# Landlord Software for Private and Family Portfolios

> Landlord software for private and family portfolios of 1 to 50 units: contracts, notice deadlines, meter readings and a defensible annual statement.

- Source: https://real-estate-management.webservices-engineering.de/use-cases/private-landlords
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- Site: Real Estate Management — The back office for real estate portfolios (Webservices Engineering GmbH)
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## Landlord software for private and family portfolios

The spreadsheet works until the year you have to prove how a heating bill was divided. This is the system for owners who have reached that year and want the answer written down once.

- Rental contracts, bailment agreements and early termination contracts in one register
- Automatic email reminders before contract end and renewal deadlines, with a record of what was sent
- Meter readings kept per meter and per period, so last year's figures are still there next year
- The Standard plan is sized for a portfolio of this shape — properties, housing units and rooms at the published limits

- [See what the Standard plan covers](https://real-estate-management.webservices-engineering.de/use-cases/private-landlords#plans)
- [Ask whether it fits your portfolio](https://real-estate-management.webservices-engineering.de/contact)

## The spreadsheet does not fail gradually

Most private portfolios are run from three places at once: a spreadsheet of tenancies, a folder of PDFs, and someone's memory of what was agreed. That arrangement is not stupid. For a while it is genuinely cheaper than any software.

It fails on a specific day. A tenant asks why their share of the heating bill went up. You need last year's opening and closing readings, the supplier invoice, the area figures used to divide it and the version of the spreadsheet from before the last three corrections. Two of those five things exist. The rest have to be reconstructed, and the reconstruction is what costs the evening.

A system does not make the calculation cleverer. It makes it retrievable. The readings, the invoice, the allocation key and the resulting per-client sheet are stored as one connected record, and next year the same shape is already there.

- [How cost reallocation works](https://real-estate-management.webservices-engineering.de/solutions/utility-rebilling)

## What a private portfolio actually needs recorded

Not everything in the product is relevant at this size. These are the parts that earn their place in a portfolio of eleven flats and two storage spaces.

- **The building, room by room** — Flats, business spaces and storage spaces, each with rooms and common spaces. Areas roll up from rooms to units to the property, so a corrected floor area is corrected everywhere at once.
- **Contracts and their history** — Rental contracts, bailment agreements and early termination contracts, with contract timelines. You can see who occupied a unit in any past period without opening a folder. [What this module does](https://real-estate-management.webservices-engineering.de/solutions/rental-contracts)
- **Prices with intervals** — Price entries carry their own interval unit and count, and are normalised for comparison. A monthly rent, a quarterly charge and an annual fee can finally be read on one scale.
- **Deadline reminders** — Notification events send email before a contract end or renewal deadline, issued by background workers. The audit trail records what went out and to whom, which settles later disputes quickly.
- **Meters and readings** — Meters and sub-meters per consumption site, with readings kept per period and a reading timeline. Batch entry screens let you walk the building once and type everything in afterwards. [What this module does](https://real-estate-management.webservices-engineering.de/solutions/utility-rebilling)
- **A statement you can hand over** — The per-client rebilling sheet is a branded PDF showing how each figure was derived. It carries your logo, colours and font sizes, not a software vendor's.

## The annual utility statement, start to finish

This is the sequence the utility billing module is built around. For a small portfolio it is an afternoon, and most of the afternoon is step one.

1. **Enter the readings** — Walk the building and record closing readings on the batch entry screen, meter by meter. Sub-meters are entered against the same consumption site as their parent meter.
2. **Record the supplier invoice** — Enter the supplier invoice for the period, or a compound invoice covering several utilities and periods at once, together with any supplier meter readings you were given.
3. **Choose the allocation key** — Per square metre, per person, per unit, per consumption share or a custom expression. Standing charges and flat components go in as unmetered consumption positions.
4. **Preview before issuing** — Rebilling entries are grouped by utility type and rebilling mode, and the invoice preview shows the result before anything is issued. Corrections happen here, not afterwards.
5. **Issue and hand out** — Issue the batch, then produce the per-client rebilling sheet for each tenant. Every figure on the sheet traces back to a reading, an invoice line and an allocation key.

## The four things that cost private landlords money

None of these are dramatic. They are the small administrative slips that a system is genuinely good at preventing.

- **A notice deadline that passed** — contract end and renewal reminders are issued automatically by background workers before the date, so an indexation window or a termination notice does not depend on remembering it
- **A missing opening reading** — with readings held per meter and per period, a change of tenant has a closing figure and an opening figure on record instead of an estimate agreed verbally two years ago
- **An allocation you cannot defend** — the allocation key is stored as a formula, not applied by hand in a spreadsheet, so when a tenant queries their share the derivation is on the rebilling sheet already
- **A document nobody can find** — documents and attachments hang on the entity they belong to — the property, the unit, the contract, the meter — with S3-backed storage, rather than in a mail thread

## What the Standard plan covers

Most private and family portfolios fit inside Standard. The number that usually decides it is not units, but rooms and common spaces, because those are counted individually.

| Plan | EUR/month | Users | Properties | Housing units | Rooms and common spaces | Document storage |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| Standard | €49 | 3 | 10 | 50 | 200 | 25 GB |
| Extended | €89 | 10 | 50 | 250 | 1000 | 100 GB |

- **Standard** — For a single portfolio that has outgrown the spreadsheet.
- **Extended** — For managers running several buildings and legal entities.

All prices are net and exclude VAT.

> Both plans are billed per month and exclude VAT. Extended is the same software with larger allowances, for owners who hold units across several properties or family companies.

