Time-based billback in property management is painful. We're fixing it.
The Problem
Employing a billback model involves tracking employee time, mileage, and other overhead costs, and then figuring out which properties to charge and at what rate. It is a massive headache. Most property managers deal with:
- Scrambling at the end of the month, trying to piece together employee time, mileage, fees, and other overhead expesnes
- Dumping everything into Excel and manually tweaking numbers and running complex formulas
- Guesswork as to what makes sense to actually charge your clients when your system is failing
Because it's such a pain, a lot of companies just don't do time-based billback at all. Instead, they will opt for a flat-rate or a cost plus model, which is easier if you don't have the right tools for a proper billback process. But it will lead to problems in your business.
Why Flat-Rate or Cost-Plus Pricing is a Problem
These billing models involve forecasting what a new client is going to cost you to take on, and then trying to account for a certain margin on top of that. Essentially, you are guessing and hoping you're right. This will inevitably lead to:
- Undercharging, which means you are actually losing money through retaining these customers
- Overcharging, which means your more profitable and favorable clients will eventually go somewhere that figured out how to accurately bill them.
Margins in property management aren't huge to begin with. You can't afford to be sloppy with how you bill. You need precision down to the hour.
How Swordfish Fixes This
Swordfish makes time-based billback easy. We automate all the annoying stuff and give you real numbers so you can actually charge what you should be charging. Here's what you get:
✅ No More Guesswork
- Track employee time effortlessly
- Assign billable hours to properties without spreadsheets
- Automatically calculate billing items based on your custom billing structure and billable hours
📊 See Where Your Time (and Money) Goes
- Get a clear breakdown of where your overhead is going
- Spot inefficiencies so you're not leaving money on the table
- Identify problematic clients and unprofitable time-sucks from your un-billable employee job functions
âš¡ Adjust and Optimize With a Click
- Need to tweak your billing structure? Easy.
- See how changes impact revenue before the next cycle
Stop Leaving Money on the Table
We built Swordfish so property management companies can stop playing the guessing game and start making their billback process work for them.
Book a demo and see for yourself: Schedule a Call