Projects PossibleA

As many of you are aware or you can see from my scrolling pictures, my wife an I own lakefront property.  When the property was subdivided by the builder he created a Homeowners Association to manage the common elements of the property including the road, the water system, and the sewer system.  As the secretary on the HOA board I’m always looking around for ways to help our small association of 12 members manage not only the invoices and receipts but also to distribute information like emergency contacts and meeting minutes to a geographically diverse group of owners. 

Today I test drove an online real estate software product called Buildium.  These are my findings.

Buildium on their home page indicate they are #1 in online property management.  With our small association I wasn’t too sure that an online solution could provide what we needed without becoming so overwhelming that it was more trouble to use than it was worth.  Pricing was also a consideration because we really are a very small association.

When you first go to the buildium.com website you will notice that they actually have 2 versions of the software.  One suited for property managers and the other for homeowner’s associations.  Reading through the website information they certainly seemed to be quite feature rich and included features like: financial reporting including budges, the ability to send announcements to homeowners, a homeowner interface where they could create tasks, pay their fees and interact, and the ability to share documents like my meeting minutes.  I decided to create a trial account and see just how much work it was going to be. 

When you setup your trial account you basically fill in a form asking for some pertinent details and an email is sent to you immediately.  Within a matter of minutes I had an online “site” ready to play in.

At first I was a little overwhelmed with the amount of information that was presented on the dashboard but I quickly learned that Buildium was trying to give me the information necessary to setup that particular portion.  I could click on a link and all of the help information including links to tutorials were no longer displayed when I clicked on the individual  tabbed sections. 

As far as ease of use is concerned I simply stepped across the tab section of the top navigation bar and each of the submenus associated with that section.   First I created our Association (“Property”) and then each of the LOTS within the association.  We are all equal owners but there does appear to be the facility to allocate percentage shares.   The Properties section also gives you the ability to indicate “Important Phone Numbers” for that property.  Since I manage the water and sewer systems I included me there.

Next I went and added me as a Homeowner of Lot 9.  When adding Homeowners there is this concept in the demo version of Moving In, Reading Meters, etc… while this may be appropriate for some associations it really didn’t apply to ours and it was rather intuitive as to what was being accomplished.  From the Admin panel on Homeowners this is where you would also create the Invoices and the amounts that would be required.   It took me a little while to find this.  I kept looking for a link on the Accounting Tab where I could Bulk Invoice my Homeowner for the 1st 1/2 of their fees.  (This is actually located on a 3rd level deep menu.)

I briefly reviewed the Accounting section and there is so much more information here than our association would ever use.  They even offer a service where you can enter the information and they will send out the checks for you.  Complete Chart of Accounts with user defined Income and Expense accounts.   It seemed feature rich but pretty simple to use.  It is also in the accounting area on a 3rd level deep menu that you would receive your homeowner payments.  Not hidden but not real prominent either.

I honestly didn’t play around with the Tasks area too much but there is notification built into the application so that if a new task is created the appropriate individuals are notified.  This was also true of the Discussion found in the Homeowner Tab.  Tasks could include things like maintenance, complaints, feedback, etc… and include the property, and spaces for assignment to an individual as well as detail of the task.

Documents which is something that I worry about, since I have to keep track of them all, is also pretty easy and feature rich.  You can upload virtually any type of document provide a description of what it is and then for those that you want to share with the homeowners you can simply check a little box and when you submit it, the document is uploaded from your PC and stored at buildium.   If you made it available to the homeowners then they are able to view it on the homeowners website.   What a great place to put things like meeting minutes, copies of invoices, etc.. 

Finally came the reports area – There is a full set of accounting reports including income statements, balance sheets and budget comparisons.  There are reports for bank reconciliation, transaction details, task details, and my big time saver statements to the homeowners.  There wasn’t a report that I could think of that wasn’t included on the reports page.

So what does all of this cost?  Buildium bases their prices on the number of units that you want to manage.  Their breakdowns are at a maximum of 5, then 25, 40, 65 and up.  For our association of 12 homeowners we would have an annual fee of $215 because we fit into the 25 category.  Additional fees are added for using their automatic payments feature and a feature they call ezmailer.

Keep in mind this was just a very brief look at this application and while I think for our association might benefit the pricing for us is too high.  Buildium’s feature set seems quite robust and the interface is for the most part easy to use although you sometimes have to remember there is a 3rd level of menus on some items and what I believe to be prominent features are often on those menus.   I will continue my quest…looking for something our SMALL association can use that is very inexpensive.   If you know of anything that I can try out leave a comment below.  As with all of my reviews… your experience may vary.