A Fool-Proof Formula for Easy Community Management

Housing societies can be heaven or hell, depending on how you live in them and manage them. If you’re looking for quick and easy solutions to making your community slice of life palatable, look no further than this post. Let’s get straight to it.

What are the main hurdles on your road to better community management? (Hint: there could be many, but we’ll stick to the main culprits).

Maintenance payments not flowing in as they should

Some residents can be lazy and undisciplined when it comes to making monthly maintenance bill payments.

Solution: Streamline the payment process. Set a date of the month when the payments should be made, come rain or shine. Send text/email reminders if the payment is late. If the defaulters don’t respond, charge a percentage-based or a flat fine on their account. The fear of losing more money will get the defaulters on the right track. (Make sure the penalty charging decision is informed to everyone beforehand).

Security concerns at the gate

Visitors have to enter their names and numbers in a physical register (a waste of time). Unwanted visitors may gain entry under pretences, not to mention nefarious elements.

Solution: Use technology to automate gatekeeping

An intelligent society management app, MyGate, can enable automatic entry/exit through a passcode verification system. The visitor gets a unique one-time passcode from the resident, scanned by the security guard, eliminating the need for pen and paper registration. No congestion at the gate, and frequent visitors get their unique passcode for daily entries.

Accounting tasks being a headache

Maintaining different sheets (physical and digital) and tools for calculating incoming monthly maintenance payments and outgoing expenses to staff, guards, vendors, and utilities is an unnecessary way of burdening yourself with tedious tasks.

Solution: Use a customised accounting suite designed specifically for society finances

These are fully personalised society ERP suite that includes automated charging of bills to members (and external vendor invoice management), a pre-applied formula for GST calculations, templates for P&L sheets and other important financial payments, including integration of payment gateways so that members can make online payments.

Chaos at the parking space

Even when you finish assigning parking slots for permanent residents, there can be parking issues with guests and visitors. Often regular residents may also park in the wrong spot or encumber other member’s parking.

Solution: Enable security guards with parking management protocols

As such, every society requires to assign a portion of parking space to visitors (5-25% depending on which state you reside in).

App-based parking management links vehicle numbers to the owner who can summon if they haven’t properly parked their vehicles. Additionally, the app updates the remaining parking slots once the visitors start arriving and parking inside the premises.

Covid-19 worries

 Social distancing doesn’t go away soon. Contactless deliveries and temperature check, mask protocols need to be enforced.

Solution: Arm the security guard with the necessary tools to combat infection.

Provide them with temperature monitors and PPE so that infection can curb at the gate itself. Use apps that can track guard/staff attendance through facial recognition technology. Use the ‘leave at the gate’ feature for contactless deliveries in which the deliveries are left at the guard’s desk and can be collected via a passcode verification later.

Publish the information about quarantined apartments or containment zones instantly so that movement restricts to a minimum.

Domestic staff MIA

We need our domestic help to be present to not take too much on our plate.

In times of lockdowns (and even otherwise), domestic staff attendance and movement should track since many residents have started working from home.

Solution: Roll call system

Have the security guard mark the time of entry/exit for every domestic staff (maids, cooks, drivers, etc.) and the residents can check in with the guard whether their help has arrived.

Society management apps record when regular domestic staff enter the premises and send a notification to the resident’s app.

Also Read: 5 Signs That It’s Period To Change Your IT Support Provider

Fighting over amenities

Everyone wants to relax and recharge, but not when there’s bickering over who gets to go first.

In-house facilities like clubhouse, gym, pool and others need to be shared among the community equitably without any bias, underbooking or overbooking.

Solution: Create a shareable calendar

A schedule for booking slots for each amenity will happen in a way that no household gets to use more than their fair share.

Available slots can be available to all to book a slot convenient to them or go for the next available slot. (MyGate enables easy scheduling with full transparency regarding all available amenities in-app).

It stands to reason that using the right technology and tools is the panacea for any financial or operational mismanagement your community faces currently. So get with it. The time is now.