What to ask a PMS vendor

Start with money flows. How are rent invoices created? Who holds Stripe or payment credentials? Does the vendor take a percentage of rent? If they do, model that against your management fee before you fall for a low monthly seat price.

Ask about data isolation. Is your agency one tenant in a shared database, or do you get a dedicated deployment? Isolation matters for brand, for exits, and for how cleanly you can white-label portals and statements.

Ask whether you must replace your public website. Many agencies already have a site that converts; the bottleneck is ops. Vendors that force a front-end rebuild add risk you may not need on day one.

Then pressure-test UK specifics: Tenant Fees Act disclosures, deposit workflows, Rightmove/OnTheMarket feeds, complaints handling versus day-to-day tickets. Generic overseas platforms often look polished until those questions land.