Let’s not beat around the bush; if you’re a property manager, Ailo will change the way you work. Switching to Ailo means changing some pretty core processes, like how you handle money and how you communicate with customers.

Dealing with change in a busy property management business is always going to have challenges. But taking a small step back to deal with the change to Ailo, you’ll also be taking a giant leap forward in your work and career.

Are you ready?

The best way to tackle this change is to be prepared. And the best way to get prepared is to be informed and ask questions like:

In this blog, we’ll answer these questions to help you prepare, minimise the change from switching, and maximise the next leap forward in your career.

You’ve probably heard a few different versions of what Ailo is through the grapevine, so let’s clear it up.

Ailo is a cloud-based, all-in-one property management platform built for Australian rentals. It enables you – the property management team – to effectively manage a rent roll (and all the important relationships that go with it).

There are 4 key parts to using Ailo as a property manager:

Let’s start with the biggest change for most property managers: the way you manage money.

With a fully embedded payment system, Ailo has everything you need to manage rent, bills, bonds, and disbursements.

The majority of renters choose to pay rent through the Ailo app instead of through your trust account because it gives them full transparency over paid-to dates and rent owed as well as an array of payment options. They also get automated rent reminders if they don’t have automated payments set up.

As the property manager, you’ll be able to see as soon as rent is paid through Ailo, so you’ll know what’s been paid and what hasn’t. All these features work together to ensure rent gets paid on time with little to no effort on your part as the property manager.

While you can also choose to manage your trust account in Ailo the majority of your transactions will no longer need a trust account, eliminating all the admin, risk, and bank fees associated with trust account transactions.

Ailo stores and displays all your tenancy and management data in an easy-to-use interface. We’ve designed our apps to be intuitive and fast, so when you’re dealing with customers it feels like you’ve got a photographic memory for everything.

Ailo also centralises your communications – including chat and email – into a single, organised inbox. One source of truth that keeps you and your team in the loop and not digging through email chains, endless SMS, and WhatsApp messages to find things. So now, not only do you have an amazing memory, but you also have this uncanny ability to always be up-to-date with who said what.

With all your customers, communications and payment information at your fingertips, Ailo becomes your property management crystal ball, helping you see everything. But even with all this clarity, you still have to get out there and get things done. That’s where Ailo Projects comes in.

Projects are what we call the task and process management side of Ailo. It works alongside Ailo’s payments and communications – as well as integrating with REI Forms, Formslive or Realworks – to help you get your work done quickly, consistently, and collaboratively.

Projects help you manage consistent service across large teams both in your office and with remote professionals. You can template the expected timeline for your work and who each step will be assigned to.

While projects can be customised to work for your agency, they also come pre-loaded with some industry best-practice processes to help you get started. Project templates include things like repairs, maintenance, inspections, new tenancy, new management - and so much more.

Compliance in Ailo is a managed service that covers your properties for all the standard compliance needs in their state. Investors pay a fixed, monthly fee to subscribe to Ailo’s compliance service – provided by Property Compliance Australia (PCA) –  meaning you don’t need to manage any of their compliance issues, trades or work orders anymore. It’s all done for you.

We’ve helped thousands of property managers make the move to Ailo. Over that time, we’ve developed and refined our process to make the switch as smooth as possible.

Here’s a quick breakdown of the first 12 months on Ailo and the changes you can expect to see in your role.

The first month is all about getting transitioned over and learning a new way of working in Ailo. This is usually the most challenging phase – with the focus mostly on settling in and finding your feet – but some agencies will start seeing benefits straight away too.

By now most teams are fully up and running in the new system. You should be feeling settled and confident that you know how everything works. You’ll also start to see:

By now you and the rest of the team should be feeling much happier, with consistently manageable workloads, leaving at five o'clock, and not having to do those extra hours. You’ll also start to see:

While some benefits happen quickly, others take time, but the cumulative effect of all of these changes has a huge impact on your job as a property manager. Here's what you can expect from 12 months of joining Ailo:

Legacy technology is built with trust accounting at the centre and defines the role of a property manager as an administrator.

But that’s all about to change.

New technology and rising customer expectations are driving a new kind of property management. The winners will be the ones who deliver better service, justify their fees rather than dropping them, and build deep trusted relationships with their investors.

In this new approach, the role of property managers is different. They use new technology to manage the daily admin and payments that used to be the core of their role, while they focus on the human side of great communication and developing a strong trusted relationship with their investors.

Ailo can give you all the tools and training you need to become that new kind of property relationship manager. But only you can make the change.

Agencies that take this relationship-focused approach to property management are winning over investors and will eventually dominate the market.

What all this means for you and your career is that you have a choice:

By adopting this relationship approach early, you'll be building a core skillset before most other property managers.

You'll become more in demand as other agencies realise what's happening, and scramble to stay in business by hiring-relationship experience over admin-focused experience.