Half-Year Feature Roundup 2021: Communications & Organization

Greetings!  We’re back with a half-year roundup post to recap the new features we released in Pilera’s community management software.  So far this year, we’ve released 50+ features, enhancements, and fixes that help our clients take their communications to the next level, better plan their workday, enhance reporting, and much more.  While we can’t review every single feature in a single blog post, we’ve linked to all of our releases this year so you can check them out!  Without further ado, let’s dive into these new features!

Table of Contents:

  1. Communicate smarter, not harder!
  2. Ticket updates – plan your day the right way.
  3. Manage your recurring events with ease.
  4. Get the most out of your data with reports.
  5. New in partner integrations.
  6. Customer support and training to help you thrive!
  7. Innovating to keep your company up-to-date!

Communicate smarter, not harder!

As a leader in community communications, our aim has been to continually develop features that make it easier and more convenient for you to keep residents informed.

Unit and people-based distribution groups

A popular feature request from our customers, the new innovative distribution groups enables managers to message any combination of streets, buildings, floors, units, and people.  The system automatically maintains the list when a resident joins or leaves the community so you don’t have to.

Send emergency notifications via text/SMS

Previously, emergency messages sent through the Reverse 911 functionality defaulted to phone and email only.  Since text messages have increasingly become a vital way to communicate quickly with residents, we’ve now added the capability for managers to send out emergency notifications via text/SMS.

Design marketing newsletters with ease

You can now add images to your emails with our new rich text editor, thus giving your emails a more professional touch.  These images can be added to emails in the Send Announcement, Send Multi-Community Announcement, and Send Message features.

New contact method enhancements

A feature that our clients find most helpful in the Occupants listing page is the real-time status of each resident’s communication preference. We’ve improved the visual indicators to make it easier to identify which contact issues are permanent, non-permanent, and where residents have unsubscribed based on whether the contact method is preferred or not.

Improved visual indicators on the occupants listing page.

Community Notices

Managers can now post a notice for each community or apply a notice to all communities at once.  Community notices are a great way for managers to bring attention to important information to residents.  The notice will appear at the top of the dashboard page in the resident portal.

Ticket updates – Plan your day the right way

Organizing your work orders, activity logs, ACRs, tasks, and violation tickets helps you to plan your day accordingly.  This year, we’ve made many enhancements so you can better manage your workload and set expectations.

A new way to prioritize your work for the day

Do you manage a large volume of work orders, ACRs, activity logs, rule violations, or tasks? If you’ve answered yes, you’ll love this new update!  We’ve modified the ticket tables for work orders, activity logs, ACRs, tasks, and violations so that you can prioritize your tickets by age, urgency, and priority. 

More live insights on your dashboard

In 2020, we released new dashboards that show managers and board members a live preview of open tasks in the community as well as their assigned tasks. This year, we’ve improved the dashboards so that managers can see assigned activity logs. Board members can also now see their assigned tasks and architectural change requests.

Manage your recurring events with more ease

It is now easier than ever to automate regular meetings you host, such as board meetings or community gatherings in Pilera.  You can set a recurring schedule for an event on a daily, weekly, or monthly basis.  The events can then be easily modified or canceled. 

Get the most out of your data with reports

Customizing your reports is easier than ever

We’ve improved the report tables in the Resident Report, Vehicles Report, Address Report, and Alternate Contacts Report for easier browsing, exporting and customizing.  The report tables are also mobile-friendly, so you can browse information on any device.  Additionally, you can export the reports to an Excel file or copy and paste the information to a database of your choice.  

New unit report

Managers can now view a list of all units in their community as well as the total number of units at the bottom of the report.  

New in Partner Integrations

New online payment integration with Authorize.net

Provide your residents with a new, convenient way to make online dues/rents payments online.  Pilera now integrates with Authorize.net, a popular payment provider.  For more information about our integration with Authorize.net, contact [email protected].  

QuickBooks Online update

Units in a community you manage may be owned by multiple individuals.  Those owners are called primary and secondary owners.  Primary owners are added to QuickBooks as Customers whereas secondary owners are added in QuickBooks Online as Sub-Customers.  We can now bring both Customers and Sub-Customers into Pilera and display the financial balance and ledger for both.

Post the TOPS ledger to the community website

For our clients that use the TOPS accounting platform, you can now add the TOPS ledger module to your community websites.  Once residents log into the website, they can then view their balance and ledger.

Customer Support and Training to help you thrive!

We’ve now introduced a new resource to help you maximize your Pilera experience so you can best serve your communities.  You can now book a live 15-minute training session directly in the app to learn how to use a certain feature. 

Innovating to keep your company up-to-date!

At Pilera, our goal is to keep delivering new features so you can gain a competitive advantage and best serve your customers.  Every year, we release hundreds of updates – new features, enhancements, fixes, and the little but vital quality of life enhancements – to make community management more enjoyable for our clients!

Check out all of the 2021 updates here!


About Pilera

Pilera Software is the premier property management software that has helped thousands of community managers and back-office personnel enhance communications, improve customer service, and manage compliance and operations. May we help your community achieve these success stories? Contact us so you can see how Pilera’s community management suite can increase work efficiency for your company.