## Modules are switched on independently

Portfolio management is always included in the plan. Many private landlords start with Rentals & Contracts, to get tenancies, prices and deadline reminders in order, then add Utility Billing before the first annual statement they have to prepare inside the system.

- **Rentals & Contracts** (€25/month) — Rental contracts, bailment agreements, tenants and deadline reminders. [What this module does](https://real-estate-management.webservices-engineering.de/solutions/rental-contracts)
- **Utility Billing & Cost Reallocation** (€25/month) — Meters, supplier invoices, allocation keys and rebilling invoices. [What this module does](https://real-estate-management.webservices-engineering.de/solutions/utility-rebilling)
- **Accounting & Invoicing Integration** (€25/month) — Issue documents on your invoicing platform and post them to the ledger. [What this module does](https://real-estate-management.webservices-engineering.de/solutions/finance-and-accounting)
- **Investment & Business Analyses** (€25/month) — Revenue timelines, consumption analysis and investment calculations. [What this module does](https://real-estate-management.webservices-engineering.de/solutions/reporting-and-analytics)
- **Facility Management** (On request) — Technical asset register, asset connections and service partners. [What this module does](https://real-estate-management.webservices-engineering.de/solutions/facility-management)

All prices are net and exclude VAT.

> Each module is charged per month at its published rate, on top of the plan, and can be added when the work requires it rather than at the start.

## Beyond the largest plan

A family portfolio that keeps acquiring is not moved onto a different product. Capacity beyond the Extended allowances is metered by what you actually hold — properties, housing units, rooms and common spaces, and stored documents.

| Allowance | Included in Extended | Each one beyond that |
| --- | --- | --- |
| Properties | 50 | €1.00 per property |
| Housing units | 250 | €0.25 per unit |
| Rooms and common spaces | 1000 | €0.10 per room or space |
| Document storage | 100 GB | €0.10 per GB |

All prices are net and exclude VAT.

> Charged per unit per month beyond the Extended allowances. All prices are net and exclude VAT.

## Onboarding, once

The work of setting up a small portfolio is one careful afternoon of inventory. The onboarding package exists so that afternoon is not spent alone.

- **Onboarding package** (One-off, €400) — Account setup, four hours of on-site staff training, travel, up to five phone consultations and ten email exchanges in the first six weeks.
- **Support, consulting and training** (€75/hour) — Support, consulting and training after onboarding, delivered on a best-effort basis.

All prices are net and exclude VAT.

## When you should not buy this

If you own three flats in one building, all let on standard contracts, all heated individually, with no sub-meters and no cost reallocation, a system is probably not justified. Standard plus one module is a real monthly cost against an administrative burden of a few hours a year. Keep the spreadsheet and set two calendar reminders.

The picture changes when any one of these becomes true: you reallocate a shared cost to more than a handful of occupants; you have sub-meters; you hold units across more than one property or more than one family company; the person who knows how it all works would like to stop being the only one who does; or somebody has already disputed a statement.

It also changes when succession does. A family portfolio that has to be handed to the next generation is a portfolio whose records need to exist outside one person's head. That is a legitimate reason to start earlier than the arithmetic alone suggests.

- [Ask whether it fits your portfolio](https://real-estate-management.webservices-engineering.de/contact)
- [See the other portfolio profiles](https://real-estate-management.webservices-engineering.de/use-cases)

## Find out in one conversation whether it fits

Tell us the number of units, whether you reallocate utilities, and how many people need access. That is enough to say yes, no, or not yet.

- [Ask about your portfolio](https://real-estate-management.webservices-engineering.de/contact)
- [Create a workspace](https://real-estate-management.webservices-engineering.de/signup)

## What private owners ask first

### What is the smallest portfolio that justifies landlord software?

There is no fixed threshold, but the practical trigger is cost reallocation rather than unit count. If you divide a shared heating, water or waste bill among occupants and have to justify each share, a system pays for itself quickly. If every unit is billed directly by its own supplier, a spreadsheet and two calendar reminders may still be the right answer.

### Can I run a family portfolio held by several companies in one account?

Yes. An account can hold multiple legal entities, and each contract is assigned to the entity that signed it. Revenue timelines can be grouped by legal entity, by property group, or by both. This keeps a portfolio split between a private owner and a family company readable without maintaining two separate systems.

### Does it produce an ancillary cost statement I can hand to a tenant?

It produces a per-client rebilling sheet as a branded PDF showing how each figure was derived, from meter readings and supplier invoices through the allocation key to the amount charged. Your logo, colour scheme and font sizes are applied. Whether that document satisfies a specific national statutory format is a question to raise before you buy.

### How do the contract reminders work?

Notification events are issued by background workers ahead of contract end and renewal deadlines and sent by email. An audit trail records what was sent and to whom. Mail can go out through your own SMTP server, so reminders reach tenants from your domain rather than from a platform address.

### Do I need the utility billing module from the start?

No. Portfolio management is always included, and modules are added independently at the published per-module rate. Many private landlords start with rentals and contracts to get tenancies, prices and deadline reminders in order, then add utility billing before the first annual statement they have to prepare inside the system.

- [Read the full FAQ](https://real-estate-management.webservices-engineering.de/faq)
- [Software for property management companies](https://real-estate-management.webservices-engineering.de/use-cases/property-management-companies)

## Put this year's readings somewhere they will still be next year

The work of setting up a small portfolio is one careful afternoon of inventory. Everything after that is entering readings and issuing statements.

> No payment card is collected when you create a workspace.

- [Create a workspace](https://real-estate-management.webservices-engineering.de/signup)
- [Compare Standard and Extended](https://real-estate-management.webservices-engineering.de/pricing)