Running a property management business means serving two groups at once. Owners want their buildings looked after and a clear answer when they ring. Tenants report a leaking tap at 9pm, a broken lift, a gate that won't lock. Between them sit your caretakers, outside contractors, and money moving in several directions.
Before anything else, one plain statement: Saauzi does not collect rent, manage leases or keep tenant ledgers. This guide is about the rest of the business: winning and keeping owners, running maintenance jobs, managing your team and tracking your own cash. We'll repeat the limits below so there's no confusion.
What software a property management business needs
It helps to split the work into two halves.
- The tenancy side: rent due and received, leases and renewals, deposits, arrears and statements for owners. This needs dedicated rent and lease software. Saauzi doesn't do it.
- The business side: a pipeline of owners who might hand you their property, a record of every maintenance job and who is doing it, invoices to owners for work done, your staff and their leave, and a cash book for your own money. This is what Saauzi covers.
How Saauzi covers the business side
When you pick Property Management at sign-up, Saauzi switches on CRM, Projects, HRM and Cashbook. You can install other apps from the hub later.
CRM: owners and prospects
Someone who has just bought three flats and wants them managed is a lead. Record contact, company (for corporate owners), source, deal value, owner (the staff member responsible) and expected close date. Set your own stages, for example enquiry, property visit, proposal sent, then won or lost. Use your expected annual management fee as the deal value so the pipeline shows real revenue.
Activities keep the relationship on record: the quarterly review as a meeting, a call about a roof repair, a task to send the owner a repair update by Friday. When a colleague takes over an owner, the whole history is there. Our guide to the Saauzi CRM pipeline covers the app in detail.
Projects: maintenance jobs
Projects are how you run maintenance. A large job such as repainting a stairwell becomes its own project for the owner, with fixed-price billing, a budget and a due date. Smaller reactive work can sit as tasks under one project per building, billed by the hour at your rate.
The task board (to do, in progress, done) shows at a glance which leaks are still open. Assign each task to someone on your maintenance team with a due date. Timesheets record hours as billable or non-billable, so the visit that turned out to be a tripped switch can be logged without billing the owner. When the job is done, raise an invoice to the owner from the project, with taxes set once in Settings, and track it from draft to sent to paid. The guide to Saauzi Projects and client invoicing explains more.
HRM: caretakers, technicians and office
Keep a profile per person: department, job title, employment type, join date, emergency contact, salary on record and status. Leave requests go to a manager for approval, so every building stays covered. Hire caretakers through your public careers page.
Cashbook: your money in and out
Cashbook records your business's own money: management fees and maintenance invoices paid by owners, spending on parts and contractors, and transfers between cash, bank and wallet accounts. Reconcile the maintenance float daily and see income against expense by category.
Be careful here. Cashbook can show that money reached your bank, but it keeps no tenant balances, no arrears and no lease dates. It is not a rent ledger, and it is not full accounting software.
A hypothetical week managing 40 flats
Say you look after 40 flats for 12 owners, with two technicians and an office manager. On Monday the board shows six open jobs; the blocked drain in Block B is overdue, so it moves to the top. On Tuesday a tenant rings about a faulty heater, and the office adds a task and assigns it.
On Wednesday you meet a prospective owner, log the meeting on the lead and move it to proposal sent. On Thursday the stairwell repaint is finished and the owner's invoice goes out. On Friday the owner pays: mark the invoice paid, record it in Cashbook, and approve a technician's leave for next week.
A checklist for choosing software
- Do you need rent and leases handled? If yes, choose dedicated rent software for that first.
- Can you see every open maintenance job and who owns it?
- Can you bill owners fixed-price or hourly for jobs?
- Does it keep a history for each owner relationship?
- Is the price per user, with the first app free?
Where Saauzi fits and where it doesn't
Saauzi fits firms that want maintenance, owners, staff and their own cash on one system. It does not cover:
- Rent collection, leases or tenant ledgers, including deposits, arrears, renewals and owner rent statements.
- A tenant or owner portal, or a helpdesk. Tenants call or message; your team logs the job.
- Automations, so there are no recurring invoices; raise monthly management-fee invoices yourself.
- Document management for leases or inspection photos, and no payroll or attendance.
- Full accounting or client trust accounting.
If rent collection is the heart of your business, a dedicated property management platform is the better choice, possibly alongside Saauzi for maintenance and owners. For the wider picture, see our plain-English guide to ERP for small businesses.
What it costs
Your first app is free forever, so you could start with Projects for maintenance alone. One flat subscription unlocks every app: NPR 1,500 or US$20 per user/month, or NPR 12,000 or US$200 per user/year. For a hypothetical three users, that's NPR 4,500 or US$60 a month. See the Saauzi page for property management businesses.
FAQ
Can Saauzi collect rent or track leases?
No. Saauzi has no rent collection, leases or tenant ledgers. Use dedicated rent software for that.
Can tenants report problems in Saauzi?
Not directly. There's no tenant portal; your team logs each request as a task.
Can I bill owners for maintenance?
Yes. Raise an invoice from the job's project, fixed-price or hourly, with taxes applied.
Get the maintenance jobs and owner relationships out of notebooks first, and keep rent where it belongs. See the Saauzi property management industry page, or start with one Saauzi app free.
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