ApnaComplex was at the recent NASSCOM Product Conclave. We were one of the ten product start ups that were selected from around 50 nominations to be presented to media in an exclusive event of NASSCOM Product Launchpad on 9th November 2010.
ApnaComplex at NASSCOM Product Conclave 2010
ApnaComplex in News
We really had good time presenting and interacting with all learned people post the session and learned quite a bit. We were covered by few news papers post this event (see right side for a snippet from Deccan Chronicle dated 10th November 2010).
Below are links to few more blogs/papers that we got a mention. We thank every one who covered us. These definitely help us to put our best foot forward.
We thank NASSCOM for providing this platform for us. We also thank all the jury members for having selected us to be in top ten from a list of 50 products.
Team at ApnaComplex welcomes Diwali with a new vibrant look for the website. While the earlier design was functional and did its job – we were finding it inadequate accommodate all the new stuff we keep doing and hence the need for a new design.
Farewell to the Old Design
And what a better time than Diwali to launch the new look.
Welcome to the New Design
Along with the new design and new graphics, we spent time in thinking and re-writing most of content of our static pages. We attempted to elaborate the ever-increasing feature set of the product to give more information to our web site visitors.
We hope you like the new design as much as we do. Check it out.
ApnaComplex offers comprehensive accounting features that helps residential apartment and commercial complexes manage their financial matters Easily, Efficiently, and Effectively.
Behind the deceptively simple user interface of ApnaComplex, a full-fledged double-entry accounting system is present, hiding all the jargon and complexities involved in maintaining accounts for residential apartment and commercial complexes.
This article provides a very high level overview of the accounting modules offered by ApnaComplex. We intend to expand on each module in greater depth in future posts.
The accounting features of ApnaComplex can broadly be classified into following five modules.
Member Income: Administrators / Association Treasurers can generate invoices for each flat/unit for charges such as maintenance dues, late payment penalties, club house usage, corpus fund etc. Members can record their payments against the invoices. Administrators can approve / reject the payments and issue instant receipts for approved payments. Administrators / Treasurers can even club multiple charges to generate single invoice. Email/SMS notifications sent to relevant members when a new invoice is raised or payment is made.
Non-Member Income: Administrators / Association Treasurers can record additional income that a complex receives – such as rentals for stalls/cell towers/hoardings/banners, bank interest charges etc.
Expense Tracker: Administrators / Association Treasurers can record all expenses that are made by the association/complex owners under different heads such as maintenance expenses, legal, taxes, admin etc. Capture details such as expense date, how the expense was paid, to whom was the payment made, if invoice/receipt was available for the payment etc along with the expense amount. Administrators can generate expense statements for various heads and analyze the trends, publish the statement to noticeboard.
Cash & Bank Accounts: This is a module that administrators / treasurers will love. Administrators / Association Treasurers can set up Petty Cash and Bank Accounts in ApnaComplex. Once set up, all member income, non-member income, expenses that are recorded in other modules mentioned above are automatically integrated with the cash & bank accounts. This helps administrators see the cash and bank balances up-to date in real time. The financial status is literally at your finger tips. Administrators can reconcile the bank account statements in ApnaComplex with their real world bank account and easily identify transactions that are out of sync.
Financial Reports: This module provides several financial reports such as “My Statement” for members (apartment owners / tenants) to see a consolidated financial statement for all the flats/units they own, defaulters reports, list of charges, payments, income/expense report, petty cash & bank account statements. You can do slicing and dicing of data to get more inference. All statements can be downloaded into excel at anytime by the administrator for offline storage or analysis or to send to your auditor.
With all these features, we sure guess that the accounting and auditing requirements of any apartment or commerical complex are met to the tune of 90-95% .
Now, the icing on the cake of such rich feature set – you need NOT pay a premium to use accounting capabilities of ApnaComplex. Contact us for pricing with your complex details and we will get back to you with a quotation at the earliest. Meanwhile, go ahead and register your complex and enjoy a no-obligation 30-day free trial.
Do you know how many pumps are there in your complex and when was each of them last serviced? Are you really sure? How about number of fire extinguishers? We know how difficult it is keep track of such assets. ApnaComplex launches Asset Register and Tracker – where facility managers can maintain list of all assets under various asset groups. What’s more – you can maintain service history of every asset and get a email reminder on next service due date – saves tremendous amount of time for committee members and facility managers. We were really pleased when one of our customers started using this register the moment this was released and even before we sent out the notification of release. Truly made our day!
Improve security of your complex
Having challenges to keep track of vehicles in your complex? You can now maintain vehicle details associated with your flats online along with a parking lot number. Just log on and update your vehicle details. Give access only to the Vehicle directory to security officers at entrance/exit points to ensure movement only of authorized vehicles.
