How HOA Amenity Software Improves Neighborhood Satisfaction
As a homeowners association administrator, you’re responsible for all the amenities that help make your community a wonderful place to live. But unless you have the right HOA amenity software to help you track reservations, approve usage, and schedule availability periods, you’re in pen-and-paper, e-mail and signup sheet mode—and that’s so much less convenient than a modern, online system.
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Tennis and racquetball courts. Swimming pools and workout facilities. Horse barns and boat slips. Whether your community is a multi-story urban jewel, an immaculate suburban development, or a rustic ranch or camp transformed into a vacation paradise, you want your residents to take full advantage of all the special features of your homeowners association.
That doesn’t mean you want the amenity-reservation process to become a time-consuming hassle.
Sure, even a system that relies on e-mail and culminates in pieces of paper is better than a photocopied signup sheet on the clubhouse bulletin board. Not much better, but moving in the right direction. But if your homeowners association software hasn’t kept up with the times, you may be stuck in the early days of HOA management packages.
Back then, simply processing a request for two hours on a tennis court or an afternoon in the clubhouse great room for a child’s birthday party required days of arrangements, phone calls, and in-person meet-ups to sign waivers and hand over a check or money order. If that sounds familiar—and not in an “aren’t we glad those days are gone” way—then you’re not only ready for modern amenity reservation software: You’re wasting time without it. And time is a commodity that volunteer HOA administrators hate to waste.
Block me out
You want an up-to-date HOA website software product for more than easy online reservation processing. You also want to be able to block off time periods and even exclude recurring days that should be off limits to residents. For example, you don’t want anyone booking the clubhouse while the housekeeping staff cleans it, or signing up for tennis court time in the middle of the winter. You also want to eliminate any chance of double bookings.
So it’s just as important for your amenity reservation system to keep track of when people can’t sign up—and mark off periods that someone’s already reserved—as it is for it to enable them to make their reservations in the first place.
Take care of the i dots and t crosses
Some amenities aren’t suitable for children. Others require a capacity limit to comply with fire laws. You may have waivers, instructions, and other documents that residents must read before they can make a reservation. Your HOA amenities reservation software should take care of all these contingencies for you.
The right amenity package enables you to set a minimum age for use of specific features, cap attendance, and present digital versions of required paperwork before a resident can sign up to use a community feature. You can tailor each amenity to what’s appropriate for it—and if you need to change your requirements, you simply modify an easy-to-use online form.
Additionally, you want some amenity reservations to go through with automatic approval and others to require case-by-case scrutiny. With the right amenity software, you can set up these criteria with a single click.
Want to send your residents a friendly reminder before the times of their amenity reservations? That’s another convenience that the right HOA amenity software offers you, with your choice of reminder intervals from hours to days in advance.
Charge me
Many communities include amenities that residents can book at no charge, but some features involve a fee for extended use or to cover the cost of post-reservation cleanup. If your HOA amenity reservation software doesn’t enable you to set a price for a specific type of reservations, you’re left with manual offline arrangements and the potential for awkward situations (“But I didn’t know we had to pay to use that!”). And if you’re forced to collect these fees manually, well, now you’re back in the old days of checks and bank deposits.
Ideally, your amenity reservation system hooks directly in to the built-in payment processing capabilities of your overall homeowners association package. But if your HOA website platform doesn’t include secure online payments…now you’re back in the old days again.
Looking for HOA amenity software that can make your administrative life easier? Sign up with HOA Start for all these and even more features. Schedule a demo today and see what the best HOA management software offers you.
