As the summer starts to wind down and the weather cools off, it’s probably time to close down the poolr and prepare for fall leaves and winter snow removal (outside of Phoenix of course). These and other projects that fall under the purview of board members and association managers require due diligence in vetting vendors. Management companies typically work with a list of preferred vendors, but numerous bids are should be sought to get the best vendor, price, and final result for a project.

Vendor management means keeping track of a lot of moving parts, especially for larger management companies, who might work with a thousand or more vendors across hundreds of associations. The Work Order system and vendor database built into uManage have helped many management companies maintain vendor information and streamlined vendor interactions, but we’ve taken things a step further with a new dedicated uManage Vendor Portal. This is a space just for vendors and includes these valuable tools:

The growing ubiquity of cloud-computing is built on the assumption of stable and secure remote access. For association managers, this has meant the transition from pen and paper to mobile account lookup, and violation and work order capture on smart phones and tablets. When your work depends on a data connection, what happens when the signal is weak or lost? This issue has been a major challenge and frustration to managers all over the country as management companies have adopted cloud-based systems. From the very first version of our mobile app for compliance, over 5 years ago, eUnify has addressed these concerns. Offline access continues to set our mobile app apart from others. These are the key features of the uManage mobile app keep your mobile inspections uninterrupted:

If you asked us in the past, “what is eUnify?”, we always responded, “Everything but Accounting”. We even trademarked that tagline. This past week at the Community Associations Institute Annual Conference and Exposition, we kicked off marketing of our full-featured accounting platform. I guess we need to update our tagline to “Everything (period).”, “Everything AND Accounting”, or maybe “All that and a bag of chips!” (chips not included). As much as we love phrases from the 90’s, and chips, we settled on, “Complete Management Software”, hoping the message is simple and clear: eUnify is the complete software package for all of your HOA management needs. What is eUnify? Answering in a bit more detail, eUnify is….

The architectural review process can be tedious and entirely manual without software. Here’s an example of how this process might play out:

Property managers and HOA Boards often get a bad rap because most of the communication with homeowners skews negative, such as, “you painted your house the wrong color and now you must redo all of it!”, or “hurry up and pull those weeds!”  While these messages to homeowners for compliance issues are necessary for community maintenance, often they are interpreted as personal attacks, or at least a nuisance.  With the warmer spring weather, homeowners are usually more interested in beautifying their homes, which presents a great opportunity to property managers for positive reinforcement.  Here are some ideas on how to use uManage and the eUnify homeowner portal to facilitate positive community yard campaigns:

Winter is almost here...
As the weather cools down, it’s probably time to rake up the landscape, plan for snow removal, and close down the pool. These and other projects that fall under the purview of board members and association managers require due diligence in vetting vendors. Management companies typically work with a list of preferred vendors, but numerous bids are should be sought to get the best vendor, price, and final result for a project.

Compliance enforcement is a big deal. As a property manager, you probably have 5-10 (or more) associations to take care of and you spend a lot of time and effort on compliance. Boards need your help to crack down on CC&R violations, and laws all over the country are becoming stricter when it comes to notifying homeowners and escalating violations to fines. This requires you to be consistent and precise while driving neighborhoods and visually inspecting hundreds or thousands of homes each week. You need software to help you keep track of it all and a reliable mobile app to capture violations. You have a few software options to choose from, but what really is the smart choice? Here’s a quick list of what we think is smart to look for and some dumb things to avoid in mobile violations apps: