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Block management software development

For directors and senior property managers at managing agents, residents' management companies and portfolio landlords who need the block register, service charges, repairs, contractors and certificate dates to live in one system shaped around how their blocks are actually run.

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The problem

What goes wrong today

Where it usually starts

A managing agent looks after dozens of blocks, each with its own lease, its own apportionment schedule and its own set of leaseholders who want to know where their money went.

  • The register is a spreadsheet per block, the service-charge budget is another spreadsheet, and the demands are produced by mail-merging the two and hoping the percentages still add up to a hundred after a flat was split.
  • A leaseholder queries a demand and the property manager spends an afternoon reconstructing which budget line and which apportionment produced the figure.

Where it gets harder

Repairs arrive by phone, email and through the concierge, are written on a pad and then into an email to a contractor, with no record of which unit, which communal area or when the contractor said they would attend.

  • Compliance certificates for lifts, fire alarms, emergency lighting, water systems and electrical installations sit as PDFs in a shared drive named by whoever uploaded them, so a lapsed certificate is discovered when the insurer asks.
  • Contractor insurance expires silently.
  • Directors of the residents' management company ask for the accounts, the minutes and the insurance schedule and are sent them as attachments three times a year.
  • Arrears are chased from a list produced at quarter end, by which time the debt is two quarters old, and the agent cannot say across the portfolio which blocks are over budget, which have open repairs older than a month or which certificates lapse in the next ninety days.

Scope of the service

What the build covers

A custom block management build normally covers:

  • A block and unit register with leaseholders Resident tenants and their contact preferences
  • Lease data per unit including apportionment percentages For one or several schedules
  • Service-charge budgets per block and schedule With demands generated from the budget and apportionments and a clear line-by-line explanation on each demand
  • Payment recording and arrears tracking With reminder letters and an escalation history
  • Maintenance and repair requests from leaseholders Residents and staff, assigned to contractors with attendance, completion and cost recorded against the block and budget line
  • A planned maintenance schedule and a compliance register of certificates With expiry dates and renewal reminders
  • A contractor register With insurance and accreditation documents and their expiry
  • A document library per block for insurance Minutes, accounts and notices
  • A directors' portal For residents' management companies with the documents, budgets and open items they are entitled to see

How discovery works

Discovery walks through a block year with you: how budgets are set and approved, how many apportionment schedules a block carries and how reserve funds are shown, when demands go out and in what form, how repairs are triaged and which need director approval, which certificates each block must hold and who renews them, how contractors are vetted, and what directors and leaseholders may see. Each becomes a named stage in the scope document: budget, demand, collect, request, assign, complete, renew.

Deliberately out of scope

  • The client money accounting ledger and bank reconciliation, which remain in your accounting system with the demands and receipts exported to it
  • Legal recovery beyond the recorded escalation steps
  • Building safety case management for higher-risk buildings, which is a separate scope if needed. The compliance register tracks certificates and dates
  • It does not claim that a block is compliant

When the scope grows

Scoping scenario

An agent managing sixty blocks and two thousand units, with several blocks carrying three apportionment schedules, forty regular contractors, directors' portals wanted on twenty residents' management companies and demands exported to an existing accounting system, is a different build from a self-managing residents' company with one block of twelve flats, and the scope document will say so.

Deliverables

What you receive

  • Discovery notes from a walk-through of a block year, including a sample of leases, apportionment schedules and the current certificate folder
  • A written scope document naming each stage from budget to certificate renewal, the accounting export and what is excluded
  • Design of the block register, the demand run, the repair request and the compliance register on phone and desktop
  • The build, deployed to your hosting or ours
  • Migration of blocks, units, leaseholders, apportionments, open repairs and current certificates from your spreadsheets or system, where relevant
  • Demand templates and the accounting export set up and reconciled against a sample quarter
  • Training for property managers, the accounts team and directors who will use the portal, with a short written guide
  • Handover material and full ownership of the source code and your data

Process

How a project runs

Each stage maps onto the project view in your client panel. Durations are set in your proposal, never on this page.

  1. Onboarding

    Access to the block spreadsheets, sample leases and demands, the certificate folder and the contractor list; contacts named for management and accounts.

    Project stage: Onboarding

  2. Planning

    Discovery with a director, a senior property manager and the accounts lead; apportionment handling, the demand cycle and the scope document are agreed with milestones.

    Project stage: Planning

  3. Design

    Clickable designs of the block register, the budget and demand run, the repair request on a phone and the compliance register with its expiry view.

