Palace alternative for property managers
Managing a growing rent roll on Palace? Keep the rent roll. Drop the per-property bill.
For agencies in New Zealand and Australia managing a few hundred properties. In 30 minutes Sam goes through your Palace invoice line by line, counts the add-on products you pay for and what your property managers actually use, and shows what one system you own would replace it with. Your owners, properties and tenancies come across, the tenancy rules are built in, and we run it for you for one setup fee, then a monthly retainer that does not move when you sign another owner.
Palace is listed from NZ$1.83 per property per month, which is NZ$21.96 a year for every property on the rent roll, with a NZ$200 monthly minimum (NZ$2,400 a year), before GST. Implementation is from NZ$1,500, data conversion is quoted on top, and Maintenance Plus, Inspection Manager, Secure Sign and Invoice Automate are each priced separately.
- check_circle30 minutes with Sam, no obligation
- check_circleBring last month's Palace invoice
- check_circleYou leave with the yearly number, side by side
The cost, side by side
Palace charges per property. An owned system charges once.
On a small rent roll the Palace subscription is not a large bill, and we will say so on the call. The cost grows in three places: every property you win adds to it, every add-on product is another line, and every change to how you work is a request to the vendor. An owned system costs a setup fee and a flat retainer, whatever the size of the rent roll.
Palace: a price on every property
Listed from NZ$1.83 per property per month, NZ$21.96 a year each, before GST. Win forty more owners and the bill rises whether or not anybody does more work.
Palace: a floor under the smallest agency
A NZ$200 monthly minimum, NZ$2,400 a year before GST, however few properties you manage. The floor is the start of the bill, not the end of it.
Palace: add-ons and setup on top
Maintenance Plus, Inspection Manager, Secure Sign and Invoice Automate are each priced on request. Implementation is from NZ$1,500 and data conversion is quoted separately.
Owned: one system for the whole rent roll
One setup fee, then a monthly retainer. A new owner with twelve properties does not change it, because nothing is priced per property.
Owned: the tenancy rules in, not on a higher plan
Arrears steps, entry notice periods, bond lodging and healthy homes are checked against your records, with the section of the Act named on every finding.
Owned: your rent roll history stays yours
Years of tenancies, inspections, maintenance and owner correspondence in a database your agency owns, not behind a vendor's export you pay to have moved.
What you get instead
A property management system you talk to
Arrears
The file the Tenancy Tribunal will actually read
Arrears is not a number, it is a process with dated steps. One question shows who is behind, how far in calendar days and in working days, and the exact step the Residential Tenancies Act expects next.
- check Five working days brings a notice of overdue rent (s 55AA), fourteen days a notice to remedy (s 56), twenty one days the Tribunal (s 55(1)(a))
- check Every notice already served, with the date, so the gaps in the file are visible before the hearing is
- check Working days counted separately from calendar days, because the Act uses both and they are not the same number
- check The arrears letter drafted from the ledger and the notices, for a person to check and send
Compliance
The healthy homes register, checked against the data
Seven compliance items on every property: the five healthy homes standards, the smoke alarms and the insulation statement. Each with a status, a date, the evidence and the regulation it comes from.
- check Eleven rules checked in one go, each citing its section: RTA 1986 ss 18, 19, 24, 48, 51, 55, 55AA, 56 and 13A
- check Healthy homes checked standard by standard against the 2019 regulations and the 1 July 2025 deadline
- check A bond not lodged inside 23 working days, and a bond over four weeks rent, both found before the tenant finds them
- check Tenant records still held years after the tenancy ended, under Privacy Act 2020 principle 9
The properties
Inspections and maintenance, with the notice period checked
Routine inspections against your own cycle, and the 48 hour entry notice checked before anybody drives there. Maintenance sorted by who it is waiting on, not by when it was logged.
- check An inspection booked with less than 48 hours notice is flagged, not served (RTA 1986 s 48(3))
- check Habitability jobs first, then anything sitting on an owner for more than a week, with the owner named
- check Approved work nobody sent a contractor to, and finished work no contractor has invoiced
- check A branded inspection report made from the room-by-room findings, and marked sent only when it has been
Yours
Your database, your paperwork, your rules
Your records in a database you own, branded documents made from them, and simple pages for the week. No client money anywhere: the rent trust account stays in the system that holds it.
