Property management software is the software that landlords, investors and the managers they hire use for the money side of a building: its leases, its rent collection, its bills and its accounts. It is also called real estate management software, or lease administration software when it is used mainly for leases. Its users are the owners of office parks, malls, warehouses and apartment buildings.
The centre of the software is the lease. A lease is the contract between the landlord and a tenant. For each lease, the software stores the area rented, the rent, the start and end dates, the security deposit and every clause that changes the rent later. From these, it works out what each tenant owes every month, raises the invoices, records the payments and chases late ones.
Take, for example, an office building in Pune with 6 lakh square feet, leased to 30 companies. One tenant, a software company, rents 50,000 square feet at ₹90 per square foot per month. Its monthly rent is ₹45 lakh. It also pays common area maintenance (CAM) charges of ₹15 per square foot, which is ₹7.5 lakh a month, for the lobby, the lifts, the security and the cleaning. On the 1st of each month, the software raises both invoices and adds GST at 18%. The tenant pays after deducting tax at source (TDS), the part of the rent that the tenant must pay to the income tax department on the landlord's behalf. The software records the TDS too, so that the landlord can claim it later. The lease says the rent rises by 15% every three years. Three months before that date, the software reminds the manager. It then raises the rent to ₹103.5 per square foot on the right day, without anyone retyping it.
The software also keeps the building's accounts: rent received, electricity and water bills paid, and repairs paid for. The owner's investors read these accounts every quarter. Large owners send them on to their enterprise resource planning (ERP) system. Some owners use accounts receivable (AR) automation to match each incoming payment to the right invoice. The tax rules behind the invoices are explained in GST.
How is property management software different from a computerised maintenance management system (CMMS)? Property management handles the money. A CMMS handles the physical work: repairs and servicing. In many buildings, the two are linked, so that the cost of each repair appears in the building's accounts.
Some property management software also recommends what rent to charge for each flat. In the United States, regulators have argued that this can help competing landlords raise rents together. The page on algorithmic rent pricing explains how. Most of this software is sold as software as a service (SaaS).