wherein Liz has far too much work
Nov. 4th, 2020 08:12 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
edenfallingWork stuff:
1. We had two people interested in one specific apartment that is a little awkward to rent because of scheduling quirks. I have only interacted with them via email, but you can tell a fair bit from that and my impression was that Person A is a very solid prospect, while Person B had some moderately sketchy vibes. However, Person B applied first and we'd already gotten through part of their reference check process, so today I emailed them to say, "Hey, are you still interested because we have another person who'd also like to rent Apartment X."
Person B's reply confirmed all the sketchy vibes (...I should clarify that I don't mean sketchy in their personal life, just sketchy as in not a reliable tenant, which are categories that don't always have as much overlap as one might initially think) I'd sensed, but fortunately they also said they were no longer interested. So we are moving ahead with nice, solid Person A and I think we'll get that lease wrapped up by the weekend.
2. I finished making a bunch of colorful flyer ads to post in my office window. I may have to make a few others for different sizes of apartment in the larger buildings, but for now I have one page for each building and that is good enough for me.
3. Mr. Commercial asked me to show him how to get Rent Manager to generate an Excel spreadsheet, which is something I only learned myself about... six weeks ago? Anyway, I tried to explain verbally, but he said he'd never remember and wanted me to write him an email.
Frankly, an email is harder because you don't have the visual aid right in front of you, but whatever. I wrote him a little guide and he can have fun banging his head against Rent Manager's impenetrable data categories on his own time.
For today, though, I made him a quick and dirty two-column Excel spreadsheet of apartment numbers matched to tenant names for our Freeville property, so he can take that to the post office. I figured it was easier to do that than to have other people catch fallout from Mr. Commercial taking forever to wrangle Rent Manager, and I am always in favor of people receiving mail promptly and accurately.
4. Added all spring semester leases to our current availability spreadsheet and rejiggered how some things are arranged. It now goes building->apartment style->apartment number, so first you see Building XXX, then all studios in Building XXX are together, all 2-bedrooms are together, etc., and then within each category they go by apartment number. I think Mr. Geniality had been organizing apartments by building and then by lease start date, but I found that extremely difficult to read. I also added some color-coding, because colors are good visual shorthand! Then I made sure all the formulas were still working correctly after I mucked around with organization and added so many rows. *wry*
5. The other thing I did today (aside from write a lease and show an apartment) is get back to work on my online advertising overhaul project. That is extremely tedious because I have to make sure I have good ad text and then upload, arrange, and sometimes label a whole bunch of photos. I am nowhere near done with that, though at least I have been throwing together a Word document of ad text templates for various buildings and units that I can copypaste and tweak as relevant. (It is SO IMPORTANT to have templates! This both saves time and creates consistency.)
6. I want to list all the other things I need to do at some point but keep running out of time to deal with.
-----A) Ms. Random Numbers gave me a list of some apartments whose electricity bills are still coming directly to the company rather than to tenants. I need to figure out what happened, shake NYSEG until they fix it, and notify the tenants that they need to pay $XXX to us for the electric bills they haven't been receiving.
-----B) Create a key tracking system. The best method would be to enter all downtown tenants into FileMaker so we can attach keys to their accounts, but that's a lot of data entry I don't have time for. I could maybe just make a spreadsheet to tide us over until I have time to do something better, but again, a lot of data entry I don't have time for. Alternately, we do have an online key tracking program that monitors all uses of electronic key fobs to get into various buildings, but the version on my work computer is so many updates behind that it won't communicate with the website anymore, and also that wouldn't do anything for the apartment keys, room keys, or mailbox keys.
-----C) Finish entering market rate data into Rent Manager because that makes certain kinds of historical data tracking easier for Lawyer Man. Mr. Geniality and I don't get any benefit from that data, yet we're the ones who got saddled with the project.
-----D) Learn video editing and put together virtual apartment tour videos! Seriously, WHEN am I supposed to have time for that?!
-----E) Follow-up on that old "we need new W8/W9 forms" project for Ms. Random Numbers, which completely fell by the wayside due to events.
