One inbox, 300 units: what routing automation actually saves.
worked model
The short answer: routing starts paying at around 200 enquiries a month, and under that we say so
The leak here is volume and triage rather than deal size: 300 units means one inbox in which the urgent drowns in the routine. Our working rule is that inbox automation does not pay for itself below roughly 200 enquiries a month, and it is published because it is the number we use to turn work down. Above it, the saving is the hours spent sorting plus the escalations that arrive late. The bands on this page are yours to change.
Every unit writes. One inbox reads. Tenants ask, owners escalate, and the genuinely urgent mail sits three screens below the routine.
This is an industry analysis, not a client result. Every number below comes from a published study or an open model, and it carries the label next to it.
Three leaks run through a typical 300-unit property management firm. Mail nobody got to, no intake after 17:00, and a bookkeeping handover held together by typing. Here is what each one costs.
The inbox that reads itself, or does not
At 300 units, volume stops being a workload and becomes a sorting problem. The question is no longer who is fast. It is what reaches a person at all.
200+ enquiries a month
Under that threshold, a human inbox is fine and we say so. Over it, heroics stop scaling. Routing beats effort every time.
The machine reads every incoming mail before anyone opens it. Routine questions get answered. Everything else is routed with a summary, so the person who opens it already knows what it is.
Under a care plan the human answer window is a stated number, not a hope.
4 business hours
22:00, water on the floor, voicemail
Emergencies do not observe office hours. The tenant with a burst pipe calls, hears a mailbox, and then calls whoever answers. Usually that is an emergency service at emergency prices, billed to the owner.
Availability is worth money to the people you serve.
72%
That survey is from home services, and it is the closest published read we have. Label it as adjacent evidence, not as property data. The mechanism transfers: the person with the problem wants it resolved tonight, not logged tomorrow.
The machine answers at 22:00 and asks the five questions you would ask. Which unit, what is happening, is anyone at risk, is the water off, best number. Urgent cases go to a human immediately. The rest becomes a structured ticket waiting at 08:00.
The handover the bookkeeper dreads
Every unit generates paper, and the paper meets a keyboard. Utility statements, tradesperson invoices, service contracts, all of it typed by someone who was hired to manage property.
≈ 15 hours a month
Document flow rides the same inbox the tenant mail rides. That is why it is the cheapest machine to add once the routing is in place.
~90%
Count the documents your portfolio throws off in a month.
What does writing invoices by hand cost you?
≈ €1,050 a month walks away.
30 hours a month of typing.
Estimate. Model: 150 invoices at 6 minutes is ~15 hours a month of typing. The machine reads them instead. Your real numbers replace it on the call.