"Arthur Online’s platform lends itself perfectly to HMOs"

Tell us about your business

We bought our first HMO to manage ourselves with the plan of handing it over to an agent before buying the next one. We couldn’t find the right agent and decided to manage our growing portfolio ourselves.

People started asking us if we can look after their properties too, so we also started building the management side of the business.

At the beginning we only used spreadsheets, but soon found that they simply weren’t good enough. The problem with spreadsheets is dealing with errors. A few errors in a relatively small spreadsheet can take days to fix.

Growing with just the use of spreadsheets wasn’t feasible, so we started looking for a property management software; but everything seemed geared towards single lets and ignored the unique setup of HMOs.

Arthur Online’s platform lends itself perfectly to HMOs and it’s flexible pricing was just what our growing business needed. There were no expensive set up fees or high minimum entry points. We always had big plans but weren’t ready to pay big prices.

What are your biggest operational challenges?

We’ve been growing rapidly over the past few years.

We started with 20 to 30 units, it was straight forward but using spreadsheets made it very inefficient; most of our time was spent on back-tracking and correcting errors.

There is absolutely no way we could manage our current portfolio of 200+ units with spreadsheets, without Arthur Online we wouldn’t have even considered growing to our current size.

How has Arthur Online helped you overcome these challenges?

With Arthur Online, we’ve been able to systemise things and make our workflow much smoother. We particularly like how you can automate so many tasks.

Being able to work from anywhere is also a huge plus. Our team all work from home, and our contractors are all around the city. We’re not in the same office all day so communication can be tricky, but with Arthur Online we don’t physically need to be in the same place. We can manage the whole business remotely and message each other through the software.

As Arthur Online is cloud-based it means that everyone in our team can login and get important information quickly and easily from anywhere in the world.

What add-on features do you find most useful?

Signable (digital signature) is the feature we use most often.

Before Arthur Online we had to go to the property to get the contracts signed. With Signable digital signatures everything can be completed remotely and all records are stored securely in Arthur Online.

How did you find the onboarding process?

We had a fantastic on-boarding experience.

It was exactly what we needed.

The Arthur Online team helped us clear everything out and automated our entire tenancy journey.

You’ve been using Arthur Online for a while now, what do you think of their ongoing customer support?

The support is brilliant, especially the live chat which is by far our favourite way of getting in touch.

Even if I have a question late in the evening, I just drop a message on the chat so it’s off my mind, and someone picks it up in the morning.

How much has your business grown since you started using Arthur Online?

Around 10x! We had 20 units when we started using Arthur Online, now we manage 200+ units. Arthur Online played a huge role in getting us to where we are today.

How much time has using Arthur Online saved you and your team?

If we had to manage what we have got now using our previous processes, we would need 2 to 4 times more staff.