...
So yeah, that was my day.
How was yours?
1. We had two people interested in one specific apartment that is a little awkward to rent because of scheduling quirks. I have only interacted with them via email, but you can tell a fair bit from that and my impression was that Person A is a very solid prospect, while Person B had some moderately sketchy vibes. However, Person B applied first and we'd already gotten through part of their reference check process, so today I emailed them to say, "Hey, are you still interested because we have another person who'd also like to rent Apartment X."
Person B's reply confirmed all the sketchy vibes (...I should clarify that I don't mean sketchy in their personal life, just sketchy as in not a reliable tenant, which are categories that don't always have as much overlap as one might initially think) I'd sensed, but fortunately they also said they were no longer interested. So we are moving ahead with nice, solid Person A and I think we'll get that lease wrapped up by the weekend.
2. I finished making a bunch of colorful flyer ads to post in my office window. I may have to make a few others for different sizes of apartment in the larger buildings, but for now I have one page for each building and that is good enough for me.
3. Mr. Commercial asked me to show him how to get Rent Manager to generate an Excel spreadsheet, which is something I only learned myself about... six weeks ago? Anyway, I tried to explain verbally, but he said he'd never remember and wanted me to write him an email.
Frankly, an email is harder because you don't have the visual aid right in front of you, but whatever. I wrote him a little guide and he can have fun banging his head against Rent Manager's impenetrable data categories on his own time.
For today, though, I made him a quick and dirty two-column Excel spreadsheet of apartment numbers matched to tenant names for our Freeville property, so he can take that to the post office. I figured it was easier to do that than to have other people catch fallout from Mr. Commercial taking forever to wrangle Rent Manager, and I am always in favor of people receiving mail promptly and accurately.
4. Added all spring semester leases to our current availability spreadsheet and rejiggered how some things are arranged. It now goes building->apartment style->apartment number, so first you see Building XXX, then all studios in Building XXX are together, all 2-bedrooms are together, etc., and then within each category they go by apartment number. I think Mr. Geniality had been organizing apartments by building and then by lease start date, but I found that extremely difficult to read. I also added some color-coding, because colors are good visual shorthand! Then I made sure all the formulas were still working correctly after I mucked around with organization and added so many rows. *wry*
5. The other thing I did today (aside from write a lease and show an apartment) is get back to work on my online advertising overhaul project. That is extremely tedious because I have to make sure I have good ad text and then upload, arrange, and sometimes label a whole bunch of photos. I am nowhere near done with that, though at least I have been throwing together a Word document of ad text templates for various buildings and units that I can copypaste and tweak as relevant. (It is SO IMPORTANT to have templates! This both saves time and creates consistency.)
6. I want to list all the other things I need to do at some point but keep running out of time to deal with.
-----A) Ms. Random Numbers gave me a list of some apartments whose electricity bills are still coming directly to the company rather than to tenants. I need to figure out what happened, shake NYSEG until they fix it, and notify the tenants that they need to pay $XXX to us for the electric bills they haven't been receiving.
-----B) Create a key tracking system. The best method would be to enter all downtown tenants into FileMaker so we can attach keys to their accounts, but that's a lot of data entry I don't have time for. I could maybe just make a spreadsheet to tide us over until I have time to do something better, but again, a lot of data entry I don't have time for. Alternately, we do have an online key tracking program that monitors all uses of electronic key fobs to get into various buildings, but the version on my work computer is so many updates behind that it won't communicate with the website anymore, and also that wouldn't do anything for the apartment keys, room keys, or mailbox keys.
-----C) Finish entering market rate data into Rent Manager because that makes certain kinds of historical data tracking easier for Lawyer Man. Mr. Geniality and I don't get any benefit from that data, yet we're the ones who got saddled with the project.
-----D) Learn video editing and put together virtual apartment tour videos! Seriously, WHEN am I supposed to have time for that?!
-----E) Follow-up on that old "we need new W8/W9 forms" project for Ms. Random Numbers, which completely fell by the wayside due to events.
...
So yeah, that was my day.
How was yours?
