We go through how the portfolio really runs: the leaseholder emails, the works orders nobody closed, the service charge year end that arrives every year as a surprise. Then we tell you which of it is worth handing to AI, and in what order.
Most managing agents know AI could take some of this off them. What they are missing is someone who will look at their own portfolio and say which part to hand over first.
Most of what arrives is answered somewhere in the lease or the last budget pack. The property manager reads all of it anyway, because the one that matters is buried in the middle.
There is an AI feature in the management system now. There is a leaseholder portal that was going to fix this. None of them tell you which job in a block management week they would actually take off you.
Consultation has a legal timetable and it does not care how busy the quarter was. Miss a stage on a major works project and the amount you can recover from each leaseholder is limited, whatever the work actually cost.
None of that is a technology problem. It is a question of which job goes first, and that is the bit we do.
These are the ones that come up in nearly every block management audit we run. Which of them lands in your plan, and in what order, depends on your portfolio, your team, and the system you work in.
Everything lands in one inbox, and a property manager reads every message to find the three that need them.
Identifies the block and the unit, answers what the lease and the published budget already answer, and routes the rest to the right manager with the relevant file already attached.
Anything about liability, a dispute, or what the lease actually means. Interpreting a lease is not an automation job.
A repair reported by email, a contractor rung, and nobody sure three weeks later whether it was ever done.
Raises the order against the right block and budget head, sends it to the approved contractor, chases the attendance, and closes the loop with the leaseholder who reported it.
Anything involving fire safety, structure, water ingress or a vulnerable resident goes to a person the moment it is flagged.
Demands assembled by hand each period, and the statutory summary of rights and obligations forgotten on at least one block.
Builds the demand run from the approved budget and the apportionments in the leases, attaches the required statutory wording, and flags any unit whose apportionment does not reconcile.
Approving the budget and the demand run. Money demanded under a lease is checked by a person before it goes.
Somebody notices the arrears list when the quarter closes, then writes the first and second reminders from memory.
Tracks every unpaid demand, runs your own escalation sequence on your own timings, and logs each contact so the trail exists if it ever goes further.
The point where arrears become a legal step. That is a decision with costs consequences and it stays with a person.
The consultation timetable kept in somebody's head alongside eleven other projects.
Tracks each stage against the statutory periods, drafts the notices from your templates, records who was served and when, and warns you well before a deadline is at risk.
Every notice is checked and approved before service. Getting consultation wrong caps what you can recover and no automation carries that risk for you.
Fire risk assessments, lift inspections, EICRs and water hygiene across dozens of blocks, in a spreadsheet.
Watches every date across the portfolio, raises the job with enough notice to get it booked, chases the certificate, and files it against the block.
Acting on a finding. A risk assessment that identifies something needs a person deciding what happens next, and quickly.
Reports for each residents' management company written by hand before every meeting, usually the night before.
Pulls the expenditure against budget, the open works orders, the arrears position and the compliance status into the report format each board expects.
The recommendations. Directors are asking what you think, and that part is written by the manager.
Last year's spreadsheet opened, uplifted by a guess, and reconciled properly only if there is time.
Assembles the draft from actual spend, live contracts, known increases and the reserve fund schedule, and flags each line that has moved materially and why.
Every figure. The budget is the document leaseholders challenge hardest and a manager owns it line by line.
A conveyancer wants the pack, and someone spends half a day gathering accounts, insurance and consents while a sale waits.
Assembles the pack from the block record, chases whatever is missing, and turns the standard enquiries around without the file sitting on a desk.
The answers that require a view rather than a document.
Renewal information gathered late, and claims progressed by whoever picked up the phone that day.
Assembles the renewal data across the portfolio, tracks each claim through to settlement, and keeps the reporting leaseholder updated.
Placing the cover, and anything about liability on a claim.
The accountant asks for the file, and it takes three weeks to assemble what should already exist.
Keeps the year end pack current through the year, reconciles the ledger against invoices as they land, and flags what is missing long before the accountant asks.
Certification and approval. The accounts are a statutory document and a person signs them.
