Onboarding That Actually Works

We share how a polished onboarding system turns growth pains into smooth operations. Monique walks through the exact steps, tools, and timing that cut disputes, protect PM bandwidth, and keep owner and tenant expectations aligned.

• building from reception to head of department and 300 organic managements
• why onboarding broke at scale and how Typeform fixed it
• owner preferences on payments, inclusions, strata and utilities
• using PME documents and alerts as a single source of truth
• timing education to reduce “I wasn’t told” issues
• introducing the PM early to build trust and reduce misdirected calls
• balancing premium communication with sustainable workloads
• plans for tenant onboarding and vacate offboarding

Typeform is the one that they use. If you don’t have an onboarding or an offboarding experience for your clients, highly recommend you get it on your list for 2026.

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Chapters

• 0:00 Meet Monique And The Mission
• 2:41 Scaling A Premium Rent Roll
• 5:51 Why Onboarding Became The Bottleneck
• 10:01 Building The Owner Preference Typeform
• 15:21 Setting Expectations On Fees And Utilities
• 19:41 Data Flow, Alerts, And Team Handover
• 24:01 Tenant Education: Timing And Format
• 28:21 High-End Brand Means High Expectations

Transcript

SPEAKER_01: 1:05

All right, welcome to today's podcast. And over in W Wang, we have a lovely lady called Monique joining us. Monique, welcome. Hello, thank you. Thank you for having me. Now, you are another person who is yet to have done a podcast, and that surprises me because I was like, I'm sure you've been on lots and lots. I'm hiding under the radar. Absolutely you are. But we we have been uh industry friends for a long time, and there is something specific that we wanted to chat about today, and that was something that I was exposed to at an event, I think maybe a year ago it was, or earlier this year, about onboarding and when you showed sort of at the event of the audience at the event how you did it, it was really, really impressive. And I think a lot of people are missing the marks. So we're gonna go into that after you have done a little intro for everyone to tell us uh who you are, where you've been, and what you do now.

SPEAKER_00: 2:02

Beautiful, thank you. So I've been in the industry for 16 years now. Um, I've started from reception and made my way up. Now I am the head of department at White House Property in East Fremantle. I absolutely loved it, uh, love it, sorry. I started with Stephanie around four and a half years ago, and she had this tiny little rental department, and she said, Monique, I really want to grow. I want to go above and beyond, I want to focus on client service, but I do want to build my rent role. So I thought, great, challenge accepted, let's do this. So now we're close to 300 managements and it's all been organic growth. But for me, a big pain point has been the onboarding of new managements that's absolutely been difficult from going in, onboarding them and managing them myself to then hand passing them on to a property management. That's been the hardest thing for us to master.

SPEAKER_01: 2:56

So is it something that you were doing from day one, this really awesome onboarding, or is it something that you developed as it became a pain point?

SPEAKER_00: 3:06

Definitely developed as it became a pain point. Because when I was going out to win new business, I had no problems in winning it and saying, I'll be your property manager. I'm gonna start with you from the beginning right through to the end of the management. Whereas as we were growing, I couldn't continue to manage properties and my space was really in the new business and continued to oversee the department. So I manage the staff and I manage the new business, but I've got specialist senior property managers there to manage the portfolios.

SPEAKER_01: 3:36

Yeah. So I mean, those that are in Perth would know the White House brand, and it um is a very polished brand. I mean, you guys are you always look beautiful at events in your homework in your video. You're a beautiful brand. They're in white. You are in white, you're a beautiful brand, and it makes sense that you follow that through. I think there's a one thing that I will give you guys credit for is that the it's consistent. Like that's what I love about you guys, that everybody embraces that same beautiful brand that you know an elevated brand, but you every single person of the team does. Like, is there something? Do you have a strict? I know this is sort of off topic, but do you have sort of a like a really good onboarding process for your team as well as your owners?

