Student Housing Software
Student housing software is technology that helps student housing property managers with accounting, maintenance, and tenant and lease management for student housing properties.
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Yardi Breeze Property Management
Yardi Breeze is property management software built exclusively for small to mid-size businesses. Yardi Breeze offers features such as autocomplete address lookups, data import utility, home screen dashboard, drill-down reportin...Read more
Buildium is a cloud-based property management software that enables managers of residential and association properties to take control of every aspect of their business, whether in the office or fully ...Read more
AppFolio provides property management software that allows property managers and owners to market, automate and manage tasks related to their apartments, residential properties, commercial property, st...Read more
Hemlane is a cloud-based property management solution that caters to small businesses. The key features of the solution include property marketing, applicant screening, lease tracking, rent collection and maintenance coordinati...Read more
RealPage is a cloud-based property management solution suitable for businesses of any size. Key features include accounting, budgeting, facilities maintenance, purchasing, document management and reporting. RealPage ena...Read more
Rent Manager is a software system for both residential and commercial real estate entities with portfolios of any size. The accounting component of Rent Manager has full integration and includes everything from standard to adva...Read more
PayProp is a cloud-based property management solution designed to help Florida’s property managers collect, reconcile and distribute rental payments for their properties under management – on time and to the right r...Read more
Total Management is a cloud-based property management solution suitable for midsize to large organizations that manage apartments, mixed portfolio, REITs and commercial or retail space. Total Management helps users mult...Read more
Building Stack is a cloud-based property management solution designed for Canadian businesses of all sizes. Key features include lease management, employee management, building maintenance, automated listing postings, tenant co...Read more
RentPost is a cloud-based property management solution that handles priorities faced by property managers including unit and tenant management, work orders, contact management, automatic rent collection, and accounting. The sol...Read more
Software pricing tips
Read our Student & University Housing Software Buyers GuideSubscription models
- Per employee/per month: This model allows you to pay a monthly fee for each of your employees.
- Per user/per month: Users pay a monthly fee for users—normally administrative users—rather than all employees.
Perpetual license
- This involves paying an upfront sum for the license to own the software and use it indefinitely.
- This is the more traditional model and is most common with on-premise applications and with larger businesses.
Rated best value for money
Property Vista is a property management software solution that transforms how property managers build tenant relationships to increase business value through technology. Property Vista integrates all of the necessary to...Read more
Innago offers a cloud-based property management platform for landlords with small to midsize property portfolios. With Innago, users can collect rent, manage leases, collect signatures and manage tenants. Landlords can ...Read more
INFO-Tracker by Netintegrity Inc. is a cloud-based property, accounting and maintenance management system that designed for midsize and large Condo HOA, residential, 3rd party rental, commercial real estate and affordable ...Read more
PayProp is a cloud-based property management solution designed to help property managers collect, match and reconcile rental payments for their properties. Key features include payment automation, audit logging, arrears managem...Read more
Snapfix uses photos as the basis for task management. Businesses can leverage the eyes and ears of team members to identify problems or faults, capture photos and create issue-based tasks, assign the tasks to appropriat...Read more
Year after year, surveys indicate prompt maintenance and property upkeep is key to tenant retention. Green Doors Property Maintenance Platform is designed from the ground-up to tackle these areas with a new wave of thin...Read more
<p>Smart Property Systems is a cloud-based property management system designed for landlords, real estate investors, property management companies and managers of student or employee housing. It offers accrual accounting, tenant aSmart Property Systems is ...Read more
<p>Real Home Finder is a cloud-based and on-premise property management and customer relationship management solution for real estate industry. Primary features include accounting, tenant and lease tracking, budgeting and forecastReal Home Finder is a clou...Read more
Smart Building Apps is a cloud-based property management solution that provides property owners and homeowners, residential and commercial property management functionalities. Key features include budgeting, forecasting and bui...Read more
Popular Student & University Housing Software Comparisons
Buyers Guide
Last Updated: February 28, 2021Here's what we'll cover:
What Is Student Housing Software?
Common Features of Student and University Housing Software
Expected Benefits of Student and University Housing Software
Key Considerations for Student and University Housing Software
What Is Student Housing Software?
Student housing software is technology that helps student housing property managers with accounting, maintenance, and tenant and lease management for student housing properties.
Aside from basic property management software features, student housing software focuses on maximizing room occupancy, managing room and roommate preferences, integrating with campus systems, and storing information for parents or tenants. Includes standard accounting, maintenance, and tenant and lease management functions.
