Buildium

Best property management software for the price

Comments: Reporting is important and Buildium lets you know who owes how much and what bills need to be paid. It simplifies the bookkeeping aspect and gives accurate accounting if used properly. Really enjoy having a dashboard with all critical information at my fingertips.

Pros:

Buildium is packed with features to streamline property management and cashflow. There is no better way to accept tenant payments and pay vendors online with the click of a few buttons. Once we got our tenants and vendors using the payment portal, we drastically reduced time spent on processing paper bills and checks. There are so many ways to automate tasks and save time.

Cons:

I'm hoping that the developers add the "Duplicate Invoice" feature in the Bills module. This would save a lot of time when entering several bills at once. Setup is difficult but key to make the software work for you.

The Best PM Software Solution

Comments: We have enlarged our client base with Buildium's features thanks to their focus on speed and accuracy with payments, reporting, and accounting ease.

Pros:

Online payments are a game-changer. Owner/tenant/HOA access allows each respective person the ability to view important reports and property status in real-time. The property database is completely searchable from anywhere on the site.

Cons:

The task feature is a bit wanting. It's good for what it is, but dedicated project management or to-do list applications work just as well or better in most cases.

Comments: I switched to Buildium from QuickBooks in July 2011 and will switch off on January 1, 2012. We manage about 100 single family properties that are owned by about 30 investors. Yes Buildium is easy. Yes it is simple but if you are in the business of managing properties for multiple owners it just doesn't do the job. First, there is no way to invoice an owner for repairs. Buildium says you should have enough in your reserve account to cover the bill. OK, that makes sense, but what if you don't? There is no way within the system to tell an owner about upcoming expenses. You have to use another accounting system (QuickBooks for me) to invoice and track receipts. Then you have to add the invoice and payment to Buildium so the owner's reports on the portal (a nice but rarely used feature) are complete. The ability to sort reports is nearly non-existent. Buildium says to down load the report to Excel and then sort. Trouble is, the Excel file has so many merged fields that you cannot sort a single column. It is taking me 15 minutes to find and remove all the merged header information before a simple sort can be done. If you select the entire sheet then un-merge the report becomes a mess. The ability to "find" is absolutely non-existent. If you get a check for $1,453.62 and need to know where to apply it, good luck my friend. You have to call the issuer and get the name of the property and unit. Receipts, statements and reports, which are generated as pdf, are all formatted differently. This means you have to have 3 different types of window envelopes on hand at all times. Buildium is "joined at the hip" with NELCO printing and I have not been able to find checks other than NELCO's that print correctly. Why is this a big deal? NELCO charges $0.35 a check while Costco charges $0.035 per per check. If Buildium is not getting commissions on the business they send to NELCO, they certainly should. The online help search feature is worthless. There is no content searching so whatever word you type in the search box shows every page that includes any of the searched words. Skip the search and go directly to their index. With a little effort you can find an answer. The support team is quite pleasant and responds quickly. They rarely, however, have a direct answer and absolutely refuse to ever confirm a feature, like sending a bill to an owner, is just not there. What they do is endlessly reply, "We don't understand your question, please clarify." I have no one to blame for selecting Buildium except myself. When I asked to be shown features in the online demo I was told to talk to sales. When I asked sales the same question they said to sign up for a demo. In summary Buildium is cheap and easy but of little substance.

Review from 7+ year user

Comments: Positive. Very similar to my thoughts above in the Pros section. Have valued and enjoyed seeing what Real Page has done with this product since the acquisition a few years back.

Pros:

Other than how easy and clean the layout is.....my favorite part of Buildium is how they utilize and solicit user feedback....and then for the most part, implement the right changes.

Cons:

The Financial Reports and Accounting modules are still lacking. Not to mention the Financials Tab within the Accounting module....is just useless in my opinion. Would love to see Buildium really take the time and initiate to improve and revise this. Which would include getting feedback from any users who are Accountants or CPAs by trade or have those backgrounds. Myself for example would love to partake in this if asked.

Very reliable PM software for professional residential management

Pros:

It's really easy to use, but still gives us very advanced tools. Robust trust accounting makes auditing and compliance easy. Support is always good and prompt. They are constantly making updates and improvements and seem to really care about the product. I like features that save me time and Buildium delivers. Really good tenant app, tenants really like it. Communication features work well.

Cons:

Buildium is great for PMs who manage up to about 100 properties. It lacks the features that you need for over that amount, such as advanced batch reports, missing many standardized features and tools, no inspection schedule tracking, and the manager app isn't the best.