Your simple PBSA checklist for getting student rooms online

The most important task you have once your units are ready is to get them online. But while you'll need some haste, you'll also need a well-considered checklist for getting student rooms online effectively.

In our Cloudfox guide, we'll give you that checklist, so all you need to do is customise it and hand it over to your team.

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Critical considerations for your PBSA checklist for getting student rooms online effectively 

There will be several considerations in building your PBSA checklist for getting student rooms online effectively. These should include:  

1. Setting your room rates - our guide will give you lots of food for thought on how to do that.
2. Contract amendments – Has anything about the tenancy legislation changed and does it need updating in the agreement.  Find this out as soon as possible as it will need updating and sign off from multiple stakeholders. 
3. Release strategy – Get sign off for what room types and room’s you will release and when, make sure to track the velocity so you don’t oversell. 
4. Decide where you stand on deposits - it's an important subject! Our guide will help you work out what your options are. 
5. Work out what incentives, if any, you will offer this year. 
6. Decide how you will handle the first instalments and compliance. 
7. Update your onboarding process to improve customer journeys and communication. 
8. Streamline your booking process with a user-friendly online system that covers various payment options and automated reminders to ensure timely rent collection. Take some time also to check out our guide, "How to use your tech to maximise your student room rebooking window", to ensure your tech helps you create a better booking process. 
9. Decide how you need to tag the deal stages of your booking pipeline. 
10. Decide on your room marketing campaign. 
11. Gather your online listing assets - Get your high-quality images, detailed descriptions, and virtual tours ready to go. Make sure your copy is engaging and enticing whilst covering all the details your potential tenants want to see. Top tip - Start your asset collation by combing through your student feedback. There will be some interesting nuggets of buyer intent that you can use to make your assets convert at better rates. 
12. SEO strategy - Update your SEO strategy to ensure your listings appear prominently in relevant searches. Anytime you revise your SEO strategy, revisit and adjust your website and listing copy. 

Once you have these strategies laid out, it's time to create your staff checklist for uploading room listings.  

Your PBSA checklist for getting student rooms online effectively 

Below is our standard checklist for PBSA businesses - Remember, at each stage, you should customise your list for how you work and the systems you use. 

Step 1 - Workflow setup or update 

You'll want to start with your list of tasks and people responsible. The crucial factor for consideration here isn't just who does what and when but how that task affects other functions in the overall workflow and contributing or resulting workflows. 

For example, if you need sign off from investors have you accounted for task completion dates and multiple rounds of revision? If not, the delay could hold up your room rate sign-off task, which means your website or PMS admin doesn’t have the data to add to each listing when needed. 

Take some time to map out your workflow with your management team before you get to step number two. 

Step 2 - Automation setup or update 

Automation is about making your life easier. Think - how can you use tech to help you reduce some of those more mundane manual tasks?

Let's look at our room rate problem again. If your finance team has set the prices and relevant stakeholders sign these off, can these be input once, and all systems sync that information to save time on manual data entry? Or errors in manual entries? And if so, where would that data need to be input first?

The beauty of a great system setup is that it is built with these automation nuances in mind, so all you need to do is set them in motion to make the process of getting your units online simpler.

Once you have automation mapped out, it will be far easier to delegate staff tasks, knowing that each job will be detailed and allocated in good time. 

Step 3 - Task-to-staff designation setup or update 

Good task designation matches the right team member to the right task at the right time. Great task designation automates timely notifications, so your team member knows about the job ahead of time and its priority level, and has everything they need to complete the task.

Helping your team manage new tasks alongside their day-to-day will be crucial if you have multiple projects and buildings on the go at once. 

Step 4 - Workflow rollout 

Depending on your choice of property management software (PMS), the rollout of simple workflows can be managed in-house in most cases without multiple system additions and unnecessary add-ons. For those initial system setups and more complicated workflows, we always recommend bringing professional consultation, if not the entire project undertaking. Why? Because it will avoid teething problems and be better for your budget.

Once you have your workflow operational, all you will need to do is have your management team brief staff about what's coming and how it affects their current work. 

Step 5 - Oversight as a reporting and review step 

The oversight of your workflow setup comes in the form of sandbox testing. Ask yourself - Is your workflow fit for purpose and as effective as possible?

The second stage of oversight you'll need is within the workflow itself. How can you create oversight steps or stages that help your management team establish performance? 

Conclusion: Your simple PBSA checklist for getting student rooms online effectively 

By giving you a checklist you can customise, we've created a process you establish once and review over time, making your team much more efficient from year to year. Relieving the pain of getting student rooms online means your team can focus on marketing and sales - exactly where you need to concentrate when a suite of new rooms or a building becomes available. 
 

Need help mapping and rolling out core functions and system setups? Contact Eddie using the form below.