Common Features of Student and University Housing Software
| Room selection management | In student housing, rooms often have two or four residents per room. Rather than splitting up one room into four separate units, student housing software will treat each resident individually. Some student housing software will even have roommate matching features, allowing staff or students to search for eligible roommates by lifestyle to minimize conflict down the line. |
| Student/parent profile management | Since a student’s parent or guardian is usually involved in at least the payment, if not other parts of their housing experience, university housing software should support storing information not just for the resident, but for their parent as well. This information may include permanent address, parents’ details, photos and even class information. |
| Integration with campus systems | Oftentimes, student housing is tied to meal plans, utilities or class schedules. A student housing program should ideally integrate with the university’s other software programs to facilitate the transfer of necessary information. |
| Additional service plans | This system will incorporate additional items, such as meal plans, internet service, cable TV, telephone and extracurricular activities, into the university housing software. This enables fees to be incorporated and paid all at once. |
| Student portal | Some of the more advanced student housing software programs will allow administrators to configure a student portal, enabling students to look up assignments or other personal information. Using this portal, students can conduct much of the application, payment and room selection processes online. |
| Incident management | The software can also help track and report policy violations or conduct incidents from the initial report through investigation, including any student sanctions or appeals. This feature will have step-by-step, user-defined categories specific to the institution’s method of handling student conduct incidents. |
Expected Benefits of Student and University Housing Software
- Save costs and administrative time via online applications: Modern housing solutions offer online platforms for students to submit their housing applications and select their preferences from a list of available options. This approach benefits both students and universities by reducing paperwork and time required to process documents for room approvals.
- Facilitate paperless approvals: Universities and colleges receive thousands of hostel/room applications when an academic term starts. Manually processing all these paper-based application forms is a tedious task and may even require the efforts of the entire workforce to accept applications, review them, approve/reject them and address inquiries. These challenges can be addressed by an online student and housing solution that transforms the traditional paper-based application process into a paper-free one. Using the software, universities can save all the application forms in a central location and speed up the approval/rejection process. Students are also able to submit their requirements or queries online and track their application status with a unique application code.
- Centralize information: The primary advantage of using a dedicated student housing solution is its ability to create a single, central repository for the entire student and university database. Universities can create student databases, record expenses, manage accounts, bill damages and do much more within a single solution. Such a solution streamlines information so that staff members don't have to maintain separate files for different data categories. Also, users can access information from the database in just a few clicks.
- Generate add-on revenue: Some university housing software offers inbuilt online shopping platforms where universities can sell products, such as bedding packs, daily essentials, stationery and toiletries. While such features provide time-saving convenience to students, they also help universities add a new revenue stream.
- Live attendance tracking: Another feature of this software is its ability to track the presence of students on university premises. A few solutions are capable of integrating with various biometric devices or swipe card machines to capture students' check-in and check-out times. This helps with recording attendance automatically and restricts any illegal access on school premises.
Key Considerations for Student and University Housing Software
While choosing the software that answers all your needs can be challenging, there is no doubt that the right solution will reduce manual efforts and tedious tasks. On the other hand, using the wrong software can slow down work and frustrate your staff. It’s vital that you list your requirements before you start shopping for a solution.
Here are some key considerations that can help you identify top solutions to match your requirements:
Business size: School and university housing software is all about managing the number of rooms and students in them. Some vendors offer solutions that are specific to the needs of small and midsized education institutions, while others serve large institutions that have multiple franchises worldwide. If you’re a first-time student and university housing software user, we recommend going for a solution that can help you scale up as your business grows in the future.
Deployment architecture: Based on the type of solution, universities and colleges can opt for on-premise deployment or cloud-based deployment. On-premise deployment is when the solution and its supporting infrastructure is installed at the local premises, while cloud-based deployment or the Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) model installs everything at vendor premises. This allows users to access the solution remotely on a connected mobile device or desktops.
Currently, most software vendors offer their services in the cloud as it’s cost effective in the long run as well as cheaper to deploy. If you’re a small or midsized housing facility owner, go for a cloud-based solution since you won’t need to invest heavily in IT. Also, post deployment, the service is ready for use in just a few hours. On the other hand, if you are a large institution or multi-chain education franchise with extensive in-house IT resources, go for on-premise deployment. It requires a one-time investment and gives users full control over their data.
Integration capability: This is defined as combining multiple applications to run as a complete system. The ideal school and university housing software should be capable of integrating with other academic applications, such as student information system (SIS), accounting software, online registration portals, single sign-on interfaces, campus portals and meal planning tools. This integrated environment can help institutions boost their overall IT functionality and sync data between multiple applications in real time.
So, as a school and university housing software buyer, make sure your shortlisted solution addresses the above considerations and meets all your requirements.