PropertyTree Virtual Assistant: a VA who works your arrears list before 10am

Nobody searches “propertytree virtual assistant” because they are curious about software. You search it because it is 9:40 on a Tuesday, the arrears list has eleven names on it that were also there last Tuesday, two tenants want inspection times, a hot water system has been dead for a day and a half, and the only person who can work any of it is the same person who is supposed to be out doing a lease signing at eleven.

A rent roll on MRI PropertyTree does not collapse from one big failure. It frays at the edges: arrears that get worked on Friday afternoon instead of every morning, inspections booked late, maintenance jobs left open because nobody chased the plumber’s quote. None of it is hard. All of it is relentless, and it is exactly the kind of work a trained VA can carry every single day so your property managers get their attention back.

The daily rhythm a VA runs in your PropertyTree

The morning starts on the Arrears screen. Your VA opens it before the office has properly warmed up, sorts by days in arrears, and works down the list. One day late gets the gentle reminder. Further along, the file moves to the breach wording your principal has approved for that state. Every message goes out from a template you have signed off, and every contact gets logged against the tenancy, so that if a matter ever heads to the tribunal, the file already shows a clean, dated trail of contact. This is the single highest-value thing a PropertyTree VA does, because arrears worked daily behave completely differently from arrears worked weekly.

Next, inspections. PropertyTree flags routines as they fall due, and your VA picks those up, sends the entry notice with the correct notice period for your state, offers the tenant times, and books the confirmed slot into the property manager’s calendar. They chase the tenant who has not replied. After the PM has done the walk-through, the VA can load the report and the photos, then queue the owner notification so the landlord hears how their asset is being kept without the PM having to write the email.

Maintenance runs alongside it. A tenant reports a problem, the VA raises the job in PropertyTree, attaches it to the right property and the right creditor, and sends the work order to a supplier from your approved list. Then comes the part that actually makes the difference: following it up. Chasing the quote, confirming the booked time with the tenant, and closing the job off once it is done, so maintenance does not quietly become a list of forgotten half-finished tickets that owners complain about at renewal.

By the back half of the week the work shifts to the slower-burn admin. Lease renewals and rent increases get recorded with the correct effective dates and notice periods. New tenancies get loaded cleanly. Contact details get corrected. Invoices get keyed in ready for creditor processing. And toward month end, your VA prepares the owner statements and ownership reports, checks for unallocated funds or a missing invoice before the run, and hands the lot to your trust manager to review and authorise. The VA assembles the statement; a licensed person signs off the money.

Through all of it, the property management inbox gets triaged. Genuine arrears and maintenance matters get flagged to a PM quickly. The routine “what day is rubbish collection” emails get a templated answer and stop eating a property manager’s morning.

The honest bit

PropertyTree is good software, but it does not run a rent roll on its own, and a VA does not change what the platform genuinely will not do.

It will flag arrears and inspections that are due, but it does not decide when a tenant in arrears moves from a reminder to a breach, or whether a hardship situation deserves a different approach. That judgement is human, and it stays with your property managers. The VA works the list to the rule you set; it does not set the rule.

It will not authorise money. The trust accounting in PropertyTree, the receipting and the disbursement runs that pay owners and creditors, sits behind functions that, in every Australian state, are a licensed agent’s responsibility. A VA can prepare and reconcile-check up to the point of sign-off, but the button that releases a payment is not theirs to press, and we would refuse the request if you asked.

And it is only as clean as the data in it. If your tenancies have wrong effective dates, duplicated owners or maintenance jobs left open from last year, a VA will surface that quickly, but the first few weeks are partly a clean-up, not just a steady state. Worth knowing going in, because the value compounds once the records are straight.

What stays with you

Property management is a licensed activity, and the line matters. Your VA does the operational and administrative work: chasing arrears to your script, scheduling inspections, coordinating maintenance, loading lease data and preparing statements. They do not give tenancy or property advice, they do not make the call on a breach or a termination application, they do not negotiate a rent increase, and they do not authorise a single dollar out of the trust account.

The decisions that need a licensed property manager or principal, escalating an arrears matter, signing off a maintenance spend above your threshold, approving a statement run, handling a dispute, stay with your people under a written rule that the VA works to. PropertyTree’s role-based permissions back this up: the login we are given simply does not include the trust functions, so the boundary is enforced by the software, not just by goodwill.

What it costs and where to start

A PropertyTree VA sits on our admin tier, $12-17 AUD an hour excl GST, and most rent roll placements run 10 to 15 hours a week, which lands around $500-1,100 a month for someone working your arrears every morning and carrying inspections and maintenance coordination on top.

Placement takes 7-10 business days. There is a $500 refundable deposit that credits to your first month, then 5-7 days supervised inside your PropertyTree before any solo work, starting with the most templated tasks so you can check the output easily. You get a 30-day recalibrate-or-replace guarantee and no lock-in beyond 14 days notice, so the risk of trying it is small. We have made 87+ placements into Australian businesses since 2024, and Jenn takes every discovery call herself.

If you want the wider view, the property management page goes deeper on the rent roll work, the inbox management task page covers how we triage a property management inbox, and the VA cost guide has the full pricing picture including on-costs you avoid versus a local hire. When you are ready, book a discovery call with Jenn and bring your arrears list.