How to Track Property Maintenance Requests (So Nothing Goes Silent)
- Customers mainly judge responsiveness, not repair speed, with praise rates from 32.4% to 36.3% across trades.
- A reply within the hour, giving a request number and due date, stops most follow-up calls.
- Logging every job in one spreadsheet shows which properties and jobs cost the most over a year.
A tenant texts about a dripping tap. The property manager forwards it. The maintenance business reads it in the van, means to deal with it, and three weeks later the tenant rings the manager to ask what happened. Nobody refused the job. Nobody was slow on site. The request simply went into a phone and never came out, and from the outside that looks exactly like being ignored.
The problem is silence, not speed
Across 12,570 publicly posted reviews of NZ cleaning, garden and pest control businesses, responsiveness is praised in 32.4% of positive cleaning reviews, 21.1% for garden and outdoor work and 36.3% for pest control. Slow communication is a top complaint theme in negative cleaning reviews at about 7%. Read those together and the pattern is clear: customers are not mainly rating how fast the tap was fixed. They are rating whether they heard back.
A tracking system does not need to make the work faster. It needs to make sure every request gets a reply, a number, a due date and a message when it is done.
It needs to make sure every request gets a reply, a number, a due date and a message when it is done.
One form in
Every request, however it arrives, goes onto the same form: what the problem is, where (property and room), since when, photos if there are any, access arrangements, and whether it is urgent or routine. If a tenant texts, the person who receives the text fills in the form. The form is not for the tenant’s benefit. It is so every request starts life with the same information, and so “the tap” and “the bathroom one” become request number 47.
One log, one line per request
A spreadsheet is enough: request number, date received, property, description, priority, who it is assigned to, due date, date done, cost, and whether the reporter was told. Every request is a line. Nothing is done from the phone without a line.
Priority sets the due date: urgent (no water, no power, security) same day; routine within five working days; cosmetic within a fortnight. Write the rule down so the due date is not a judgement call made at 6pm.
A reply within the hour
The moment a request becomes a line, the reporter gets a message: “Received, request 47, we will be there by Thursday.” That one message is most of what customers mean by responsive. It costs thirty seconds and it stops the follow-up call.
A weekly review
Friday, ten minutes, open lines only. Anything past its due date gets a reason and a new date, and the reporter gets a message about it. Anything done this week that has not been closed gets closed. Anything that has been open more than a fortnight gets a phone call.
Tell them when it is done
The job is not finished when the tap stops dripping. It is finished when the person who reported it has been told. “Done, request 47, replaced the washer, no charge under the agreement.” Close the line. Record the cost. Over a year the log shows which properties generate the most requests and which jobs cost the most, which is the information a property manager wants at renewal.
Keys are the same problem
Access is where maintenance businesses get into trouble with property managers, and it follows the same logic: a register of what you hold, an ID tag that is never an address, and a sign-out line every time a key leaves the safe. Access details are personal information under the Privacy Act 2020, so they are stored, not texted around.
A template
The maintenance log, request form and key register in our resource library has the request form in PDF and Word, the log and the key register in Excel, with the priority rule and the Privacy Act note built in. Free. Start it on Monday with every open request you can remember, and run the Friday review from then on.
Maintenance businesses rarely lose customers for being slow. They lose them for going quiet.
What to do on Monday
- Write down every open request you can remember onto one form.
- Enter each request as one line in the log with a due date.
- Message every reporter to confirm their request has been received.
Sources and legal references
Legislation and agency links checked on 9 October 2026. This is general information, not legal or tax advice.
