Hi,

I've had a couple of questions this week about how i-PortfolioTracker is meant to work with properties you have with Managing Agents. Looking at what we've written about this in the past I can see that we've been pretty unclear, so apologies for that.

As well as replying individually to these people I thought I'd run through what you can already do and what the benefits you get are, so you can get more from the system. I'd also like to enlist your help in making this work better for all of us.

So why integrate portfolio management software with managing agents? No one else has ever done this before.

As an investor myself I've noticed a few weaknesses with using managing agents, even the good ones:

• Timeliness of information
• Written reporting
• Communication
• Performance management

Timeliness of information: Wouldn't it be great if as soon as your agent logged rent as received, or as soon as it became overdue, you could see this immediately in one place for all your property? Why wait for the report to come through the post, or rely on email that may or may not get through your latest anti-virus and spam filters?

Written reporting: Unless all your property is managed by a single agent then the reporting of rent received, payments made on your behalf, changes to tenancies etc. will arrive in different formats from different agents at different times of the month or quarter. This information at an individual property level can also be confusing an unclear itself at times.

Even if all the information sent from separate agents can be brought together, you still have to retype it to get a view across your whole portfolio of what's going on overall.

Communication: The old game of telephone tag is alive and well, with sometimes 3 to 4 phonecalls back and forth required to resolve sometimes minor issues. Adding email to this mix does not ensure success, as spam filters routinely delete emails before they are read, or people looking at 300 new emails a day delete the wrong ones.

How about a way of keeping a clear shared written log of communications back and forth between landlord and agent? In the case of misunderstanding, both parties would be able to see the same webpage with a list of what was said and agreed when and by whom.

Performance: How do you compare the performance of different managing agents? How can you tell whether the service they are giving is good compared to what over landlords are receiving? The old adage that you need to keep hassling service providers in order to get a good service is certainly true from some (but not all) managing agents. What if a system could keep a track of how effectively the agent was collecting rent, responding to queries etc.? What if you could compare that to other agents in the local area?

Does i-PortfolioTracker really do all these things for me for free?

Yes, all these things are provided for free by i-PortfolioTracker.com. Right now. The more people that use the service, the more powerful it is for everyone involved - so please use it and tell others. We will invest more time and money and energy in this as more people use it and engage and give feedback - that's my promise to you.

I've got some questions....

So, so far so good? Well, all the above raises a few questions - it certainly did this week. I'll pick up on two of the interesting ones here, and I'm sure you'll be sending in more.

Question one: 'How does the system automatically contact Agents on your behalf?'

Well, I went into some detail about this on the Property Secrets forum, but the summary is simple:

1. You enter the agent's details against your property on i-PortfolioTracker.com, either by choosing from a directory we've compiled, or by adding their details manually.
   
2. They then receive an email from i-PortfolioTracker.com saying something along the lines of 'Your landlords Joe Bloggs has requested that you provide management information on their property 22 Acacia Avenue by using the free i-PortfolioTracker.com online portfolio management service.'
   
3. The rest of the email points them to pages for managing agents and offers our free assistance in helping them get up and running. If they log in to their account on the system they will see your request which they must either accept or reject.
   
4. If they accept it they will get access to enter contract details, payments etc. related to that specific unit. You will see on your account what they have entered, and you will be able to send messages to and fro using the website, which messages are stored so that you can both see them.

Yes, I can see that this might be tricky to get going, but once started it's easy enough. We're also willing to change processes to suit managing agents who are willing to engage with the process.

Where possible we'd look to get their systems to talk directly to ours, so they don't have to re-type anything, but can then offer you this service at no cost to themselves or you - just a win-win for everyone.

Question two: 'What about security? What happens to my data?'

All the data is stored on a server managed by a company called Rackspace.

Rackspace maintain web presences for a number of major companies and all their systems and physical equipment is fully compliant with all relevant security and data protection procedures. For example, they host the UK Army's ArmyNET site which allows families and soldiers to communicate with each other and holds pay information, operational information in a secure environment. I think that makes them a credible host from a security point of view.

Our servers use SSL encryption to secure the data between Rackspace's physical servers and your web browser.

Should you wish it, we can always remove all information held about you from these servers. The management reporting suite that is growing on the i-PortfolioTracker.com website generates reports of your data for you. This will shortly produce it in Excel-readable formats allowing you to remove your data from the system in way that doesn't tie you to i-PortfolioTracker.com.

So, what happens next?

We believe that encouraging your agents to engage with this free service will give benefits to you and to them. In case you're wondering what we get out of it, we earn money from the discreet advertising on the website, without sharing any of your personally-identifiable information with any third parties, and we use aggregated information about capital growth, rental yields etc. to inform consultancy work we do through PropertySecrets.net.

Let me know if you have any questions or ideas for improvement and I'll be happy to reply as best I can, and to get features added as quickly and effectively as possible. In return, can I ask you to use the system and to spread the word to other investors who would benefit from it.

Best wishes,

Peter Bennett
Director
Visium Group Ltd
Publishers of www.propertysecrets.net & www.i-portfoliotracker.com

p.s. to contact me you can use email, but the best way initially is to use the 'How can we improve this site?' link on each and every page of https://secure.i-portfoliotracker.com - I read all of the comments sent in through here, and reply to them all.