End of financial year is just a Wednesday

Corrine Forsyth has watched Ailo grow up. "We were client number four when Ailo first arrived on the scene." she told the Fortitude Valley panel. Four years on, the parts of the job she once dreaded have quietly stopped being a job at all.

Corrine leads the property management teams at Ray White Beenleigh and Ray White Redland Bay, part of a group operating across South East Queensland. What pushed her to move, half a decade ago, was trust accounting.

Payments were landing in the account with no reference against them, "just rent, or a number," she said, for a business managing hundreds of properties. "Who is this for?" She had come to resent the hours it took. "There's so much better use of my time supporting my team than sitting there doing anything to do with tenants paying rent."

The clearest measure of how far that has travelled came at the end of the financial year. Asked what the period looks like now, Forsyth was almost dismissive. "It's just a Wednesday. Just doing my emails." The event that once dominated the calendar has become a non-event, and that calm is the point.

Being early meant she watched the platform expand from a single function into the operating system for the whole business.

She lives in the team dashboard; her virtual assistants work from it; the projects tell everyone what is due and when. The spreadsheets are gone, lease renewals included, and smoke alarm compliance sits in the same place.

Consolidation is a running joke with her principal. When Ailo released 360 inspections, her team plugged in the cameras they already owned and retired a separate program they had paid for alongside a legacy platform for years, at no extra cost. "Glenn and I agree that it’s good news when you can strategise arounds costs, letting go of unnecessary expenses is always welcome ." He no longer asks her how anything works. "Glenn does not need to ask me questions anymore, because I've taught him how to use Ailo."

Part of what has kept her invested is being heard. "If my team puts in feedback and you implement it, you shout them out on the monthly, so it makes them feel really heard," she said, and the younger staff in particular treat each new release as something to explore.

The people she expected to resist turned out to be the strongest advocates. Owners now consolidate properties onto the platform so they can move between them regardless of location, and they update their own details, insurance and payment methods, and check when the next inspection is due, all of which has taken the follow-up calls away.

Compliance sharpened the case. Forsyth is candid that most businesses do not appreciate their exposure until someone audits it. When she moved that work to DC Smoke Alarms, an entire role's worth of manual updating disappeared, tenant details synced, and the risk became visible. "I can go into our dashboard and within thirty seconds see if there's any compliance issue across the whole rental."

Four years in, the through line is the same one that first sold her. The work she never wanted to do has simply gone quiet.