Top 5 reasons to digitize your housing society using Technology

Picture a housing society office and you’ll probably imagine stacks of files, accounts books, piles of guest registers and heaving steel cupboards. Managing the vast amounts of resident and visitor data, bills, and fees, from day to day, over years, can be an overwhelming to say the least.

One of the most important jobs that managing committee members have is to organize this information clearly and with appropriate privacy, for easy access when needed for buying and selling of property, issuing NOCs and checks with authorities. Physically keeping records pose a variety of challenges - they could be misplaced, stolen, spoiled, or even tampered with. That is why, digitization is extremely important currently to organize and maintain housing society data. Today, society management apps such as MyGate make going digital seamless. It also offers added advantages for committee members and residents, with an added layer of convenience, accountability, and security when it comes to data.

If you are a member of a housing society committee looking to go digital. Here’s a quick overview of the top advantages going digital will offer your cooperative housing society.

Easily manage finances

The most time-consuming component of running a society is collecting dues, reconciling payments and keeping all the paperwork in order for the annual audit. With a community app, though, it’s all either automated or capable of being completed in just a click of a button. For example, you can automate bill payment reminders to apartment owners of apartments for rent in Alexandria and an SMS or email will be triggered automatically. If you want to send SMS updates to your clients such as notifications, and reminders, it's great to have an SMS gateway API that you can integrate into your software. And come year-end, you can auto-generate every report you need for the audit. Most committee members using solutions such as MyGate will tell you that it reduces their work by up to 70% every week.

Streamline gate traffic

Every day, hundreds of visitors arrive at the gates of a housing society, most of them delivery personnel and daily help. In this scenario, the security guard can do one of two things: either let everyone through, creating a security risk, or verify everyone by placing an intercom call, thereby leading to congestion at the gate all day long. With a community app, though, all interactions between security guards and residents are simplified and completed in under 5 seconds. So you get the best of both worlds: top notch security and a congestion-free gate.

Smoothen communication channels

Keeping all residents on the same page is a tall task. A common group on a messaging app like WhatsApp does help but cannot address every need. However, if you really want to take a notch higher, you can create homeowner association websites to manage communication channels. You can’t run a poll, set up a meeting, or pin important information. But you can do all these things with a community app built specifically for your housing society. So if you want to gauge interest in a society fair, you can run a poll; if you want to ensure everyone is informed about a power cut, you can notify every resident.

Unlock the power of the collective

All residents in a society have a few common needs, such as pest control or car servicing. Now, what if they all purchased it at the same time? Surely they could ask for a discount. Community apps such as MyGate can organise such group buying deals for their residents, bringing savings to all.

Become more environmentally friendly

Housing societies that are run the traditional way end up using plenty of paper -- at the main gate, in the society office, at the notice board, etc. With a community app, all of this paper can be done away with as every message happens on the app.

Digitizing your housing society can seem like a mammoth task but making the shift can be seamless with the right technology. What’s more, once you go digital the mundane jobs such as bookkeeping become simple and straightforward. There are also plenty of great features on community apps that can aid the organisation and running of your housing society.