    Project stage: Design

  4. Development

    Built in stages: register, leases and apportionments first, then budgets, demands and arrears, then repairs, contractors, compliance and the directors' portal.

    Project stage: Development

  5. Client review

    Your team runs a shadow demand cycle on real blocks, reconciles it against the last real run and logs a month of repairs, telling us where the rules differ from practice.

    Project stage: Client review

  6. Revisions

    Apportionment edge cases, demand wording, escalation steps and certificate categories are adjusted from the review and re-checked against the scope document.

    Project stage: Revisions

  7. Ready for launch

    Blocks, units and certificates migrated, the accounting export verified against a sample, reminder emails tested on addresses you control, checklist signed off.

    Project stage: Ready for launch

  8. Delivered

    The portfolio runs on the new system from the next demand cycle; optional maintenance and hosting continue under their own agreement.

    Project stage: Delivered

Integrations

Commonly integrated

Systems this kind of business usually asks us to connect. Each integration is confirmed during discovery; none is assumed.

  • Accounting and client money systems receiving demands, receipts and contractor invoices
  • Payment providers and bank payment references for service-charge collection
  • Email, SMS and postal mailing services for demands, notices and reminders
  • Document storage for leases, certificates, minutes and insurance schedules
  • Contractor job-management apps that return attendance and completion data
  • Electronic signature services for contractor agreements and directors' approvals
  • Building sensor and alarm monitoring platforms where a block already has them
  • Companies House filing reminders for residents' management companies, recorded as dates rather than filed from the system

How we would approach it

Worked example

Concept demo

A sixty-block agent with multi-schedule apportionments

The situation

A managing agent with sixty blocks produced demands from per-block spreadsheets, several of which carried three apportionment schedules that no longer summed correctly after flats had been combined, and tracked certificates in a shared drive.

Why it is a custom build

The reason this needs a custom build is the apportionment and export logic: the agent's accounting system is the ledger of record, so demands must be generated here and land there in a form the accounts team can reconcile without re-keying.

The scope we would propose

  • A register where each unit holds its percentage per schedule and the system refuses a demand run whose schedule does not total a hundred
  • Budgets per block and schedule with reserve fund lines shown separately
  • A demand run that produces a line-by-line explanation for every leaseholder
  • A compliance register with certificate categories per block, expiry dates and a ninety-day view across the portfolio
  • A contractor register with insurance expiry blocking new assignments
  • A directors' portal for the twenty residents' management companies that wanted one

Concept demo: a scoping scenario written to show how we would approach the work. It is not a delivered client project.

Pricing

What affects the price

Every proposal is priced on scope. These are the factors that move it most for this kind of build.

  • Number of blocks and units, and how many apportionment schedules the leases carry
  • Whether demands are issued from the system and exported to an accounting system, and which one
  • Arrears escalation steps and letter templates
  • Certificate categories tracked and whether contractors update them directly
  • Repairs volume, contractor count and whether contractors have their own login
  • Directors' and leaseholder portals and what each may see
  • Volume and quality of register and document data to migrate
  • Hosting choice: your own hosting or ours

Start from a package

Block management package

Block and unit register, service-charge budgets and demands with apportionment, arrears, repairs with contractors, certificate expiry and portals for directors and leaseholders.

Custom build
View the package

FAQ

Frequently asked questions

How do you decide between a custom build and the package?

Discovery compares your block year with what the block management package does through configuration. A portfolio with standard single or dual schedules, demands exported in a common format and conventional repairs usually fits the package. Several schedules per block, bespoke accounting exports or director approval rules that vary per company point to custom work, and we say which before anything is quoted.

Does the system hold the client money accounts?

No. The accounting system you already use remains the ledger of record for client money. The block system generates the demands, records payments against them for arrears tracking and exports demands and receipts to the accounting system in a form the accounts team can reconcile.

Does the compliance register make our blocks compliant?

No system can claim that. The register records which certificates each block holds, their dates and the contractor who issued them, and warns you ahead of expiry. Which certificates a block needs and whether the work behind them is adequate is for you, your contractors and your advisers to decide.

Can leaseholders and directors see their documents?

Yes, within what you allow. Directors of a residents' management company see the budgets, accounts, minutes, insurance and open repairs for their block. Leaseholders see their own demands, payments and the block documents you publish, never another leaseholder's account.

Who owns the system afterwards?

You do. Source code and data are handed over at delivery, including every document in the library. Hosting and maintenance are optional and separately agreed, and the system can move to another provider.

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