Nobody starts with eleven. A plan usually puts two live in the first month and leaves the rest ranked and waiting, so when you have the appetite for the next one you already know which it is.
Most of the job is joining up the systems you pay for rather than moving you off them. These are the ones we come across most in block management, and we have no affiliation with any of them.
Three steps. You do the talking on the first one, and nothing is committed until you have seen what we found.
No prep, no agenda to fill in. We ask the questions and you walk us through how your week actually runs: the jobs, the tools, the emails you send a dozen times a month.
Recorded and written up, so you never repeat yourself.
We work back through the call and map where your time actually goes. Then we find the automations that suit your tools, your team and your budget, ordered so the biggest time saving comes first.
Back with you within a week.
We walk you through the whole report, recommendation by recommendation, and you decide what to take on first. Most people have their first automation running within a week of that call.
The report is yours to keep either way.
The plan tells you what to build. The dashboard shows you what it is doing once it is built, so you can see what you are getting back without asking us.
Set up when the plan is delivered, at app.fewerhours.com under your business name. No shared login and nothing to install.
Every one we build reports the hours it saved and the work it handled, so the value is a number you can check rather than a promise we made.
The rest of the ranked list sits there waiting. When you have the appetite for the next one, you already know which it is.
This works best where one person can still see the whole portfolio. There are a few cases where it would waste your time, and those are worth saying out loud.
Fewer Hours exists because too many owners knew AI could help them somewhere and had no way of telling a good idea from a sales pitch. The plan is the boring part done properly: sitting with the real workflow and working out which jobs are worth handing over.
Whoever takes your call is the person who writes your plan. No account manager, no junior doing the analysis, and nobody trying to move you onto a retainer at the end of it.
Three steps, and you can stop after any of them. The first one is a conversation, and nothing about it commits you to the next.
A short chat about how your business runs. If there’s nothing here worth mapping, we’ll say so on the call.
The full job. We map the workflows, score every candidate, and hand over the ranked list and the 30-day plan.
If you’d rather we built the projects than just planned them, we’ll do the ones the audit put first. Anything from a quick win to a full agent build.
If there are fewer than five of you and admin takes about an hour a day, there probably isn’t enough here to be worth mapping, and we’ll say so. If you already know exactly which job you want automated, skip the audit and just ask us to build it. And if your processes only exist in your head, we’ll tell you to go and write them down first.
If yours is not here, ask on the call. It is twenty minutes about how the portfolio runs, not a pitch.
It can find the clause and show you it, which saves the twenty minutes of hunting. It should not tell a leaseholder what the lease means, and nothing we recommend does. Every lease is different, interpretation carries liability, and that answer comes from a property manager.
It tracks the timetable, drafts the notices and records service, which is where consultation usually goes wrong: a stage missed because the quarter was busy. It does not serve anything on its own. Every notice is approved by a person first, because the consequence of getting it wrong is a cap on what you recover.
Every recommendation states what data it touches and where that data ends up. Keeping leaseholder and financial data inside systems you already control is the default, and anything that would move it somewhere new is flagged, with the alternative, before it reaches the plan.
That is one of the first things we check. Some of it is the API, some is a feature your system already ships and nobody switched on, and some is email and a shared folder joined up properly. Where your system will not do something, the plan says so rather than pretending.
Both, and the audit covers whichever side is costing you more. The work is genuinely different: lettings is tenancies, referencing and landlord reporting, block is leases, demands and consultation. If you are mostly single lets, start with the letting agents page.
Only where you decide it should, and never on arrears, disputes or anything about liability. Most agents start with drafts a manager sends, then let the genuinely routine replies go on their own once they have watched them for a few weeks.
Usually yes if you manage blocks, because leasehold work runs to a statutory calendar and repeats on every block you hold. That is exactly what automates well.
The plan lands about two weeks after the call. Most agents have the first automation live within a week of that, because the first one is usually enquiry triage and that does not need anyone to change system.
The call takes twenty minutes and it is about how the business runs, not about software. The plan lands about two weeks later.