Balancing his young family while building his own business, Duncan always knows what’s going on with his Brisbane investment property despite his hectic schedule.

He can see how regularly his rent is paid on time, easily pull statements and bills at tax time, and skim updates from his property manager (instead of digging through his overflowing inbox!) – all in his Ailo app, and on his own schedule.

An Aussie expat in New York, Duncan was kind enough to give us a quick call after work to tell us how the Ailo app has helped him keep in touch with his property manager from across the Pacific (and a 14 hour time difference!).

My sister-in-law said that she’d used the Ailo app before and that it was just really simple and easy. She said it made all of the communication with your agency super easy. We don't live in the same state or country that our property is in, so we were intrigued.

We ended up choosing Ray White Ashgrove, because they had a strong reputation – and, importantly, they were the only ones in the area at the time that were using Ailo.

Tax time! Because we live in New York, we have different tax cycles so it feels like we are forever doing our taxes! To get one statement for our property manager back home in Australia is so good. All we have to do is forward it to our accountant and everything they need is included. It’s a huge, huge time saver. Otherwise, we’d have to go through all of our records to keep track of all the payments and expenses we’ve had. Last year, we were even able to get a custom statement made for the US tax year. I can’t tell you how many hours that saved us!

🤩 Duncan’s pro tip: Get your property manager to handle all of your property-related bills via Ailo then simply forward your end-of-financial-year statement (and the link to all your bills) directly to your accountant who can handle it from there.

I don’t use it that often to be honest, but when I do it’s a lifesaver. The other day I was filling out a form, and I needed to know what our weekly rent was. It had recently changed and I couldn't remember. So instead of going through the normal channels like reaching out directly to the agent or even going back in my files to find the lease agreement, I just jumped onto the app and was able to find it super quickly and super easily.

Life would be a lot more difficult. Living abroad and in a different time zone can make things tricky when we're trying to do business or communicate with anyone back home in Australia. So just having the ease and the peace of mind that if I need anything from my property – any statements, any bills, if I need to check on how much a renovation cost, or how much a bill cost, or even if I just have a question – I can do it myself, and on my time. Almost everything that I need is right on the app.

If I didn't have the app, I imagine I would have to formulate emails and send them off to my property manager and hope that they would get back to me in time. And then it just feels like it's just such a headache.

This is going to sound so minor, but I noticed this month a list of outstanding bills and fees appeared in the monthly statement. I don’t think I’ve seen that before. So much better! It just clears up that fuzzy question for me every time I saw it [the closing balance] of, ‘what is that money doing there?’ Now I know it's for bills, and how many, and I can plan my cash flow better.

I know that’s minor and most people wouldn’t notice, but those little details and improvements are important. Anytime you’re managing your finances the last thing you want is to be left guessing or not sure.

Download the app! It's the one-stop-shop for every piece of information that you need about your property. It can all be done through the app. You can communicate with your agent, pay your bills, you can track your payments and your income, and get your monthly statements.

Yes! Everyone on the Ray White Ashgrove team is great. They are nice to work with, they prompt with all the responses, they know what they're doing – I really can’t fault them. The communication lines just seem easy, because not only do we have the app, but we're all working off the same scorecard really.

So yeah, I would absolutely recommend Clara and the team at Ray White Ashgrove!