For a property manager a relaxing holiday is nothing short of a dream. If you have a tenant with a kid similar to the one in Home Alone, you better have a game plan to fix all the mess he created.
As much as we love the movie, we are pretty sure the feelings are NOT mutual with their property manager or the suppliers who ended up fixing the iconic house from the 90’s.
The season of festivities has kicked off already. Make sure you have ticked off everything from this checklist to enjoy a relaxing holiday this festive season.
1. Make sure everyone knows that you’ll be away
Let your clients know that you will be closed. Not only them, but also your tenants, suppliers and your colleagues. Provide your colleagues all the information they need as they act on your behalf.
Tell your tenants, landlords and suppliers, who else they can contact while you are unavailable. Put their minds at ease and let them know that if something needs only your attention and that too, right away, they can email or SMS you.
- Circulate an office wide email about your break
- Send out a season’s greeting email and use it to tell about your closing period along with details of the person backing you up.
- Change your voicemail and use your email auto responder
- Announce your closing period on social media
- Update your Google My Business listing hours
- Communicate the same on your business website.
2. Make it simple for your tenants to get in touch if something urgent comes up
While you might be having a relaxing holiday, someone might be trying to break into your tenants property. The holiday season is also high time for emergency repair service requests because the property is usually flooded with guests, and blocked drains, burst pipes or appliance breakdowns are very common.
While you may have mentioned that they can call you if there is an emergency, it’s a good idea to automate your service request process and direct them to use i4Tradies to send a service request. Your tenants get a fast and streamlined service request experience with full visibility from start to finish and anyone on your behalf can handle it, without the tenant noticing a difference!
3. Reschedule property inspections that conflict with your time off
You might not have elaborate plans for a relaxing holiday when you scheduled some of upcoming routine property inspections last month. But now plans have changed and you know you won’t be available for work during the festive season.
Now is the time to reschedule your calendar, putting those inspections to a later date when you would be back after the New Year break!
With simple drag and drop functionality, i4T Maintenance is a great app for Property Managers to easily make changes to their schedule and take better control of their processes.
4. Keep a list of suppliers available during the holidays
Year-end break or not, how many times have you received a service request from a tenant, only to find yourself taking ages to respond as you just can’t find the right supplier to complete the work order?
Now imagine getting the same service request during the busy holiday season, when the suppliers are booked months in advance and outright refuse to take on more work.
It’s time to organise your tradespeople. Have a plan to address tenant repair requests. Talk to your suppliers in advance and clearly communicate the response times you expect from them in case of an emergency. As a complete ecosystem, i4T Maintenance lets you connect to i4T Business which is the app of choice for a thoroughly vetted list of compliant suppliers in your area and get quotes within minutes!
It’s already starting to feel like a relaxing holiday. Doesn’t it?
5. Ensure you don’t keep suppliers waiting for payments
Your suppliers have been considerate enough to compromise their relaxing holiday so yours does not suffer. Now it’s time for you to ensure they get their payments on time, so they too can enjoy with their families without having to stress over their delayed cash flows.
You can either get someone to do it for you, or you can release the payments with a cloud-based property maintenance software like i4T Maintenance, from wherever you are holidaying.
Just make sure that after you have made the payments, you still have enough cash flows in hand to deal with emergency work orders.
6. Do not pause on relationship building
Effective communication is the cornerstone to building and strengthening relationships with landlords and tenants.
As much as you would like to have a stress-free relaxing holiday with not even the tiniest work-related matter crossing your mind, don’t let this time off put a pause on client engagement.
Keep the connection strong by hosting a virtual meet up, sending a holiday greetings email or a small gift as a gesture of appreciation for putting their trust in your services.
7. Send your tenants a checklist for home security, safety and property upkeep during holidays
Holiday season is the time of giving and your house is most likely loaded with gifts that you plan to give or you have received. This makes it a high time for burglaries. Make sure you communicate well in advance to your tenant to secure their home property with security lights, security alarms, door locks and other measures.
With all the holiday decorations, Christmas trees, candles, cooking and baking going on, make sure you have informed your tenants how to keep their home safe from house fires, which are becoming all the more common in the festive season.
Additionally, educate tenants on looking after their property while they are away. Send them a checklist for them to tick-off before the holiday season kicks off. This ensures most of the maintenance work is already done and they can effectively minimise emergency work orders and enjoy a relaxing holiday.
8. Don’t leave too many tasks on the desk for the New Year
While it’s tempting to reschedule your work to the New Year if you are planning a break, this might mean you will have a mess waiting for you to be sorted when you are finally back from a relaxing holiday!
As you plan for the break ahead, it’s time to spend a couple of hours accessing the tasks that can be completed sooner than later. If you already have too many overdue tasks, do not push them back any further. Try clearing the backlog before the holiday starts.
With little time left and more work to do, this means you need a way to speed up your processes through:
- Digitising paperwork
- Following up on rental arrears
- Creating message templates
- Automating invoicing
- Clearing up payments
- Efficient communication
i4T Maintenance lets you do all admin work from one integrated platform!
9. Keep your social media churning
Holidays means plenty of time spent online surfing websites, looking for products or services and simply reading or watching stuff that interests you.
This is your opportunity to grow your customer base and get the attention of people who are looking to move from one property to another as they enter the New Year.
However, in order not to spoil your well deserved relaxing holiday by fussing over what to post on social media, try scheduling your posts well in advance, so your online presence keeps getting you new clients, while you are literally sunbathing on the beach in another part of the world!
10. Thank everyone for their cooperation and support
Let’s admit it. If it weren’t for all these wonderful people around you, there was no way you could have a relaxing holiday.
Whether it’s your tenants who are patiently waiting for you to return and deal with pending maintenance work, or it’s your colleagues who were kind enough to handle your work during your absence, a thankyou note can go a long way.
Also, don’t forget to thank the field service suppliers, who didn’t let you down when you needed them the most!
Wrapping up
Days leading up to the festive season can be stressful, with loads of distractions and work overload. At i4T Maintenance, we aim to bring more hours to your day by adding efficiency to your workflows, so you can have a relaxing holiday now and a work-life balance you have always wanted.
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With our cutting-edge technology and in-depth knowledge of how the Field Service Management sector operates, the i4TGlobal Team loves to share industry insights to help streamline your business processes and generate new leads. We are driven by innovation and are passionate about delivering solutions that are transparent, compliant, efficient and safe for all stakeholders and across all touch points.
