How our agency digitalised the management of 120 properties in 6 months

The agency before digitalisation

Immobiliere Bruxelles-Sud has existed since 2008. We manage 120 rental properties for 45 landlords in the municipalities of Forest, Uccle and Saint-Gilles. A team of 4: myself (management + sales), 2 rental managers and 1 administrative assistant.

Until January 2025, our management relied on 3 independent tools: accounting software for billing, a shared Excel spreadsheet for rent tracking, and paper files for leases and inventories. The 3 tools did not communicate with each other. To know whether a tenant had paid, you had to check the bank account, cross-reference the spreadsheet and open the paper file.

Result: each manager spent approximately 20 hours per week on repetitive administrative tasks (receipts, reminders, indexations, filing). Out of 35 hours of effective work, only 15 hours remained for human contact, viewings and problem management. The ratio was inverted.

The diagnosis: where were we losing time?

Before choosing a tool, I carried out an internal audit over 4 weeks. Each staff member recorded their time by task, every day. The results surprised me:

• Monthly receipts: 14 hours/month (120 receipts x 7 min each)
• Payment tracking: 8 hours/month (bank reconciliation + reminders)
• Annual indexation: 12 hours/year (120 properties x 6 min calculation + letter)
• Filing and archiving: 6 hours/month
• Document searching: 4 hours/month (finding a lease, an inventory, a receipt)
• Errors and corrections: 3 hours/month

Total: approximately 38 hours/month of automatable tasks. The equivalent of a half-time position. With a suitable rental management software, most of these tasks could be automated or drastically reduced.

Deployment in 3 phases

We deployed the new tool in 3 phases over 6 months:

Phase 1 (January-February): the 15 new leases signed in 2025 were directly entered into the new tool. No historical migration. The team trained on these real files, without pressure. 2 half-day training sessions per person.

Phase 2 (March-April): migration of the 65 most active properties (those with tenant turnovers, upcoming indexations or ongoing disputes). The managers entered data progressively, at a rate of 5 properties per week. Each entry took approximately 20 minutes per property.

Phase 3 (May-June): migration of the remaining 40 properties (stable tenants, few movements). Entry delegated to the administrative assistant. Target: everything migrated by 30 June.

The main difficulty was not technical but human. A 52-year-old manager, in post for 12 years, took 3 weeks before using the tool daily. The key: pairing with a more comfortable colleague, not a lecture-style training.

The tool was chosen for its compatibility with the Belgian market: automatic indexation based on the health index, compliant receipts, multi-region management (Brussels, Wallonia, Flanders) and a landlord portal for monthly reports.

Results after 6 months

Quantified review as of 30 June 2025, compared with the same period in 2024:

The most significant gain: each manager recovered 12 hours per week for fieldwork, viewings, tenant relations and prospecting. The lease is now generated in 5 minutes, compared to 45 minutes previously.

Lessons for agencies that are hesitating

Six months of digital transformation for a 4-person agency. Three lessons:

1. Digitalisation is not an IT project, it is a human project. The tool is secondary. What matters is team buy-in. Train, support, listen to resistance. A perfect tool that nobody uses is worthless.

2. Measure before and after. The 4 weeks of initial audit were the project’s most profitable investment. Without baseline figures, it is impossible to prove the gain. And without proof of gain, it is impossible to justify the investment.

3. The ROI is real and measurable. 38 hours/month of automated tasks, i.e. approximately 8,000 EUR/year of freed-up time. The tool cost: 3,600 EUR/year. The return on investment is positive from the 6th month.

For individual landlords also looking to simplify their management: How I automated managing my 3 apartments, From paper to digital management and Testimonial: landlord switches to online management.