15 Ways to Simplify Lease Administration with Templates

Tessa Author

Automate repetitive tasks with one simple strategy to save time and effort. Read more to stop re-creating the wheel and start using templates.

Doing anything for the first time takes the most effort and brainpower. However, you get more comfortable with every subsequent repetition. And, if you do it long enough, it’ll become a habit you do without thinking. Just think of your shower routine as an example.

However, this blog is about simplifying Lease Administration, not personal hygiene. So, this week, I’m covering how to use one simple strategy to automate repetitive tasks to save time and effort.  It’s easy - stop re-creating the wheel and start using templates. 

What is a template?

Templates are anything that establishes or serves as a pattern. It’s essentially a framework, or an example, of a product you are trying to replicate with minor variations.

It can be an excel form or a text paragraph, amongst many other options. The useful life ranges from very short, like the time it takes to complete four race entries for one family, to longer, such as an excel model used annually for CAM reconciliations.  

It’s an easy-to-implement strategy that saves the energy and time required to complete the task.  We already know that time is a finite resource, yet energy is also vital for analytical duties such as those presented in lease administration.  

My guiding rule is to create a template for anything you’ll need to type or do more than three times with minor adjustments. Of course, It’s a judgment call, and you get better at making those with practice.  

Below, I'll share the three types of templates that I use the most in my work and five ideas for implementing them to simplify your own lease admin process.  

Email Templates

Templates are a form of automation, and one of the best places to start is your email. Typing takes time, and coming up with a professional way to say things also takes energy. It becomes a grueling process, especially if you have a foreign client.  

The reality is that the “80/20 rule” applies to your email responses, and you can easily create templates for your most common email responses that will cover 80 percent of your correspondence.  

Requests for supporting documentation is the first example. How many times have you received an invoice without backup and had to reach out to the landlord to request it? The answer is many if reviewing lease invoices is your responsibility. Therefore, it’s prudent to have a template where you only need to customize the landlord's name, property address, and charge description.
 
Here are five more ideas for email templates:

1. Request for CAM expense reconciliation support. 
2. Release of monthly reports. 
3. Request for access to the real estate database. 
4. Response to ad hoc report requests. 
5. Request to AP to re-issue failed payment. 

One of the quickest ways to template monthly emails is to re-send last month's email with the current month’s details. Just don't forget to attach the new file.  

Text Templates

The easiest of all are the text templates. You just copy the text you’ll need again and paste it into a suitable medium, like a text file. And your email address is the best to get started.

Even with a short name, the time it takes to write out your full email address is… unnecessarily wasted. Instead, you can just copy and paste the text from the Sticky Notes on your desktop or a pinned file.

If you’re an Apple-product user, I recommend the Notes app because your templates are then accessible from any authorized device you’re using. For Windows, I’ve used the Notes in Outlook to keep sample text for my emails, which are also available if you’re signed into the webmail account from a different device.  

Here are five more ideas for text templates: 

1. Contact information, such as address. 
2.  Excel formulas for calculations or formatting. 
3. Abstraction comments. For example, citations (Lease, Sec. , page ) or “Lease is silent.”
4. Ticket requests you submit online, not via email. 
5. Frequently used responses to instant messages. 

Consider starting a file with sample notes for your reports, commonly used abstraction comments, or any other categories of the text you type repeatedly.

Form Template

Form templates are perfect for capturing information uniformly and automating calculations, such as financial analysis or an abstraction template.

Although it usually takes the longest to create, forms create sustainable efficiency. Once the format and layout of the information are standardized, you’ll only get better and quicker at populating and analyzing it.  

Use Excel, Google Sheets, Sharepoint, surveys, and any other medium for collecting information. However, expect to have several iterations until your template accommodates most of your scenarios. Start with the most common occurrence first and build on that; let the 80/20 rule guide you.  

Here are five ideas to use Form Templates in your process: 

1. Lease Document Transmittal form.
2. Annual CAM Expense reconciliation.
3. Vendor set up a form for ACH. 
4. Access Request for CRE database.
5. CPI-based Expense Adjustment Calculator.

Depending on the process, logs are another excellent example of a form that guides the analyst through the process. Check out Notion for tasks and project management as an alternative to excel logs. There, I have a template, which includes a checklist of steps and necessary information for each primary activity.

Make “copy, paste, customize” your new mantra if you want to simplify your process and save time and energy while you’re at it. Regardless of the medium, if you find yourself in a reoccurring process, templates are indispensable to help you streamline and shift your focus to the project itself.   

Categories: : Process Improvement