CAM stands for  (Common Area Maintenance) , and they are charges which you post to a group of Tenants. Most commonly, CAM charges are for expenses such as building maintenance, taxes, or insurance. So the most common use is for commercial property, however, any Tenant File user can take advantage of its CAM posting ability for other types of charges.

Now, these charges are only to the ‘tenant’, so you can only select accounts that are specifically created to post only to the Tenant’s Ledger in the program. You could set up a single expense account called ‘CAM Charge’, or you could create several different more specific charges, such as one for ‘Utilities’, another for ‘Grounds Maintenance’, and another for ‘Insurance Costs’. These expenses are typically paid by the owner (or manager) and then ‘passed through’ to the tenant, so they are also referred to as ‘pass through’ charges.

Here’s an example on how to post something. Let’s say you have a bill for ‘Grounds Maintenance’, and you want to pass the expense to your tenants.

• Do you want to divide it equally among all tenants?
• Do you want to divide it according to their rental space size (square footage)?
• Do you want to divide it according to ‘leased’ space, ignoring vacant rentals?

These type of questions will determine how much is charged to each tenant. You can even use the amount (or percentage of rent) that is entered in one of the three ‘recurring fields’, found in the information for every rental unit.

Furthermore, you don’t have to charge this to every tenant. You can just select a specific owner and charge only to that Owner’s tenants. You can even choose a specific property or building for the charge, or even just one tenant.

Another example: You charge a specific Owner‟s Tenants for Maintenance, Taxes, and Insurance once a month. The yearly charge of all 3 combined is $12,000, and you have 6 Tenants for this Owner. That means each month, a $1,000 (12k / 12 months) charge would need to be divided amount that Owner‟s Tenants.

1. Under ‟select how to allocate’, you would choose if you want the charge divided evenly among the 6 Tenants, base it on each Tenant‟s total of the total square footage, include only leased units, etc.

2. Under ‘Charge to’ you would choose ‘All Tenants of one or more Owners, and choose the Owner‟s name from the list.

3. Lastly you would select the account. You have 2 choices:
#1. If you want one transaction to appear in the ledger for each Tenant, you would set up one account for all 3 charges (Maintenance, Taxes, and Insurance) and call it something like ‘Monthly CAM Charges’. Then click the ‘Choose Accounts’ button and set up this charge, using the amount $1,000.
#2. If you want detail of the transactions for more detailed reporting, you would set up 3 accounts, one for ‘Maintenance Fees’, another for ‘Monthly Taxes’, and another for ‘Insurance Fees’. Then click the ‘Choose Accounts’ button and set each of these up. The ‘total’ for all 3 would add up to $1,000. You will see that total next to the ‘TOTAL amount to be allocated’ field.

Your settings are saved, so you only have to set this up once. Each month, you would need to enter this screen and click the ‘Post CAM Charges NOW’ button. Of course, if you only charge CAM charges once a quarter or once a year, you would divide the total $12,000.00 charge differently.

So, while CAM charge posting is normally used for commercial property, you can probably see other uses for residential property. For example, if you manage a mobile home park, you might want to allocate an electric bill to all tenants in the park. Or, if you manage a fourplex, there might be charges that you want to allocate to your tenants on a regular basis. If you manage a gated community, you might want to allocate a security fee or a HOA fee. As long as you are posting to a tenant ledger, there is no limit to your options.

The Feature Search Screen

When you have entered your information under the ‘Features’ section in the Tenant File (go to any Unit and click ‘Features’) it is time to put it to use. One way is the RentalWIZ service to upload your vacancies to the Internet. However, this article will focus on searching for specific items from within the program.  To do this, you use the ‘Feature Search’ section, found under ‘Miscellaneous > Feature Search‘.

Let’s say you have a prospective client that is looking for a 3 bedroom house, with 3 baths, and a back yard with a deck. That is where the Feature Search comes in.  In fact you can have not just three items, but up to five! So, you could search for the following:

• A two bedroom house
• With a built-in dishwasher
• With a privacy fence
• Near a certain area of town
• With a lease to purchase option

Starting with the first ‘Pick a Search Choice’ option at the top, you would first select a MAJOR category, such as ‘Interior’ . Then, you would enter a SUBCATEGORY, such as ‘Bedrooms’. Then you would enter your KEYWORD, such as ‘Two’.  That’s all. Next you would move back up to the top and choose your second MAJOR category, such as ‘Appliances’, then the SUBCATEGORY, like ‘Dishwasher’, then the keyword, like ‘Built-in’. You get the idea.

Once you are finished with the criteria you want, just click the ‘Show Results’ button to see what available rentals in your inventory match your choices. Of course you can choose to browse ‘All Units’ or just those that are VACANT.

Hope this has been informative for you. We talk to customers all the time that have been using the Tenant File for years, and they say “Wow, I didn’t know it could do that!”. We’ll keep adding tips to make you aware of some of these neat tricks to make the Tenant File even more valuable to your office.

I’m pissed. Sorry for the language, but I am. Probably like you, I run a top-notch company, I’m an honest person, and I work really hard. So, it really gets to me when I trust another company and get scr%@ed. I’m talking about SEO – search engine optimization. You know, the way for your site to climb to the top of Google’s rankings.

You probably get tons of those SEO company promises in your email. I get about 20 a day. “We’ll get you top ranking in Google!”. All you have to do is pay about $150 per month and they will add tons of links to your site, submit to directories, write articles, post blogs, fix your meta tags, write content, social marketing, and on and on….if you see this….run! Back in 2010, these things were credible in Google, but since Panda and Penguin (Google algorithm updates) things all changed. Adding your site to a web directory isn’t that important any more, other than maybe under 20 national well established directories, and a handful of (your industry) related directories. Content on your site is still important, but now you can be penalized by Google for too many of your primary keywords on the same page, and not enough ‘synonym’ keywords. If you think that adding 150 links per month will help you, you are wrong. Each link must be relevant to your business, come from a respected site, and ‘trading’ links (reciprocal links) doesn’t help you, and could even hurt you if done too much.  Article sites aren’t not important any more, you need to build your reputation by creating information so valuable that it gets distributed via social sites (like Facebook, Twitter, Digg, LinkedIn, etc). So, if you go with the ‘old school’ SEO you’ll probably regret it! They will most likely put up a bunch on links to your site, that you will end up spending untold hours trying to get rid of.

I tried that approach way back when. As I became pretty much an expert in SEO, I hired a local company to help out. Several thousand dollars later, I found out that they put up questionable links as well, and I fired them. Next I went to the top and hired a nationally recognized company to do SEO for me. Big mistake. One day I called them and asked why I didn’t see any links. They had contracted to add 125 ‘industry relevant’ links per month. Apparently they had forgotten, and quickly ‘subbed out’ to another company, which in turn put out some horrible links. I’m talking links to dog, cat, and horse websites! Thousands more dollars down the drain…I can’t even say their name publicly because they made me sign an agreement in order for me to get a partial refund.

So, I guess you can see why I’m pissed. Now we do our own SEO in house and the results are great. Our link building is slow, steady, and relevant. We are getting back in good standing with Google finally after undoing all of the bad work done by other companies I trusted (and paid). I hope this will give you some advise so that you don’t have to go through what I did. I wish you well!