Key Features in Student Housing Management Software

Did you know that 8.6 million students need rental housing close to their schools? Because of this, most student housing will be occupied 100% of the time. Before you can find tenants for your property, you’ll need to look into great property management software to help ease the stresses and worries of having many tenants.

Because there are so many options in the market, you may be overwhelmed with all the choices. Before you make a purchase, be sure that you know exactly what you’re looking for. In this blog post, we cover everything you need to look for regarding the top features of student housing property management software.

What Is Student Housing Software?

Student housing/university/school property management software (PMS) is a software category that helps users manage their properties. Student housing software has been designed to help managers stay on top of their properties most efficiently and digitally. In most cases, student housing software will use cloud-based applications through the web, while others will come as a downloadable phone app.

Property management software offers various tools that each serve a purpose. Top property management software benefits include the following:

• Providing a centralized view of all your appointments and bookings
• Allowing you to market your properties on various channels
• Creating and printing leases to be signed digitally or physically
• Tracking housekeeping and maintenance for your properties
• Managing communication with guests, prospects, and tenants
• Creating visualizations and dashboards for daily reports
• Recording all your bookkeeping and automating your financials

A great PMS will allow you to do all these things in one platform while helping you automate administrative tasks and maintain a clean trail for your audits. This will leave you with room to focus on KPI analysis, customer experience, and the growth of your business.

Who Needs Property Management Software?

Any individual responsible for managing a rental property's profitability and day-to-day activities may benefit from using a property management system. Below are just a few sectors that will reap the most from using the right PMS.

• Residential: Residential homes can profit from the right PMS since it will let you market, maintain, and manage your rental property. With it, you can maintain a good line of communication and accept online payments to deliver a great tenant experience.
• Commercial: You can also use a PMS to manage various properties such as office spaces, malls, marketplaces, airports, and many other retail spaces. A good PMS will offer robust tools for reporting, utility tracking, and more to help you with complex commercial contracts.
• Homeowner’s Association: Property management software can also come with specialized modules that can help you manage polls, association meetings, and community notices apart from the usual standard features of PMS.
• Hotel: If you’re a hotel manager, a PMS can help you accept bookings, create your website, and manage everything for your hotel. These systems will also be able to handle activities at the front desk while connecting you to backend workflows, delivering improved visibility and a smooth flow of data. A PMS can help with hotel chains, motels, vacation rentals, bed and breakfasts, and other real estate in hospitality.
• Student Housing: You can use your PMS to check on everyone living in your housing, where you can track and rent each student for the amenities they use. Each student can get an individual portal to pay, chat with managers, and request services.
• Public Housing: A great PMS system will give you access to comprehensive accounting tools to handle government benefits and funds. You can also use it to manage, rent, and communicate with your tenants from anywhere using a mobile device.
• Real-estate Investments: An investor can use PMS to track the growth and profitability of their many assets all from one dashboard.
• Self-storage: Some PMS systems are designed to track your storage spaces, where you can connect with CCTV cameras, thermostats, and gate systems to track the movement of tenants within these facilities.

Top Features To Look For in a Student Housing Property Management Software

While many student housing property management software will claim to be the best option out in the market, below is a list of the top features you need to look out for.

Accounting Features

If you’re managing a wide range of properties across a few websites, you’ll need to use a reliable accounting system that will help you manage and simplify your accounting. This will also help to make your rent collection process easier while making quick work out of pulling out basic tenant details for financial reporting. Some systems also come with debt management features that will help you track individuals with debt and get data on money owed while keeping a document of everything for your future reference.

Online Student Portal

These days, students are used to doing everything online rather than having to gather everything they need to bring up to the front desk. To enhance the student experience, be sure to provide them with a way to manage their accounts, payments, orders, and leases online. Doing this will allow for a great customer experience that can be achieved from the comfort of their laptops or phones.

Room Management

Regarding student housing, a room will usually have two to four students. Rather than splitting a room into four different units, your PMS software can help you treat every resident as an individual. Some PMS software may also come with matching features to help you place individuals together to minimize the possibility of conflict.

Campus System Integration

Often, a student’s housing will be tied to their utilities, class schedules, and meal plans. Organizing a student housing program using a PMS will allow you to integrate with their school’s other programs to help students transfer the information as needed. 

Student Access Control

Providing your residents with access control is an important feature that can help limit security breaches and trespassers on your property. Using access control, you can set rules that you can control through the system, which will allow passage for only authorized staff and students. Because cybercrime and security breaches are rampant, you must have full control of who you give access to while protecting who sees your company’s resources and information.

Conclusion

When it comes to student housing property management software, it’s essential to be aware of the top features in PMS to ensure that you get the most out of your purchase. Property management software can provide an excellent service that will allow your business to manage your accounting, lead generation, and reporting better. Unfortunately, many platforms will focus on a specific niche, where you’ll need to pay to use each one, but at Exact Estate, you can get everything you need in one place.

Be sure to sign up for our property management software demo today or visit our website to see how our property management solutions can help your student housing business.