Estate Management Software
Most estate managers had gotten into the profession of estate management to avoid things like spreadsheets. So how, with all of today’s reporting requirements and need for fiscal transparency, can estate managers cope?
Estate Management
Latitude 365 aims to help estate managers with tasks they face every month: record and track expenses, report to the owner or his office, request money and have large purchases pre-approved.
The idea to create Latitude 365 was born during the time when Dasha Grupman (co-founder and CEO of Latitude 365) had been managing a handful of residential estates in 5 different countries for a high-net worth individual. One of Dasha’s responsibilities was doing accounting and reporting for those homes. Part of the process was collecting receipts and reports in Excel from caretakers and other staff taking care of each estate. Most staff members had no accounting education and barely knew Excel. Excel reports calculate item by item down incredibly long spreadsheets… No matter how careful you are, it is almost impossible not to make a mistake once in a while. So every month, it was a big headache for everyone.
When Dasha Grupman tried to simplify her own process that was what she found out. Any software she tried for tabulating sums and building some kind of report (Excel, Quickbooks and many many more) were bafflingly over-spec’d. They’re almost always made to be too powerful, and inevitably offer tools, templates and functions that an estate manager would never need. Using them was like having to perform gastric surgery each time you wanted to take a pulse.
To make her own life easier, she partnered with software developer Uli Graser. Together, over two years, they built a deceptively simple, yet powerful program for managing expenses in private residences, estates, vacation homes and other types of privately owned assets (including yachts and private aircraft).
Latitude 365 was built to help estate managers, personal assistants, family offices, caretaking and estate management firms, and anyone else involved in the estate operations. With the ability to export all its data to Excel, the system works very well in conjunction with a home office or estate management companies existing systems.
With Latitude 365, Dasha Grupman and her partner have taken an estate management specific approach (although the software is equally well suited to managing yachts, private planes and helicopters). Clients don’t need to lay out enormous sums for custom software development, and they don’t need to hire a developer to customize existing software. It’s been developed and tested based on the needs and feedback of those on the front lines of the industry.
The most important feature of Latitude 365 is its simplicity. It’s so easy to figure out and start using that, I would expect every spreadsheet-averse estate manager in the world could file monthly reports to the owner or manager after less than an hour’s introduction.
“Every little bit of functionality of the system is something you need and use and like, and there is nothing else. It is just all there. It is very well thought out in terms of what exactly is need for estate management.”
“Latitude is easy, effective and better than what’s currently available for estate management software.”