SPEAKER_00: 4:27

Or really good question. I think it's just about surrounding ourselves with aligned and not only brand aligned, but culture aligned and personal alignment. And I feel as if everyone we've met along the way that's ended up joining the team is because they didn't know not only fall in love with the opportunity, but also our brand. And you know, they wanted to be a part of that because they could align themselves with that, and that's just naturally happened over the years as Steph's grown her business, just a natural um with people attraction. Yeah. And what comes with you know, beautiful brand-aligned people and culture aligned is beautiful properties. And I'm so grateful that we do get to work within that demographic of beautiful properties. But what comes with that is very high expectations. You know, our properties, our property managers work end-to-end on our portfolios, and I couldn't throw them into a portfolio of 150 plus managements because that they are high demand clients, and that's why we had to get it right in the onboarding and set very clear expectations.

SPEAKER_01: 5:33

Yeah. So the onboarding, talk us through the product that you use to create yours and a little bit more about what types of questions it asks and when at what stage is it done in the client's journey with you.

SPEAKER_00: 5:50

So when I so I do all the appraisal side of things, I do all the new management side of things. So once the client has told me they'd like to go ahead with White House, I issue our management authority. We do that over DocuSign and I feel as if it's quite limited in the information that the client can edit or provide. So at that stage, I also send them through a new management preference form and we use type form. So it's an interactive, they can give us as little or as much information as possible, but we're very firm in what information we want from the client. So we want to know if they want to be paid mid-monthly or end of month. We want to know all about their property in terms of inclusions, exclusions. We want to know about the strata details, how utilities are invoiced, because there were so many times that we would sign a new management. I would go to bring the property manager in and they'd have questions on I've just arrived at this property for a home open and it's fully furnished, and we had no idea about it. So I felt like it was just really setting those clear expectations at that time. So we also go through how water usage is going to be involved in the owner's statement at the end of month, because that's one question I get asked on a on a daily basis is they get their statement and they say, Why am I paying for water usage? So we just detail that in our onboarding. Please expect a payment, but you will be reimbursed for water usage because we have a combined billing system. So it's just really detailing all I say our headache questions that we had in the get-go to try and spell it out to them in the onboarding process.

SPEAKER_01: 7:23

So they do the paperwork first, the managing authority, and then they go through the type form.

SPEAKER_00: 7:29

Yes. So they get their management authority and they get a link in there. I have just issued your DocuSign Management Authority. We also require this preference form. On this preference form, you also need to upload your insurance, your identification, a copy of your title. So then once we receive the management authority back, then I've got Tara. She's our investor relations and leasing consultant. So she's a bit of a hybrid role that works both in new business with me and with leasing our new managements. She then makes sure that that type form survey has been returned by the time we list the property to the market because we want full transparency when we go to market. I don't know about you, but we've got a lot of owners that are like, I want to exclude my garden shed, or I'm going to exclude a part of the property for not for the tenant's use, or we've got properties with studios that are excluded. So that kind of information I want to have right then once the management's been signed and before we list online.

SPEAKER_01: 8:26

Yeah. The um I was having this chat to an office the other day, and it was actually more in relation to tenant onboarding. And we're just saying the timing of this sort of form or education is really, really important because you don't want to get it stuck in a month when the receiver is already too busy planning that they're not going to, you know, to really concentrate. You know, for example, in the lease agreement, if you try to go through the lease agreement when they're to pick up keys, they just want to pick up the keys. They're not absorbing anything that you're doing. But with your form, it does at least hold them accountable. So if the question comes up down the track, you can easily say, listen, this was, you know, we did ask this question in the form and you didn't mention anything about the gardens. So is that sort of where you find that you can hold people accountable?

