5 Ways Technology Can Save on your HOA Budget

As a manager or board member, you're tasked with creating a budget to plan expenses for your community next year.  However, creating a budget that saves money for your community can be a challenging job. You have to take into account how to forecast expenses for utilities, insurance, vendors, reserves, maintenance, legal fees, and more. With many expenses to consider, how do you effectively save money on your HOA budget?

There are many ways to save on a community’s budget – energy efficiency, vendors, reserves planning, etc. However, a surprising and often understated way is to include technology into your budget as a way to save money. Although technology requires an investment in time and money, it can reduce costs by automating repetitive tasks and helping you avoid unforeseen expenses. Studies show that automating business processes can reduce labor costs by up to 50%*. In this article, we’ll explore the five different areas where technology can help you save on your community’s budget.

Resident Communications

Communicating with residents on a frequent basis is key to running a successful community. However, you need to send a wide variety of messages to residents. You frequently send messages about maintenance, events, payments, support requests, and emergencies. Mailing these letters in-house means that you are paying for paper, ink, envelopes, stamps, and employee labor. Depending on how many units are in the community and how frequently you communicate with residents, these mailing costs can chew up a significant amount of the budget. To reduce costs, you can automate communications through email, phone calls, and text messages.  

Maintenance

Maintenance is an integral part of any community’s operations; however, communities often encounter unexpected costs. A community may end up spending thousands of dollars if equipment breaks unexpectedly. To keep residents safe and the equipment functioning, it’s essential that the community conducts preventative maintenance on a regular basis. Preventative maintenance helps to identify issues with the unit or common area equipment before it becomes an emergency.

Through technology, you can create and assign work orders so you can quickly identify and fix issues. The software should also allow you to set and track work orders by priority and due dates. By tracking maintenance items on a regular basis, you’ll know how much to budget for repairs or replacements. In that way, the community lessens the risk of depleting its reserves fund. Your residents also won’t be surprised or disappointed with an expensive special assessment fee.

Administrative Tasks

Have you ever taken a long phone call from a resident trying to find their payment balance? You didn’t expect the call to take hours long and so you ended up delaying an important project you were working on. This is a hidden cost that many managers face on a daily basis.

Promoting self-service within your communities is a great way for your residents to access essential community information on their own time. Residents can view documents, events, and past communications so they are informed. They can look up their financial balance and make a payment online. When residents are more informed and engaged, the community runs a lot smoother. You are more productive as a result. Instead of dealing with daily questions on payment balances, you can work toward improving the community experience for residents.

Technology can also help free up the time it would otherwise take to manually perform tasks. These include sending messages, responding to customer support tickets, streamlining maintenance, and more.

HOA Fees

Collecting and processing HOA dues is another challenge that many communities face. Communities often have to set aside a budget to account for homeowner delinquency. How HOA Software helps is that it brings more predictability into the community’s budget. A resident portal provides residents with an easy way to make their payments online. This is a faster, more convenient way for the community to collect dues. No more delayed or lost mail.

Another hidden cost of managing communities is processing checks that residents mail in for their dues. With the ease and convenience of online payments, managers or the board treasurer can save a trip to the bank, cutting down administrative costs.

Vendor Services

Hiring the right vendor is critical to keeping residents safe and improving property values. To save the association money, board members might be tempted to hire a vendor who presents a lower bid. However, if the vendor is not insured and an employee or resident is injured on the property, the HOA can face legal issues. Additionally, if an employee of the contractor files for workers’ compensation, it could come at the cost of the residents. It is worth more to the association in the long run to hire a vendor who is insured.

Your HOA software should allow you to track vendor contact information, license expiration dates, and your rating of their service. Keeping track of vendor license expirations ensures that you are not sending a vendor who is uninsured to perform work on a property.

Read the full article here: https://www.pilera.com/2021/09...

Citations: https://www.frevvo.com/blog/wo...