Tracking a lease’s critical dates is one of the most time-consuming parts of managing a commercial real estate portfolio.  Even before the lease commences, there are multiple deadlines that need to be met.  Then once the lease is operational, accounting needs to know about rent bumps, environmental departments need to know when licenses expire, and the transaction managers need to be kept aware of lease renewal options.  The list goes on and on.

The responsibility of monitoring these dates often falls on each department.  Some of the common tools used to manage critical lease dates are Microsoft Excel, Word, and Outlook. The problem with these solutions is that they all lack centralized control.  Although flexible, Microsoft Excel and Word lack notifications, reporting, and detailed lease information.  Outlook provides calendar reminders but lacks any reference to the lease.  Lastly, when lease documents are directly referenced, the process of finding information is tedious, especially if the document is not scanned.

Lease management software is therefore essential to any company with a multi-lease portfolio.  An effective system will centralize critical dates, lease information, and contacts information of those to be notified.

Top 5 Critical Date Tracking Features

1.  Critical date email reminders delivered to specified contacts.
2.  A critical date dashboard that displays upcoming dates across the portfolio.
3.  Ability to search, report and export all critical dates to Microsoft Excel.
4.  Ability to specify which contacts receive each critical date alert.  For example, accounting only wants critical date alerts for changes in real estate lease expenses or regional managers receive notifications for leases in their territory.
5.  Unlimited user defined fields with associated critical date alerts.  This will enable any and every piece of information to be tracked.