SPEAKER_00: 9:22

Absolutely. It's been our saving grace. So we've had a few owners that have, because we're very specific about what outgoings owners opt in and out for. So would you like us to pay your council rates on your behalf? We specify it's going to be paid in four instalments. So if you're not happy with that arrangement, then you'll need to pay them direct because we won't have the cash flow in order to make sure that they're covered. And then down the track, we might get an owner that said, Oh, I've just received an overdue reminder from the council saying you haven't paid my council rates. And it's a great referral point. We've actually just referred back to your instructions on your typeform survey. You actually opted out for us to pay your council rates specifically. So sorry, that's it, that's down to you. Yeah, absolutely. And we did the same with accounts and you know, water corporation or paying their gardeners' bill, paying their bond uh pond maintenance, anything along those lines.

SPEAKER_01: 10:35

Pond maintenance. We do have a few with ponds.

SPEAKER_00: 10:39

How much does pond maintenance cost? Is it 120 a month? Servicing a pool. Yeah. There you go. That's what happens in the fancy areas. Oh, and the good exact and the good thing with the type form is that if their question doesn't apply to them, then it skits them to the next question. So we'll have do you have a pool spar or pond? They'll say yes or no. If they're no, skip to the next question. If they're yes, great. Then tell us about this. And would you like to opt in or out for servicing? It's our recommendation. So I think it's just a really good education piece at the same time as an onboarding piece.

SPEAKER_01: 11:14

Yeah. The with your type form, do you use questions, videos, images like what does I know it's a nitty-gritty, but I'm quite interested because I think last time yours was quite it was beautiful with images and survey, but I don't know whether it had videos in that. Is that anything changed there?

SPEAKER_00: 11:34

No, it doesn't have videos, but I'm I'm working on it. So I'm going to do some video, uh, definitely some uh knowledgeable pieces. And I feel like explaining it verbally and over video is going to get the point across. Because whilst, like I said, I still do things like water usage coming out of your bill, I still get the question, it's one in every 10 now instead of 50-50. But I felt like if I did a video piece to explain that, it'll go a long way.

SPEAKER_01: 12:00

Yeah. The so the survey comes back, which is which is fantastic. What do you do with that information when you've got it? Are you saving it somewhere specifically? Are you tra how are you transferring that data? How do people uh refer back to that to make sure they're delivering on the service the clients expecting?

SPEAKER_00: 12:21

So we download all our surveys back onto we use uh PME. So we put all that information as a PDF download, and then there's specific items on the sheet that we like to flag as an alert. So if there's an alarm code, if there's specific exclusions or inclusions that are really important to highlight, then in the back end they'll do it as an alert. So we make sure that we're alerting what's important and then still having the PDF document of all the information accessible in PME documents for everyone to view.

SPEAKER_01: 12:53

Yeah, excellent. I think it provides a really nice, yeah, nurturing experience to go through. Do you have or have you created an offboarding one yet?

SPEAKER_00: 13:05

Or not quite at the offboarding stage, but I would really, and I've been working in the back end doing more of a tenant onboarding. So I feel as if there's just a quite an overwhelming experience when it comes to the tenant moving in. And I would love to do an educational piece that runs you through. But back in my day, I used to meet with a tenant in the office for a lease signing, and we would go through page by page these days. It's look, in most cases, it's sent over DocuSign and you do a bit of a what's next transition to the tenant, you let them know what to expect. But I don't think the details there like it used to be from what I can see in the industry. So my expectation next is to then start up a tenant onboarding. And then once I've mastered that, then maybe a little bit of an offboarding as well for both.

