Most property management software takes a full week to configure — you're learning menus, connecting integrations, uploading residents, and wrestling with permissions. Modern Management is different. You can sign up, import your residents, connect your communication channels, and generate your first full month's rent roll in under ten minutes. Here's exactly how.
Every step takes a minute or two. By the end, you have a working property-management system with AI, unified messaging, rent tracking, and broadcasts all set up.
Three plans, transparent pricing, cancel anytime. No hidden fees, no per-unit pricing surprises. Head to the signup page, pick your plan, and your workspace is ready in minutes — including a dedicated phone number for tenant texts and calls.
If you're on a team, you can invite coworkers later — but to get started, a single account for yourself is all you need.
When you first sign in, a 3-step onboarding wizard introduces you to the key concepts. You'll set your property name (e.g., "Sunset Apartments"), a short description or tagline, and optionally upload a property photo. This personalizes your dashboard — when you sign in each morning, the home screen greets you by property name with a banner image of your actual building.
You'll also pick your default AI mode: Manager Review (AI drafts, you approve) or Auto-Response (AI sends instantly). Don't worry — you can switch any time from the Operations page.
Open the Contacts page. You have two options: add residents one at a time using the + Add Contact button (each contact takes about 30 seconds to create — name, unit, email, phone, lease dates, monthly rent), or bulk-import everyone at once from a CSV file.
If you're migrating from a spreadsheet, the CSV import is the fastest path. Export your tenant list from wherever it lives now (Google Sheets, Excel, your old software), map the columns to our fields, and click Import. A property with 50 residents typically imports in under a minute.
As you add residents, be sure to include their monthly rent amount and lease end date. These two fields power every automation downstream — monthly rent generation, overdue detection, lease expiration tracking. The more complete your contacts, the more work the system does for you automatically.
Modern Management provisions a dedicated SMS number and email address for your account during onboarding. Your residents text or email that address; their messages land in your Modern Management inbox; your replies go back to them from the same address.
If you want to integrate with a phone number you already own, you can do that too — we'll help you forward or port the existing number. Most new users start with the auto-provisioned number because it's instant and works out of the box.
For SMS, there's a brief compliance step (Twilio's toll-free verification) that confirms your use case to the carriers. We handle most of the paperwork — you just confirm the details. Verification typically takes 1–3 business days and doesn't block you from using any other feature in the meantime.
With contacts imported and residents' monthly rent amounts set, go to the Admin page → Rent Payments and click Generate Month. Pick the month, the due day (usually 1), and click Generate. In about three seconds, every resident gets a pending rent record. Your whole month is set up.
From here on, the system runs itself. As tenants pay, click Mark Paid on their row. Overdue records flag themselves automatically. Your Collected vs. Outstanding summary updates in real time. And when you get to month-end, generate the next month with the same one-click action.
Setup is one thing. Daily use is what matters. Here's a typical Tuesday for a property manager running Modern Management.
Open the app. See overnight message count, 3 tasks due today, one lease expiring in 14 days. Tap the AI Command Bar: "What's urgent?"
Review 4 AI-drafted replies from overnight. Approve 3 with one click each; edit and send the 4th. Drafts took the AI 2 seconds apiece.
A resident calls about a broken dishwasher. While on the phone, say: "Create a maintenance ticket — broken dishwasher, Unit 204, normal priority." Done.
Three tenants dropped off checks. Open Rent Payments, click Mark Paid on each. Total collected for May jumps to $38,200. Outstanding drops.
The city schedules a water shutoff for tomorrow. Open Broadcast, pick SMS to all residents, preview the message, send. 24 residents notified in 42 seconds.
Manager Review mode is off. Auto-Response takes over for the evening. Residents who text at 9pm get replies at 9:01pm. You're at dinner.
If you're currently using AppFolio, Buildium, Rentec, or a spreadsheet, migration to Modern Management is straightforward. Your most valuable data — your resident contact info, lease terms, and rent amounts — all exports to CSV from any of these tools.
Download the CSV, open it in any spreadsheet app to clean it up if needed, and import into Modern Management. You'll have your full resident roster in the system in under five minutes. Historical rent records don't migrate (they live in your old system for reference), but everything from this month forward runs natively in Modern Management.
Most property managers run both systems in parallel for the first month to confirm they're not missing anything, then fully cut over once they're comfortable. There's no contract, no migration fee, and you can cancel anytime — so the risk is minimal.
"Most property managers are sending their first AI-drafted reply within 15 minutes of signing up. The system is designed to feel useful on day one, not day thirty."