Rental Businesses are not quiet businesses. They are like human hearts pumping with a very irregular pace, caused by sharp peaks experienced on a monthly basis. These peaks are associated with getting all Tenants Billed, Getting Tenants in and out of Properties, Reimbursing Tenant Deposits, Initiating Renewal Processes, Paying Agent Commissions to highlight just a few. In addition there is a constant stream of interruptions and special intervention is required to survive this monthly storm of activity and communication. Did I mention stress affects the heart?

According to an article posted by Discovery Health on the importance of Heart Beat, timing is everything. Without a strong heartbeat, your blood cannot get to where it needs to go, and to have a strong heartbeat, it must be steady. Similarly, a Rental Business needs to have a strong and steady heart beat in order to get the job done in a predictable way. So, how do you get yourself a healthy rental heartbeat…

One suggestion is to create and post a Timeline for your Business so that all involved with the business can be on the same page.

If you map the activities on the timeline to your employees you might also gain some valuable insights on who might be under severe pressure during certain peak periods of the month.

How to construct a timeline “pacemaker” ...

Well, you are welcome to use the one included in this article as a point of departure or you can just draft your own.

The most important Milestone on the Monthly timeline is normally the Billing Day and most activities are really just preparation for an accurate Billing process. So I would suggest that you decide on a day (normally before month-end) and put that “stake” in the ground as a point of departure.

Then work your way backwards and pin down the latest completion date for pre-requisite activities in order to achieve an accurate billing process.

Then work your way forward and include activities associated with things that need to be done over month-end such as Checking Billing accuracy, Occupation and Exit Management, Default Management, Initiation of Renewal Processes, etc.

Like a good pace maker, the timeline will ensure that no mission critical activity (beat) is missed in the chaos.