Can anyone advise me on a good computer program to help us manage our property portfolio. Having properties in different countries, and being able to keep tabs on various issues including capital growth and rental incomes, as well as having all the tools to remind you when to do whatever needs doing is a tall order. I cant find anything really good but I am sure someone else already has! Any advice gratefully received.

I haven't looked too hard for available packages but have developed a spreadsheet to help understand cash flow, capital growth and managing risk for my portfolio.

It's very personalised to my situation but could be adapted to any portfolio.

I think you would struggle to find a package that does this AND helps with day to day management of properties but I would also be interested to hear what others have found.

Good morning,

Property Secrets does have its own 'My Portfolio' tool, which is available to all Pro Members. This might not do everything you require Bruce so I will have a look to see if there is anything I have myself.

http: / /www .propertysecrets .net /my _portfolio .html

Kind regards,

Martin

I use "The Landlords Property Tax Manager"

http: / /www .property -tax -portal .co .uk /landlords _property _tax _manager .shtml

Covers everything I need and it is very easy to use.

Erico

Hi Erico

Your link looks exactly what I want. Thanks also to Martin, I had not realised exactly what Property Secrets have on offer on the website. I think Erico's suggesiton has more functionality and appears to cover pretty much everything I need. The same website has a series of other software tools to cover other issues as well.

This forum is certainly useful. Thanks to you all.

Bruce

Hi Bruce,

Let us know how you get on with the software if you buy it. We do have something on our site, but it isn't going to be right thing for what you are after. We are developing software to help in this area, but it's not a trivial challenge.

The way we are looking at it there are quite a few products on the market from spreadsheets to database packages that allow you to enter the details in for your in and outgoings and then produce more or less detailed results. To allow you to file your own tax return they need to be updated regularly when laws change, and as a result the packages on sale that do this typically cost a few hundred pounds (I think the one recommended above is somewhere in that price range).

What we're trying to do, and I'd be really interested to get feedback from members on this is a bit different.

Through our sister company, i-PropertyAssets, we work with a number of letting and management agencies in CEE countries and a lot of our work is to bring them up to the highest standard of reporting of information (as well as other areas). We do this through an online system that allows the partner to track money in and out for clients.

This allows us to present clients with a single interface showing what has been paid out of their accounts (or what they need to pay, together with scanned in invoices, bank details etc.). It also stores the tenant contracts and the key terms, allowing it to show when rent should have been received and track this.

What I'd like to do is roll this out to a number of UK agents so that if you have property in the UK we could offer a free service to managing agents allowing them to put in the basic information on money in and out of clients' accounts, contracts etc. We'd offer the UK service to clients for free as well, asking only that our clients encourage their agents to participate.

This way you could get up to date information without having to type it in yourself. We would be happy to promote agents that keep this information up to date for clients, thus helping them get more business.

What's in it for us? Well, we'd have a number of relatively discreet adverts for mortgage brokers, other financial services companies, etc. and fund it through advertising.

As we've practically finished building the systems to track multiple properties across different countries and currencies, rolling this out in the UK should be a cinch.

This system wouldn't do your tax returns for you, although this might be something we could add later.

Would you be interested in using a service like this? Do you know any managing agents who would be willing to put basic information on money in and out into the system?

Our Finance Director was recently seen berating one of his managing agents for providing pitiful levels of reporting, and failing to adequately track rent received etc. I get the feeling there may be more people out there who have a less than satisfactory flow of information on their portfolios.

Let me know what you think (either on this thread or direct to peter.bennett@propertysecrets.net) and you could get your requirements worked in.

Best wishes

Peter Bennett
Director