The jobs
This is the main part of the guide: the work you do once everything is set up, grouped by the kind of work.
Every task has the same shape:
- What you'll end up with — the result, in one or two sentences.
- Before you start you need — what must already be in place, with the task that does it.
- The steps, numbered. The orange numbers on each picture match the steps.
- You'll know it worked when — what you see on screen when it has worked.
- If something's wrong — the common problems, what the screen says, and what to do.
At the top of each task are the people it is for (property manager, finance, administrator, director) and when you are likely to need it first.
The examples use Hardingvale Property Management and its five properties: Harrowfield House, Calderwick Court, Marrable Wharf, Pinnock Green and Verrell Gardens. The people and figures are made up.
Every Day
My Work: what needs you today, why, and the next step.
Finance
Budgets, demands, receipts, arrears, suppliers, funds and the year end.
- Setting next year's budget
- Getting a budget approved
- Issuing your service charge demands
- Correcting or cancelling a wrong demand
- Raising a one-off charge (an administration charge, a recharge or a shared cost)
- Recording that leaseholders were told about costs inside the 18 months (s.20B notice)
- Recording money that has come in (matching receipts)
- Refunding a leaseholder who is in credit
- Reconciling the bank account
- Chasing someone who hasn't paid
- Agreeing a payment plan
- Recording a supplier's bank details, and checking a change
- Paying a supplier's invoice
- Setting up bank accounts and funds
- Moving money between a property's funds
- Charging your management fees
- Paying ground rent over to the landlord
- Charging a fee for a parking bay
- Seeing what a reserve or ground rent fund holds, and what was paid out
- Closing the year and sending it to the accountants (year end)
- Publishing the signed year-end accounts to leaseholders and directors
- Keeping your chart of accounts
Buildings
Repairs, work orders, quotes, contractors and planned work.
- Logging a repair someone has reported (raising a ticket)
- Keeping on top of open tickets and their due dates
- Replying to a resident about their ticket, or adding an internal note
- Instructing a contractor (raising a work order)
- Seeing everything that happened with a repair, and what it cost
- Getting quotes and choosing one
- Chasing a contractor who is late
- Asking a contractor for an invoice they haven't sent (Auto-Chase)
- Letting a contractor into the building (access details, keys and fobs)
- Setting up planned maintenance (servicing schedules)
- Running a Section 20 consultation for major works
- Adding a contractor to your approved list
- Inviting a contractor onto SynkroTech Trade
- A contractor's first sign-in to SynkroTech Trade
- Recording an asset (plant) and its servicing
Compliance
- Seeing what is overdue across every building
- Recording that a check was done (filing a certificate)
- Booking a contractor's visit for a duty
- Keeping documents and certificates in one place
- Adding or removing a duty from a property's register
- Waiving a duty that does not apply
- Following up an overdue duty that has been escalated to you
- Keeping buildings insurance in force
- Managing fire safety for a building (heights, duty-holders, fire duties)
- Finding the exact statutory wording for a notice
Inspections
- Booking or starting a building inspection
- Doing the inspection: answering the checklist, recording findings and photos
- Raising a repair from something found on an inspection
- Signing off an inspection
- Seeing this year's inspection visits and what is due
- Producing an inspection report for the client
- Looking at inspection trends
People
- Finding a leaseholder and their account
- Sending a leaseholder their statement
- Setting where a leaseholder's post goes
- Recording residents and tenancies
- Recording a sale or other change of owner
- Answering a message from a resident or leaseholder
- Logging a phone call
- Writing to everyone in a building (group email)
- Checking what letters and emails went out, and to whom
- Posting a notice for a building
- Giving a leaseholder, resident or director a portal login
- Helping someone sign in to their portal for the first time
- Seeing a portal exactly as a leaseholder, resident or director sees it
- Talking a leaseholder through their portal
- Removing or resetting someone's portal access
- Setting up a concierge desk for a building
- Talking to colleagues in team channels
- Connecting your mailbox
Clients
- Adding a client and appointing yourselves to their property
- Running the residents' company: filings, AGMs, directors and members
- Showing directors how their building is doing
- Seeing how the whole portfolio is doing
- Logging what a client has asked you to do
- Handing a property back when you stop managing it