Toolbox: STRATA Master

Product: STRATA Master
Price: From $AU450 per month for a single user
Overall rating: 4 out of 5*
Website: www.rockend.com.au

STRATA Master is software designed to streamline the accounting and management of body corporates.

This one piece of relatively easy-to-use, Windows-based software allows you to run one building or numerous buildings. It can record details of the properties (assets), owners and financial details relating to income and expenditure. Monthly bank statements can be automatically imported and a diary system ensures jobs for each building are flagged.

As well as crunching the numbers the software is a repository for information. For example, STRATA Master has a built-in document management system so users who have sent emails or posted Word documents relating to a particular building can track those documents.

It’s designed for use by several people within the same property management office, allowing for the supply of data from multiple sources such as the accountant, strata manager, office administration person and so on.

Like most property management software, STRATA Master has a wide variety of built-in reports: general ledger, annual general meeting, clients and debt recovery, which can be exported in Word, Excel, or PDF format. These reports can then be emailed to body corporate committees, individual owners or lawyers and accountants.

Integration with Microsoft Word, Excel and Adobe PDF documents allows data from the product to be mail-merged for sending to interested parties.

STRATA Master has a system of work orders so any user can follow the progress of work and flag problems, for example, if the cost of a job exceeds the quote.

It has built-in contact management information and another useful feature is that contracted, preferred or even excluded tradespeople can be set up for individual buildings or globally, so in an emergency anyone in the office can identify immediately who to contact.

I have to say that the menu system and the shortcut icons for items such as receipts, invoices, cheques, reports, diaries, levies and insurance claims are some of the most straightforward in any property management or accounting software package I’ve reviewed.

Having said that, this is not a shallow or basic package. There is plenty of depth to this software and it has some powerful features. For example, in the Lot Owner section, there are six sub-tabs covering general, agent/tenant/lease, levies, notices, mortgages and debt recovery.

STRATA Master has plenty of built-in flexibility. For example, the software can handle a single general trust account simultaneously with individual bank accounts and it can handle differential levies for mixed-use developments.

Other nice features include a search facility that allows the user to track down data stored in another location. For example, a ‘building number’ can be searched for using the town, postcode, street, street number and so on.

Without a doubt, this software will simplify the administration of body corporates.

The downside is the price. STRATA Master users rent the software paying a monthly fee ranging from $AU450 for a single user with either up to 400 buildings or 2000 units, to $AU615 for up to 2000 buildings or 10,000 units. Those who want to run it on more than one computer will need to pay an additional $AU45 per user each month.

If you’re running a single small building or a sausage block of three or four brick and tile units, this product won’t suit. Not because it won’t do the job, but because of the cost. It may suit a large property management-type firm, but not a small operator.

In all fairness Rockend, the company behind STRATA Master, says this itself, recommending the product for sites with more than 50 units.

Installation of the software is free as is one day’s training. Courses for staff over and above that cost $AU330 per day. Rockend charges $AU121 an hour for importing data files into STRATA Master. While the product might be expensive, support is included in the monthly cost.

The software’s integration with Microsoft products such as Outlook and Word could be improved to avoid the need for the person operating the system to enter the same data twice.

The document management system doesn’t automatically save emails and documents into the register and the user has to remember to do this if they’ll be needed later. Nor does it have legal and accounting pre-worded templates in the system. Users need to generate their own.

*Note that this product was demonstrated to NZ Property Magazine and not ‘reviewed’ in the ordinary sense where I would load it on to a computer, identify any glitches or difficulties encountered (and there are usually plenty) and then test it extensively.

The demonstration involves the software publisher showing off the product’s best features, but doesn’t necessarily give the reviewer the opportunity to search for features that are less well developed.

Likewise, we couldn’t test the response of the help team to an enquiry. Sometimes help departments simply don’t reply. Others are quite rapid, but we couldn’t check this.

Rockend also produces property management software aimed at professional managers called REST Professional.

STRATA’s main competitor is Vision Body Corporate Manager: www.visionsoftware.com

Contact: www.rockend.com.au or telephone: +61 2 9966 0900.
System requirements: Windows 95, 98, XP and soon Windows Vista.
Verdict: The product appears useful, but we recommend users try before they buy.
Pros: Streamlining of body corporate management.
Cons: Expensive for single building managers.