company

First step is to compare price quotes from multiple vendors of property management software.  Select a vendor who takes the time to understand your needs and offers you the right software solution. Find a vendor who is committed to customer service and can effectively handle bugs, feature requests, regular updates and upgrades to new releases. Ask for a comprehensive training package for all who will use the software. Call the references to find out about the vendor’s reputation before finalizing your property management software provider.

How much does it cost to get Property Management Software?
Property management software packages come in a range of prices depending on the number of units to be managed and the number of locations and employees using the software. Price depends on the vendor, the software company, feature set and also your geographic location. For example in the US prices range from $500 dollars for entry level systems that manage around 20 units to over $50,000 for massive commercial systems that keep track of thousands of units.

Carefully analyze your needs, evaluate features and capabilities of the software, total costs involved and the track record of dealers before making a decision.