Enhanced Facility Booking
The recently launched Facility Booking has been enhanced based on your feedback. Facility Booking now supports recurring bookings up to one year in advance. Now, you can book that Tennis Court every Monday and Wednesday till you become as good as Federer. As a bonus – administrators have a separate view for approving all the bookings waiting to be approved.
Message Center Upgraded
Message Center can now display history of the messages that have been sent by you based on feedback from our customers. In addition, there are UI enhancements to make your experience better. Log on to Message Center now to see the changes.
Capture more data for all Vendors
Vendor Management module now allows to capture more data related to a vendor. You can now have a contact person’s details of a vendor and multiple phone numbers.
Personalization
We took tiny steps towards providing a personalized experience to you when you are on our site. You can now update your profile to set the number of records you want to see by default in listings like member directory, complaints etc. We will be adding more such options in coming releases.
Enhanced Navigation
We constantly listen to your feedback! Based on the feedback received, we now have more choices at the bottom of pages to easily go back to the main pages. Log on to experience the changes.
Phew! Thats a long list for lean startup. We do hope all these features and enhancements make the management of your complex lot easier, efficient and effective.
Starting today, ApnaComplex supports control access mechanism for the documents stored in the document repository.
When a Repository Admin or Community Admin uploads a document into the repository, the admins have an option to set the access level such that the document is available only for Administrators and not to the entire community. This can help in storing documents relevant to the committee members only – like vendor contracts, association letter heads, work-in-progress presentations.
In addition, the document repository supports categorization of documents with powerful searching and sorting – no need to remember which sub folder is a document present in. Just type few letters of one or more details related to the document – such as document name, category, description, date of upload or name of member who uploaded the document – you shall get the document instantly. Makes it very simple and easy with out clutter of sub-folders.
Stay tuned to our blog to know about more exciting features that we would be releasing shortly.
Starting today, we release a new feature of Facility Booking to all ApnaComplex customers.
One aspect of a residential complex living is to share the “common facilities” with all residents of the complex and there starts a trouble as most residents never get a chance to use the facility at a time of their choice. This is where facility management feature comes in handy.
The facility booking module helps residents know the list of people who intend to use a facility on a given day. Residents can book facilities like Club House for personal events like Birthday parties or regulate their gym schedules so that there will not be timing clashes with fellow residents.
Directory of Facilities - Sample Screen shot
With this addition, a new role “Facility Booking Administrator” is also introduced who can be given total charge of facility reservation. To start using this feature, the administrators need to first set up the facilities available in the complex. Once the facilities is set up, other members can see the same and start booking the facilities to suit their needs. It is as simple as that.
Sample Screenshot containing list of bookings of a facility on a given day
As with most operations in ApnaComplex, Administrators have the authority to cancel any member’s booking if required. This, of course is in addition to the user having the ability to cancel his/her reservation at any time.
Stay tuned to our blog to know about more exciting features that we would be releasing shortly.
At ApnaComplex, today we have released a simple but very useful new feature to help secretaries of Apartment Associations in form of “Action Item Tracker”.
In short, “Action Item Tracker” just does what it means – track action items. With this feature, ApnaComplex enables managing committees of apartment associations to formally track and monitor progress on various activities that are happening in the complex.
One of the core issues that a resident welfare association faces is that things take forever to complete and the remedy is very simple – institutionalize a formal action item tracking mechanism. This makes the progress and bottlenecks to implement visible to every one and also makes all managing committee members more accountable. This exactly is what “Action Item Tracker” is expected to provide.
The tracker is available to all Managing Committee Members. Action items can be created, updated, reassigned by any of the managing committee members and by the community administrator. Also, more often than not, all managing committee members will not be present for all the meetings. The tracker shall prove to be excellent way for committee members to keep every one else informed about the progress on an action item irrespective of they attending a meeting or not.
Committee Member View of the Action Item Tracker
Also, since the action items can be re-assigned to other members if needed – the new assignee can get all updates on a given action item will be at one place – instead of being present in multiple emails – making it seamless to move forward. Secretaries can now start every committee meeting by going through the list of “Open” or “In progress” action items making the meetings very focused and effective.
Most importantly, it makes sharing information on Managing Committee achievements a breeze. All it requries is to filter all closed action items and send a report to entire community.
Happy action item tracking and we sure hope to have made life little better for you!
Reference to the article posted on Citizen Matters – Can Apartment Owners’ Associations be run professionally? , the author lists various hurdles in running Apartment Associations professionally and offers some suggestions that can help associations.
True, there are many hurdles to run association in a professional way. But leveraging technology would surely be a way to overcome some of the hurdles, if not all. This is exactly where ApnaComplex comes in. ApnaComplex neatly fits into the apartment management eco-system and provides tool set that just perfect for Apartment Owners Associations to manage their complex in efficient, effective and transparent manner.
