Property Invesment, Investment Property, Cheap Property & Buy to let

 1. Weekly: usually this is low paid private tenants

 2. Fortnightly: usually this is the top up element from an unemployed person because their Job
Seekers Allowance is paid fortnightly

 3. Four weekly: usually this is councils when they pay the housing benefit

 4. Per calendar month: usually salaried private tenants with higher incomes because the tenant is
paid every calendar month

 Add to the fact that some of the rent is paid in arrears and some in advance you can see that a mixture of 
tenants that are private weekly, private monthly and housing benefit can quickly lead to confusion.

 So in my scenario try handling 170 properties.

 A little bit of personal information about me.  My girlfriend moved in with me 1 year ago and we always
knew that she would take over the administrative duties of the portfolio eventually.  Well she has over time
taken over the letter writing, dealing with the council tax, sorting out the repairs etc. but now its time for 
her to enter in to the rent chasing from the letting agents.

 So with a few discussions with her we ruled out the following methods of keeping track of rent arrears:

 1. Pen and Paper: this just seemed to out dated and backward.  We both new that using a 
computer in some way will always be better than pen and paper.

2. Using Microsoft Excel: this seemed a possibility but considering there was no trigger for when
the rents become due it would simply be a static page sitting on a computer.

 3. Using Landlord Software: I bought a package for 149 GBP and frankly I was gutted.  I thought
it was the solution to all our problems but the software was just too confusing and complicated 
and very inflexible.

4. Using An Online Accounting Package: I liked the idea of being able to check on the status of
my portfolio anywhere in the world.  But when I looked in to it there was nothing for a landlord
where rents due would be automatically calculated.

So in a nutshell there was nothing out there.  But then I thought….. let me look at my own portfolio online
manager software I offer on my propertyhotspots.net site.  I created it a while ago and aimed it towards 
the part time landlord. Now I am not blowing my own trumpet but what I myself offered to my subscribers was
EXACTLY what I needed.  No joke.

1. Online: so you can check on your portfolio anywhere.  Also if you lose your computer or it gets
stolen or the data gets corrupted you do not have to worry as all the data is stored on our high 
performance security backed servers.

 2. Simple to use: no complex linking properties with tenants or compulsory fields to be filled in.

 3. A Debtor list generator: by a click of a mouse you can see who owes what at any one time
because rents are added to tenant’s debts automatically once the rent becomes due.

 4. Flexible with rent cycles: you can add the rent so it is payable daily, weekly, fortnightly, four 
weekly, monthly, quarterly or even annually.

So now my girlfriend and I are in the process of adding all my properties on to my own website.

 There is also another neat feature where you can create a portfolio page which has all the details of your 
portfolio in a spreadsheet to view online.  You can include the date you purchased it, what you paid for 
it, mortgage outstanding and estimated value.  The sheet will then calculate the estimated profit the equity 
contained in the property and the yield.

It will also total up your portfolio so you know what to expect to earn from your portfolio as a whole, the total
 amount of equity in your properties (i.e. your net worth) and the overall yield of your portfolio.

 So I challenge you: See if you can find a software package that does what my package does!

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