SPEAKER_01: 13:53

Yeah. Now I'm saying it really quietly as a whisper, but I still do have one person in my team that does the, you know, half an hour appointment. Yes. And I can't, I can't, you know what, I can't get them out of it. That's just her thing. I just let that slide. But I do believe that that tenants do they they just want to get the keys, you know, pay your rent, look after the property. And while I fully, you know, respect that there is there is a lot that the we should educate the tenant with. What I think, I think absolutely, I mean, yes, the onboarding is a fantastic idea for tenants. I I think though, the tenant onboarding, I feel like it's something when you do launcher to consider make trial doing it at the start, but also trial doing it like 14 days into their tenancy. I just feel like that they're so overwhelmed. There's so much going on, their house is an absolute mess. You know, the emails are probably piling up because they're so busy moving. I just feel like the information will be absorbed more at you know, 14 days or the end of the month. So I hope you've settled in really well to your home. You know, I know it's probably been a really busy few months, you know, really busy few weeks for you, but here's some extra information that's really going to help with your tenancy. And then, you know, go through your routine inspection is going to be coming up in a couple of weeks and you know, what's what I'd expect.

SPEAKER_00: 15:16

Yeah. Because I do feel when they don't get that education piece in the beginning, and look, I don't know if it's it's probably not just our office, but the amount of disputes that come when a tenant vacates and not aware of this, or didn't believe I had to do this, or costs of cleaning, costs of everything involved in preparing a property for tenancy for vacate. I just feel as if that expectation was set in the commencement. And same with owners. The moment I've set an expectation in the onboarding, it's very clear. And we avoid a lot of concerns or disputes, or I wasn't aware of this, or the property manager wasn't aware, because I've got it all spelt out for everyone involved.

SPEAKER_01: 15:53

Yeah. Do you know what? You know how we sort of said, you know, you've got your onboarding and your offboarding for owners, maybe an offboarding for the tenant as well. So there is something that goes out. Like we've got, like, it's I I wouldn't call it offboarding though, but it is just a bit of a an SMS that, you know, you're you're due to vacate soon. Do you need a hand with gardening or is there any damage that we need to be prepared for? Like we have um questions that is really helpful and it allows us to help them if they need us to do anything. But I think they're offboarding for the tenant. So when they give notice, they go through it. And it could have things like, have you got a copy of your property condition report and a bit of a video explaining how we do your final? We're going to go through using that report. If you don't have it, let us know so we can send you a copy. Because I actually think that most things can be resolved if people have a copy of their property condition report and if they can just refresh themselves how it was when they move in and for them just to understand that's all we're using, that same report. You you can do it yourself and make sure that everything looks the same. So I feel like that if every tenant could do that more, it would probably explain a lot of things. Because if you think about it, when you're living in it, you don't go and physically look at an internet thing, that's all right. All right, hold on, let me just start that little sentence again. No, I think no, I think we're still recording. I think we're just gonna keep on going. Okay. And I'll do a little bit. I'll do a little edit. Excellent. Saves me uh editing later. So yeah, so just going back to um just that offboarding. So I think that with the offboarding of a tenant, that that would be really awesome to do to make sure they've got a copy of their property condition report or they need a copy that they understand, you know, the next steps. Like I actually, I actually just had um just before you called a tenant that had called me to get an update on the bond. And she goes, I didn't sign any paperwork. And I said, No, no, you wouldn't get any paperwork, you just get notification from the bonds admin. So even little things like that, we really forget the smaller details of you know, they're thinking, yeah, that and they have been sent the notification, but it turns out it there was an issue with the spelling of the name or something like that. So they've just been sitting waiting. Um yeah, yeah. So I think tenant offboarding would be a pretty cool thing for you to do.

