TouchRight | Software to replace pen and paper property management

Conventional property reporting is often encumbered by time spent collating and typing notes, and the screeds of paper required to print these for clients. Terry Lightfoot, director of TouchRight, explains how property managers can benefit from digital reporting.

NAME OF PRODUCT | TouchRight Software

PRICE | 3x plan options – All Inclusive, starts from £25; Monthly Lite starts from £10; Report & Go is £2 per report

TARGET AUDIENCE | Property managers

CHALLENGE/ OBJECTIVE | Old pen, paper and camera methods are still widely used amongst property managers to produce their property reports. While that method isn’t broken, it usually results in fewer appointments being carried out due to the admin back at the office. It’s often the case that a property manager could carry out five mid-term inspections in a day and due to other things going on in the office and the admin involved in typing up their notes, downloading, uploading, resizing and naming photos, the reports don’t actually get sent to the landlord for many days. The pressure often mounts further when carrying out inventories, knowing they have a tenant moving in the next day.

SOLUTION | ToughRight’s cloud-based dashboard and iOS/Android app template create a more streamlined and efficient approach, the company says, as each project manager will use the same templates for the different property reports. Gone are the days of ‘freestyle’ reports, where each property manager would order things in their own particular way. TouchRight’s custom template builder means the agent’s old paper reports can be replicated as a starter to add some familiarity with their users and landlords.

Using software can add many additional benefits, from date and time stamped embedded photos, less need to print reports, linking reports to previous reports on the same property, the ability to tag issues for follow-up repairs and push them seamlessly into a Fixflo account. Anyone who receives the PDF report can click on photos and see them enlarged to full size on the screen, which offers much better image quality than a paper copy.

RESULTS | Companies not only benefit from their property managers being more efficient: they also like the professional looking reports the software produces, adding more value to their management fees. They can even add their company accreditations or associations, so they appear on the reports.  Some of the larger agents using our software have commented on the money they are saving on print and paper, and the need for fewer filing cabinets.

There are no extra charges for sharing the system with contractors or suppliers, and we’ve seen many agents set up their plumbers and other teams who add maintenance reports.

ToughRight is currently used by hundreds of lettings agent branches of all different sizes around the UK from Aberdeen to Falmouth, alongside many clerks and assessors. We are now on V5 of the software, and have some significant API integrations with leading industry suppliers and more lined up in 2018…