Console Virtual Assistant: a VA who keeps the rent roll, arrears and inspections moving

Nobody googles “console virtual assistant” for fun. You search it because the rent roll has grown faster than the team, the arrears list is two days behind, three inspections need rescheduling, a hot water system has failed at one property, and the levy run is due, and all of it lives in Console while you are the only person who can drive it. The repeatable parts of that, the chasing, the scheduling, the logging, the data hygiene, do not need a licensed property manager. They need someone reliable who already knows their way around Console Cloud and Gateway. That is what a VA is for.

The daily rhythm a VA runs in your Console

The day starts with arrears, because in property management arrears that slip become arrears that hurt. Your VA opens the arrears list in Console Cloud, sees who has moved into one day, three days, seven days late, and works your approved sequence: the friendly reminder, then the firmer follow-up, then the breach notice template when the rules allow it. Every contact attempt, the SMS sent, the call made, the promise to pay, gets logged against the tenancy so there is a clean trail if it ever goes to a tribunal. Anything heading toward a termination is flagged for the property manager rather than actioned, because that decision is yours.

Then inspections. Console’s inspection planner shows what is due, and the VA builds the run for the week, issues entry notices with the correct notice period for your state, and chases tenant confirmations so the manager is not knocking on doors that nobody answered. When the manager gets back from the route, the VA attaches the photos and the report to the property file and gets the owner update moving. The manager spends their time on site and in front of owners, not on the diary admin around it.

Maintenance is the other constant. A tenant logs a leaking tap or a dead oven, and the VA raises the work order in Console against an approved supplier from your panel, sends it, tracks it through quote and completion, and keeps both the tenant and the owner informed along the way. The hard line here is spend: if a job is going to cost more than the limit in the management agreement, it gets escalated to the manager for the owner’s approval, never waved through. The VA coordinates the trades and keeps the timeline honest. They do not approve money.

Underneath all of it is data hygiene, the unglamorous work that makes every Console report trustworthy. Contact details, bank details for owner disbursements, lease start and end dates, rent review dates, key registers: the VA keeps them current so the rent roll reports actually reflect reality. Lease renewals and rent reviews get flagged well before they lapse, so the manager is having the renewal conversation early instead of discovering a holdover tenancy three months in.

For strata managers, the rhythm runs through Console Strata and Gateway instead. The VA prepares the levy notice run for the strata manager to issue, keeps the roll and the lot owner register current as lots change hands, logs by-law breaches and common-property requests so nothing falls through, and assembles committee and AGM document packs from your templates. Meeting reminders go out, RSVPs get tracked, and the manager walks into the committee meeting with the pack already built. The strata manager still chairs, still advises, still signs. The VA does the assembly.

The honest bit

Console will not run itself, and a VA does not change that. A few things are worth being straight about.

Console does not automatically chase arrears for you. The reminders, the breach notices, the calls: someone still has to work the list and follow the sequence. That is a feature for a VA, not a limitation, but it means the value comes from the person doing the work consistently, not from the software being clever.

Trust accounting is walled off, and it should be. Receipting rent, reconciling the trust account, authorising owner disbursements and end-of-month: these sit under your state’s agents’ trust account legislation and stay with your licensed staff. A VA can prepare the arrears position that feeds receipting, but they do not receipt, reconcile or authorise. We set the Console permissions so that line is enforced by the system, not just by a promise.

Console’s integrations have edges too. Inspection apps, SMS gateways, payment platforms and supplier portals all hang off Console differently depending on your setup, and not everything syncs in real time or in both directions. The VA works with the workflow you have rather than assuming a clean two-way sync that may not exist. Where something has to be re-keyed between systems, they will tell you, and we will look at whether it is worth fixing.

And Console is configured per agency. Your supplier panel, your arrears rules, your notice templates, your spend limits: these are yours, and the VA learns them during the supervised ramp. A VA who knew a different agency’s Console still has to learn your settings. That is what the first week is for.

What stays with you

Property and strata management is regulated work, and the boundary matters. The VA does the operational and administrative work only. Everything that requires a licensed agent or carries real legal or financial weight stays with you and your team.

That means trust account authorisation, receipting and reconciliation stay with your licensed staff. Decisions to escalate an arrears matter to termination, to a tribunal or to NCAT stay with the property manager. Approving maintenance spend above the management agreement limit stays with the owner, via the manager. Rent determinations, lease terms, and any advice to an owner or tenant that needs a licensed person stay with you. For strata, the manager still chairs meetings, gives the advice, and signs the minutes and the levy authorisations.

The VA prepares, chases, schedules, logs and keeps the data clean so those decisions are quick and well-evidenced when you make them. The judgement, the authorisation and the licensed advice never leave your side of the line, and Console’s role permissions are set up to keep it that way.

What it costs and where to start

Console arrears, inspection and maintenance admin sits on the admin tier, $12-17 AUD an hour excl GST, typically 10-15 hours a week, which works out around $500 to $1,100 a month for most rent rolls. If you want a strata levy and meeting-admin focus, or bookkeeping-adjacent work that touches the numbers, the tier may shift, and Jenn will tell you that on the call rather than after.

Placement takes 7 to 10 business days, with 5 to 7 days supervised inside your Console before any solo work, starting with arrears and inspections where the workflow is most repeatable. There is a $500 refundable deposit credited to your first month, a 30-day recalibrate-or-replace guarantee, and no lock-in beyond 14 days notice. Across 87+ Australian placements since 2024, the property and strata ones tend to settle fast because the daily Console rhythm is so consistent.

If you want the deeper view, the property management page and the strata managers page go into the role properly, the arrears and invoice chasing task page covers the chasing cadence, and the VA cost guide has the full pricing picture. Otherwise book a discovery call with Jenn and we will map your Console workflow to a real placement.