How to measure the efficiency of the practice

Time spent per building: the first warning sign

The first signal of efficiency, or the lack of it, is how much time the practice spends on average per building under management. What matters is not only the annual owners meeting: it is the recurring phone calls from the same residents asking for the same information, the manual search for documents scattered across paper files or emails, the manual compilation of accounting records.

A simple method is to track, even for just one month, hours worked broken down by building and by activity type: routine accounting, supplier management, responding to resident requests, meeting preparation, claims handling. If a significant share of time goes into repetitive, low value activities, such as printing receipts or replying by email to the same question about an instalment already paid, that is a clear signal that the answer is automation, not working harder. A management platform such as AmministraPro, which centralizes accounting, communications and documents in one environment also accessible to residents, cuts down precisely these repetitive requests because residents can find the information themselves.

Arrears: the indicator with the heaviest impact on the budget

Arrears are probably the most critical indicator, because they affect not only the practice's efficiency but the financial stability of the entire building: if a share of residents fail to pay their instalments, the manager still has to guarantee payment of suppliers and shared utilities, often having to advance funds or chase payments urgently. A useful indicator is the arrears rate per building, calculated as the ratio between overdue unpaid instalments and total instalments due in a given period, and how it evolves quarter over quarter.

Equally important is the average time between an instalment's due date and the first formal reminder: property managers generally have the authority to pursue debt recovery without needing prior approval from the owners meeting, but that authority is only useful if exercised promptly. An efficient practice has an automatic or near automatic reminder process, with notices going out on a fixed schedule without needing manual checking case by case: this is one of the areas where the difference between an organized practice and one that is struggling shows up most clearly.

• Arrears rate per building and quarterly trend
• Average days between instalment due date and first reminder
• Percentage of reminders resolved without resorting to formal legal recovery
• Share of residents on active, honored repayment plans

Disputes and complaints: quality as perceived by residents

The number of disputes received, formal or informal, is a service quality indicator that is often overlooked because it is uncomfortable to look at. It includes formal challenges to meeting resolutions, but also simple complaints about expense allocations considered incorrect, delays in communication, or lack of transparency in financial statements. A high number of disputes over expense allocation, for example, often signals an upstream problem: outdated ownership share tables, allocation criteria that residents do not understand clearly, or simply financial statements that are hard to read.

Keeping a log of disputes by type and resolution time makes it possible to spot recurring patterns: if most complaints concern the same expense line or the same building, the issue is not the individual complaint but a process that needs revisiting. Making financial statements available to residents in a clear, self service format, with common expenses broken down by ownership share, significantly reduces the clarification requests that otherwise absorb the practice's time.

Automation: where lost time gets recovered

Once bottlenecks have been identified, the next step is understanding which activities genuinely lend themselves to automation. Not everything should be automated: the relationship with residents and the judgment needed for delicate situations remain tasks that require the manager as a person. But generating payment notices, calculating allocation by ownership share, sending meeting notices within the required timeframes, and archiving documents in a traceable way compliant with data protection requirements under EU Regulation 2016/679, are repetitive activities where digital management software delivers a measurable time saving.

A useful indicator at this stage is time saved per activity after introducing an automation, comparing before and after on a sample of similar buildings by number of units. Practices that adopt a single platform for accounting, communications and document management, such as AmministraPro, tend to see the sharpest reduction precisely in low value activities, freeing up hours that can go toward managing more buildings or providing better service on existing ones.

Building a simple dashboard of indicators

The most common mistake is trying to measure everything from day one. It is better to start with three or four indicators: average time per building, arrears rate, number of disputes by type, and response time to resident requests. Track them monthly or quarterly, always with the same method, so they remain comparable over time. A simple dashboard kept consistent over time is worth more than a complex one off analysis: the goal is to see the trend, not to photograph a single month.

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