Aerial view of an HOA community. Learn how self-managed HOA software can help your community transform its operations and save money.

5 Reasons Your Self-Managed Community Needs HOA Software

/in /by

As a board member, self-managing a community on your own can be overwhelming.  Juggling multiple tasks at once, such as preparing for board meetings, hiring vendors, managing compliance, and addressing resident concerns can be challenging for HOAs without ample resources or outside support. But what if you could offload these repetitive tasks and create more time to focus on helping your community thrive?  That’s where HOA Software can benefit your team. In this blog post, we will explore 5 self-managed HOA software features that can empower you to run your operations more efficiently.  

1) Reduce your workload with self-service resident engagement tools

HOAs often struggle with sharing important information about the community, such as upcoming events, rules, and meeting updates.  Without a way to share critical information that keeps a community running smoothly, board members may start to feel overwhelmed. Ultimately, residents may feel dissatisfied with the lack of information.  

A self-service resident portal can be an invaluable resource for HOAs looking to self-manage their community.  Through a self-service portal, residents can manage their own data, submit requests, and connect with other residents.  For example, residents can submit maintenance requests, view documents, or make payments without ever needing to contact the board.  This can significantly reduce your workload as a board member while providing a satisfying resident experience. 

Resident portal features

When choosing which HOA management platform is right for your community, look for one with a resident portal that is easy for your residents to use. The resident portal should include features such as:

  • Online Payments
  • Document Library
  • Discussion Board
  • Resident Directory
  • Event Calendar
  • Service Requests
  • Architectural Change Requests
  • Self-managed resident data

Through Pilera’s self-service portal, residents can get the latest community information and request services, which ultimately reduces the administrative burden for your team.  Residents can also self-manage their own data such as occupants and communication preferences.   

2) Keep residents informed in a timely manner

With so many communication options available, HOAs often feel overwhelmed with fragmented communication and reaching specific groups in a timely manner. Communicating with the right people at the right time is vital to running your HOA successfully.  Effective communication helps to reduce operational issues and empowers you to foster positive relationships with the community.  It’s important to keep residents informed about upcoming events, board meetings, emergencies, or important changes in the community.  Boards need to be able to quickly respond to resident inquiries and complaints as well.  A communication platform can make it easier for board members to disseminate important information and bring the community together.  

Communication features

When choosing communication software that’s right for you, it’s vital to understand your community’s demographics and how they want to be communicated with.  More HOAs are utilizing text messaging as a way to reach residents instantly.  Whereas, elder demographics may still prefer to be communicated with through phone calls.  Having multiple methods of communication increases your reach and ensures your message is heard.  Here are some features your automated communication platform should include:

  • Phone, text, email, and postal mailing options
  • Distribution groups
  • Language translation
  • Resident communication & language preference
  • Advanced scheduling
  • Templates
  • Message delivery analytics
  • Invalid contact reports & troubleshooting
  • Strong message delivery reputation

Through Pilera’s automated communication tool, you can send phone, email, text, and postal mailing; send messages to dynamic distribution groups that update as residents leave or join the community; and track the lifecycle of a message in real time.   Our team works behind the scenes to monitor delivery reputation, so your message is sent when and where it needs to be.   With a 99.9% message delivery rate, your messages will be delivered even during a local outage. 

3) Stay on top of Maintenance repairs

Keeping track of the high volume of service requests you receive from residents in a timely manner can often be daunting.  Maintenance tracking software helps to create a streamlined process for residents to submit their requests online and for board members to notify vendors of work that needs to be done.  With maintenance software, board members can eliminate paperwork, stay on top of repairs as they progress, and respond to residents in a timely manner.  

Maintenance features

When choosing maintenance software, look for features that provide two-way communication with residents to save your team time.  Look for other features such as:

  • Resident input work orders with photos & documents
  • Work order ticketing and vendor assignment
  • Automated email notifications to vendors and residents
  • Vendor email response tracking
  • Vendor database and license expiration reminders

Pilera provides an integrated work order and vendor management system that empowers board members to reduce resolution time, improve vendor and resident communication, and organize tasks. 

4) Get competitive RFP bids for your community projects

HOAs regularly need to run a Request for Proposal (RFP) to get a minimum of 3 or more vendor bids for their community projects.  The process can often be overwhelming, from the distribution of the RFP to evaluating vendor responses.  An RFP management feature helps board members to create a consistent process that promotes fairness to all vendors and gets bid responses in a timely manner.  With an RFP management system, board members can send RFPs to vendors, share documents, respond to any questions, and track vendor responses in one place. 

RFP Management Features

When searching for the right RFP management tool, it’s important to look for a tool that keeps all of your RFP activities organized and helps you communicate better with vendors.  Here are some key features to look for:

  • RFP creation and automation
  • Vendor database to track contact information
  • Document sharing
  • Vendor email response tracking
  • Vendor license expiration reminders

Pilera recently introduced its partnership with RFP Plus, a secure and collaborative platform to manage your RFP process.  The platform centralizes all RFP activities, documents, vendors, and vendor responses related to your RFP in one place. 

5) Organize and prioritize community tasks

HOA board members have many responsibilities, including administrative tasks, event planning, managing finances, preparing for board meetings, and more.  It’s important for you to have a central place to organize all your community responsibilities.  A task management system provides a central place for board members to create and assign tasks, set priorities, schedule due dates, collaborate, and provide regular updates to team members so nothing slips through the cracks.  Having a central place for board members to work together on tasks improves accountability. It also gives everyone visibility into the status of current tasks.   

Task management features:

When searching for a task management tool, look for a tool that gives visibility to your team on tasks that need to be completed.  Your task management tool should also allow you to collaborate with other board members to ensure that everyone has the most up-to-date information.  

  • Task creation and assignment
  • Status updates and collaboration
  • Document sharing
  • Automated notifications
  • Dashboard and filters 
  • Board meeting/community reports

Through Pilera’s task management platform, you can create and assign tasks to each other, prioritize tasks, collaborate, and report on task status.  Our task management feature also includes a comprehensive audit trail of the task, making it easier to transfer knowledge to new board members. 

Conclusion

Operating a self-managed HOA is no easy feat, and it takes a lot of planning, organizing, collaborating, and dedication to make it successful.  Today, there are many self-managed HOA software solutions that can take the administrative burden off of your daily grind as a board member and empower you to manage your community more efficiently.  

In this blog post, you learned about 5 self-managed HOA software features that can make managing your community easier and more rewarding.   Resident portals, communication tools, service request management, RFP process tracking, and many more tools can help keep your operations more focused and save time for your HOA.