Back to Citizen Matters article – we will touch upon three key points metioned in the article and how some of the features of ApnaComplex can help.
“Communication” is the number one problem that most associations have
We could not agree more. That’s the prime reason why ApnaComplex was created. ApnaComplex solves this fundamental issue of communication by providing a platform that brings all owners/residents/managing committee together. Everyone sees and shares all information about the complex at one place. Any member can know the details of entire managing committee at one shot and reach out to them. The member directory provides information about all members in the complex at a central place, Managing Committee can reach out to any member any time. Broadcast Notifications through email can be sent to all members or subset of members (like only residents, only tenants etc.) at click of button – making it easier for managing committees to constantly communicate. In addition, there are SMS notifications too that can help MC send urgent messages.
Use formal action item register
Bang on! ApnaComplex provides Complaint Box which enables members to record all action items/issues/suggestions/complaints in a central place, assign them to owners and all relevant people including the managing committee can visibly see the progress of action items or complaints. This not only increases transparency but also the turn-around time to resolve complaints. ApnaComplex even allows residents to provide feedback on how effectively an issue is resolved and also on the vendors used in the complex there by establishing two way communication between residents and MCs.
Use a “Balanced Score Card” approach to show Managing Committee results
Another great suggestion. ApnaComplex offers reports that can sliced and diced in many ways . Reports of complaints resolved in each category, expenses of a given month, number of defaulters etc are available at the click of a button which enables MC to shwocase thier work and also provides visibility to rest of the association members on MC’s work.
While the above offer direct benefits for associations using ApnaComplex, the indirect benefits include reduced work load on the managing committee there by giving them more time to implement newer initiatives for betterment of the complex and even make more owners join the managing committee 🙂
Bottom line, YES! Apartment Owner’s Associations using ApnaComplex can be run professionally.
We have released an upgraded version of the “Complaint Box” module of ApnaComplex along with host of other enhancements.
Starting today our customers can experience the benfit of the new features. The key features of of this upgraded Complaint box are:
Category-wise Administration:
1. Administrators can now configure “complaint box administrators” for each category type of complaints. This will make it easier to assign owners for different aspects of managing the complex.
Screenshot of Category Admins for various categories - ApnaComplex
2. The “category owners” shall only see complaints related to the categories they own – the electrical guy no more need to even see the issues related to swimming pool. Of course, community adminsitrators can see all the complaints.
3. The category owners shall have the ability to reassign the complaint to a different category and/or to a different owner.
Complaint Re-opening and Rating
1. Closed complaints can now be re-opened by the originator or the administrator till specifed period of days after the complaint is closed. This has been the most requested feature till date and we are happy to satisfy the need now.
2. Residents can now provide feedback on the quality of the service provided on all closed complaints. Similar to the ratings of vendors in ApnaComplex’s Vendor Management module – the ratings will be on a scale of 1 (worst) to 7 (Best). Makes it very easy for managing committees to judge the real quaility of work. The ratings can be updated/changed till specified period of days after the complaint is closed.
Complaint Details View
3. The number of days a complaint can be re-opened or rated after its closure is configurable by the communtiy administrator.
Notification Enhancements:
1. Administrators can now configure if mails related to community complaints shall be sent to entire community or only to the administrators. This is again based on the need for some of our customers.
2. Formatting changes to bring in more readability to all the automated mails that get sent as a part of complaint tracking.
Searching & Sorting Enhancements:
A complaint box has never been so easy (and actually fun) to search and sort. Users and Administrators can practically search on every possible data element and sort on every element to easily find and manage the complaints and it is blazing fast.
Administrator's View of Complaint Box in ApnaComplex
Now that you have a fully loaded complaint box, is your facilities manager geared up to close all the complaints?
We released new feature of “Document Repository” in ApnaComplex today.
Starting today, Administrators and members of a complex can upload documents of relevance in ApnaComplex secure repository. This shall enable the community members to easily locate association documents – such as bye laws, meeting minutes, welcome kits, photos, vendor quotations, contract copies, building plans, regulatory certificates and just about anything relevant.
We believe that this shall help both the members and the managing committees as this greatly improves accessibility of data to everyone at any time.
Efficient way of managing documents by an owners association
Any member can upload a document (up to 2 MB in size) along with a short description and select a relevant category. Members can search and sort for the documents based on the name, description, size or category making it easier to locate. No more issues of digging through emails or your personal desktops to find a particular document.
Any member can view or download a document and Administrators will have the ability to delete documents to ensure a clean repository.
With this feature, we sure hope to have made life little better for you!