SPEAKER_00: 21:00

Absolutely. And look, I feel as if when we were first just doing our normal off or our normal tenant vacating process, we would send an email when they give their notice, maybe a quick reminder, but that's about it. And it really sits at the bottom of their inbox, and that's 30, maybe 60 days prior to them vacating that they've received this information. So it's in one ear, out the other, or it's at the bottom of the inbox. Box and and they come to vacate, and it's like, where's your carpet cleaning receipt? Oh, sorry, I didn't realize I had to do that. Where's you know, where's your flea treatment? Oh, I didn't even realize that was a thing. So, yeah, that's definitely the next thing that we really want to work on and just setting those expectations for everyone because definitely in our demographic, we do have high expectations to provide for both clientele, both the when you talk about the high expectations with regards to the um clients, both owners and and tenants, is it high um expectations for for communication or for what they expect your role is? I would say levels of communication. I think, and and I don't know if it's because we're now in, you know, in this time of day where everyone wants instant gratification, instant communication, instant responses. And we pride ourselves on the service in that respect. So when I do the onboarding, we've also got a little bit of a golden, I suppose, on onboarding process on top of our type form where we introduce the property manager along with me as the head of department and our leasing consultant. And we've got, you know, a really good setup there in how we communicate, but it does set a very high expectation to then move forward from there. So, not like a lot of agencies where they might sign the business, upload the property online, they don't get a live link, they don't get an instant update after home opens, they're not getting then an instant update the following day. So we definitely have high levels of communication that we provide from the commencement, but that's le that's keeping that standard up there onwards.

SPEAKER_01: 23:06

Yeah. It's I don't want to, this is a maybe a pattern allergy, but it sort of reminds me, you know, if you go to a really, really nice restaurant, you have an expectation with how the service goes, how the food tastes, and you're absolutely happy to pay a premium for that, but you definitely do have those expectations. But if you go to local, I went to Good Fortune Duckhouse the other day and and had a really cheap meal. And my actually true story, my dumplings didn't arrive. So I ordered lunch and dumplings and I went in there because I needed to go. And I said, Oh, I just wanted to check to see if the dumplings are far away. And they're like, Oh, I'm so sorry, we forgot to put the order in. And so I said, Can you just make them takeaway? Like it's interesting enough, I'm actually okay with that because it was just a basic cheap lunch. If that was a really top quality restaurant, they might have got a bad Google review. Exactly. But because they're cheaper, I well, you know, I let it slide because I want to go back there again. I don't want to recognize me being a person because I do good food. But it's it's really always interesting to put to reflect on our businesses based on experiences that we've had and how you interact with different businesses and to give some insight into how people would expect to deal with you. So, you know, understanding, I guess, where it comes from is it's yeah, is always just an interesting exercise. And yeah, I think it's nice. I I like to use different industries, you know, to reflect on our own business in how you compare.

SPEAKER_00: 24:52

Yeah, absolutely. But then it's just upholding that. So then you go from being a really high-level communicator, and that's something that I know that I, you know, I love to do. I love to be a high-level communicator with all my clients, but it's making sure you're setting a then reasonable standard because me is looking for new business and onboarding owners and the excitement of that new business, and then to a property manager who's not just dealing with, you know, whether or not you're onboarding 10, 15, 20 new clients that month, they're also managing a portfolio of 100 or 150, depending on how your model works. So it's really been a challenge in order to set an expectation of what to expect from the beginning, but on also make that sure that's a reasonable expectation to uphold for our property managers as well.

SPEAKER_01: 25:37

Yeah, and and to have that maintained. The what is the just the last one for today, but just the the handover to property manager, what does that look like in your office? There's obviously I'm what I what I'm seeing before you to give me your answer is that lots of different ways of doing it. And to be honest, every way is working well for that agency. So they're all working perfectly, regardless if yeah, you're doing the leasing or not doing the leasing. But yeah, good to hear as of what your team does.

