Closing the month in an hour

Month-end used to be a weekend. A spreadsheet with a tab per property, a bank statement printed and ticked with a pen, a folder of contractor invoices that never quite matched the tab they belonged to. By Sunday evening the numbers agreed, mostly, and the statements went out on Monday if nothing else happened.

What changed

Nothing about the work changed. Rent still arrives on the first, repairs still happen on the worst possible day, deposits still need protecting within thirty days. What changed is that each of those things now files itself the moment it happens, so month-end is no longer where the filing gets done. It is where you read what was filed.

The rent roll is sorted by what needs you. On the first of March the top two rows were the two units whose rent had not arrived. Everything below them was done, and the statements for those units had already gone out at midnight.

The hour, itemised

• Ten minutes reading the roll and sending the second reminder to the one unit that was genuinely late.
• Twenty minutes confirming three bank matches Haven was not sure about — a tenant who pays from a new account, a partial payment, a reference with a typo.
• Fifteen minutes reading the work orders that closed in February and checking the invoices were categorised correctly for year end.
• Fifteen minutes of nothing in particular, which is the part that still feels strange.

The statements were already issued when I opened the laptop. I read them with a coffee. That was March.

What to do with the other ten hours

Most of the landlords we spoke to did not fill them. A few looked at a fifteenth unit. Several said the same thing in different words: the business is the same size it was, it just stopped taking up the whole weekend.