Best software for property management

Write the jobs down before any demo

List, in your own words, what the software has to do for you every month: raise and collect rent, receipt it, keep the ledger, flag arrears, hold the tenancy and its documents, take maintenance reports and track them to done, report to whoever asks. Then list what it has to do once a year: statutory certificates, the tax categories, the deposit returns. The list written before a demo survives it. The list written after is the demo's list, and it will contain things you saw rather than things you need.

Weight them, then score

Give each job a weight out of five for how often it happens and out of five for what an error costs. Multiply. The jobs at the top of that ordering are what the product has to do well, and everything else is a tie-breaker. This is a fifteen minute exercise that consistently changes the shortlist, because the highest-scoring rows are almost always the dull monthly ones rather than the features that get demonstrated.

Cost every quote on one basis

Products are priced per unit, per user, flat, with a monthly minimum, and with setup, migration and payment margin underneath. Reduce every quote to one number: total cost per month at the portfolio size you have, and again at the size you expect, over the term you would sign. Include what the product earns from payment processing, because on a rent roll of any size that is frequently larger than the subscription.

Test the two things that go wrong

Take your least tidy real tenancy and enter it. Then send a partial payment and see what the ledger does. Those two tests separate products more reliably than any feature list, because the happy path always works and it is the untidy tenancy and the short payment that you will meet in month three.