Two years on Ailo, and Yvette Bateson isn't going back

Yvette Bateson spent more than 10 years doing end-to-end property management in New Zealand before she moved to Australia. She arrived ready for a change of pace, thinking she might work as a routine inspections officer.

Instead she took on a full portfolio, and soon after, the office she had joined moved to Ailo, with Yvette and her colleagues among the first through the transition. She has used Ailo for about two years now, and today she is a Senior Property Manager at Belle Property Mermaid Beach on the Gold Coast. Asked how the experience has been, she doesn't hesitate. "I love it. I love Ailo."

For her, staying on top of a busy portfolio comes down to process.

When Yvette started looking for a role closer to home, the first thing she asked was which software the office used. At Belle Property Mermaid Beach, the team told her in the interview they were keen to move to Ailo. Once she came on board, she championed the move from there. Asked whether she would now work anywhere that didn't use Ailo, her answer is two words. "I wouldn't."

Part of it is knowing the software, and part of it is how easy it is to use. "It just makes your life easier," she says. "It's easier to navigate. It's easier to just reach out if you need help."

That help has always been there. Yvette has a person she works with at Ailo, and getting help has always been easy. What has changed is how often she needs them. Now the AI built into the chat gives her the answers she is looking for, and asked whether that has made life easier, she was quick to reply. "Oh, so much easier."

She uses smart extract for invoices, and she loves that the platform keeps evolving. "I love all the updates as well," she says. "You can just go in there and see when the next training is or when the next update. They're always updating. So, you're always just learning."

Asked for the improvement that has impressed her most this year, Yvette went straight to renters and the way they pay. Ailo gives tenants a choice of ways to pay rent, and plenty of tenants are wary of paying into a separate bank account or through an app. Having an easy option that suits them has made one of the most common conversations simple. It is easy to explain, and in her experience tenants hear it and just do it. She has gone as far as looking at the tenant app herself, so she knows exactly what renters see and can walk them through it.

Owners have come around too. Plenty told Yvette they were a bit nervous about the move to Ailo, then came back to say the app was great. "This is such a better way," they told her. "We can see our money. We can take it out when we want."

Business development is now one of Yvette's key roles. She is part way through a BDM course and has Ailo's growth platform lined up for when she starts approaching owners. It is all new to her, she says, "so I'm definitely going to be using it to its full advantage." For someone who arrived in Australia ready to step back, she is now stepping forward, on a system she chose.