SPEAKER_00: 26:05

That's been an interesting one because I've spoken to so many different BDMs or so many different companies, and they've all said, I'm not sure where the perfect position of handing over the management is. And for us, I was originally signing the business, I was leasing the business, I was signing up the tenant, and then I was handing it to the property manager. And then I had owners continuously calling me thereafter, feeling as if I was their first point of contact for the management of the property, not for the purpose of me being the head of department and they are always welcome to call me and reach out with concerns, but they felt as if I was their main contact from the beginning right through to the leasing and the management. And I kind of stuck, I was a bit stuck in that position. So I felt as if I needed to introduce the property manager very early on so they could start their connection, they could start building their relationship and there was trust between them in the decisions on the tenancy. So once I've signed the business and once I've gotten the property ready for market, so I'll ensure that the property has an electrical safety certificate in place, I've booked in cleaning if it needs to, I'll liaise with my leasing consultant and onboarding so that we get it live online. And then I'll introduce, well, I'll actually let them know who their property manager is at the time of signing. So I'll send them their management authority. Welcome to White House. This is your team. It sets us apart. This is what to expect. I'm your head of department, this is your senior property manager, property manager, and this is our leasing consultant. So then they know what to expect. Once the property's been listed, the property manager takes over all communication. So they'll update them on the home opens, they'll present the applications, and then they'll see it right through to their tenants being secured and then onwards. But I'll always tell the owner as head of department, if you have any concerns, you're welcome to reach out to me. But I'd say the communication has more than halved in terms of their expectation to continuously coming back to me throughout the management.

SPEAKER_01: 28:04

Yeah, I think that's perfect because the other thing is that if you leave it all with the property manager, I'm sorry, if you leave it all with you, and then the property manager only jumps in once the tenancy sorted, generally that first contact that that property manager is going to have is on a negative, which will be because there's maintenance due. So it's good. I always say it's yeah, not let the let the property manager have some good news stuff about a tenant before they call for maintenance. And so the leasing consultant, yes, you've got one, but doesn't have any client contact for the owner.

SPEAKER_00: 28:36

Very little. So they'll still help the on owner in the onboarding. They'll be my follow-up. Hi, as you, you know, welcome to White House. I can see that your type form's still outstanding. Can we please get that through? You know, just the little nitty-gritty that I don't necessarily always have the time for. And they still do home opens. So leasing consultant Tara, she'll do home opens for a lot of our new business because that's our priority in terms of their onboarding, whereas the property manager is still responsible for their reletting new business with a bit of help from leasing consultant. Yeah. We're not big enough to have an individual role per, you know, role of property management. But I think that works really well for us.

SPEAKER_01: 29:13

I think it's a great, a great handover. Yeah, I think it's really good. I mean, our office is getting the property rent ready as well. So the clean, any maintenance and all of that. So you, and then as soon as it's, and then she will also put it online. And at that point, the property manager is CC'd. So, excellent news, your property's now listed, it's on the market, and your PMC seed and we'll be in touch, we'll get the first home open done. So that's sort of when they introduce the only difference with being that we don't have that leasing consultant because the property managers are control freaks and like to make sure that they see everyone that goes through their property, yeah, yeah, yeah, secure their own tenants, which I can understand because you don't want to be responsible for that at the end of the day, do you?

SPEAKER_00: 29:58

If your property manager's not happy with who you chose. Correct, correct. I mean, we probably could do with a leasing consultant though, but yeah, it is what it is. The other thing I find as well is that if the property manager then presents the owner with the good news, especially for the first time your property's been leased, that's a really good connection point. Whereas when I was doing that, they felt that connection with me and that I had done that role for them. And, you know, whilst I got great reviews over it, I've seen since changing that transition to property manager leasing the property. They've really been rewarded for the work involved, which I think is so important because let's be real, there's a lot in property management that you don't see the reward for. So I think having them involved in that leasing process and having that correct onboarding is just given everyone a highlight. Yeah, no, I agree.

SPEAKER_01: 30:46

I think it's wonderful. Well, it's so lovely chatting with you. Thank you for your time and thank you for your ongoing support as well with PM Collective and enjoying the community and and yeah, sharing with us that onboarding experience, which is incredible. So typeform is the one that they use. And if you don't have an onboarding or an offboarding experience for your clients, highly recommend you get it on your list for 2026. Yeah, to make your life easier, but also just to set those standards and elevate that service level a little bit more. So thank you for sharing and being so generous with your time. Thank you for having me, Ash. It's been beautiful.