- check Owner monthly summaries, inspection reports and arrears letters in your colours from one brand kit
- check Read-only pages for the week and the portfolio, nothing to log in to
- check The total weekly gap between what your tenants pay and the market rent on file, and which reviews are legally available today
- check Your Palace, PropertyMe or Console Cloud owners, properties and tenancies brought across in one step, with a test run first
Make it yours
Design your own Palace replacement
Everything starts from the open-source base. Then it gets your name, the parts you run, your rules and your data from Palace. Try it here, and we build the real one.
2. What it runs
3. Make it fit
4. Your colour
Answered from your own database
Good morning. Here is what needs you today.
We build it from the open-source base, bring your Palace data across and run it for you.
What it looks like
Ask it like you would ask a colleague
Real answers from the demo data that ships with Property Management for Claude Code. It runs in Claude Code inside the Claude app, so it feels like any chat you already use.
Property Management for Claude Code
Connected to your own database
Which tenants are behind on rent right now?
Arrears (4 tenancies, $3,728 owing, 2 past fourteen days)
TEN-2007
- Property
- 3/14 Coromandel Street
- Tenants
- Marcus Vaeau
- Owing
- $1,760
- Days
- 27
- Wk days
- 19
- Rent
- $440 weekly
- Last paid
- 2026-08-18
- Next step
- Apply to the Tenancy Tribunal (RTA 1986 s 55(1)(a))
TEN-2013
- Property
- 7 Duncan Street
- Tenants
- Holly Redmond, Isaac ...
- Owing
- $1,120
- Days
- 14
- Wk days
- 10
- Rent
- $560 weekly
- Last paid
- 2026-09-01
- Next step
- Serve the 14 day notice to remedy (RTA 1986 s 56)
TEN-2019
- Property
- 62 Britomart Street
- Tenants
- Omar Haddad
- Owing
- $700
- Days
- 7
- Wk days
- 5
- Rent
- $700 weekly
- Last paid
- 2026-09-08
- Next step
- Serve the notice of overdue rent (RTA 1986 s 55AA)
TEN-2004
- Property
- 22 Rata Grove
- Tenants
- Priya Nadarajah, Tom ...
- Owing
- $148
- Days
- 1
- Wk days
- 1
- Rent
- $760 weekly
- Last paid
- 2026-09-15
- Next step
- Ring them today, before it becomes a notice
| Tenancy | Property | Tenants | Owing | Days | Wk days | Rent | Last paid | Next step |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| TEN-2007 | 3/14 Coromandel Street | Marcus Vaeau | $1,760 | 27 | 19 | $440 weekly | 2026-08-18 | Apply to the Tenancy Tribunal (RTA 1986 s 55(1)(a)) |
| TEN-2013 | 7 Duncan Street | Holly Redmond, Isaac ... | $1,120 | 14 | 10 | $560 weekly | 2026-09-01 | Serve the 14 day notice to remedy (RTA 1986 s 56) |
| TEN-2019 | 62 Britomart Street | Omar Haddad | $700 | 7 | 5 | $700 weekly | 2026-09-08 | Serve the notice of overdue rent (RTA 1986 s 55AA) |
| TEN-2004 | 22 Rata Grove | Priya Nadarajah, Tom ... | $148 | 1 | 1 | $760 weekly | 2026-09-15 | Ring them today, before it becomes a notice |
Where each one has got to TEN-2007 3/14 Coromandel Street overdue notice 2026-08-30 14 day notice 2026-08-30 Tribunal no TEN-2013 7 Duncan Street overdue notice 2026-09-05 14 day notice NONE Tribunal no TEN-2019 62 Britomart Street overdue notice NONE 14 day notice NONE Tribunal no TEN-2004 22 Rata Grove overdue notice NONE 14 day notice NONE Tribunal no
Rent is overdue once it is five working days late (RTA 1986 s 55AA). Three of those notices inside ninety days, or twenty one days of arrears, and the tenancy can be ended through the Tribunal (s 55(1)(a) and (aa)).
Ask it anything
Questions Palace cannot answer
Every one of these is a real question the demo answers today. Yours will be different, and that is the point.
Switching
How to switch from Palace
Moving off Palace is mostly an export, one import command, and a short period where you check the numbers before you turn Palace off.
- 1
Export your rent roll from Palace
Go into Palace's reporting module and export owners, properties and tenancies. Palace's own export screen decides the exact format, so check what your account allows: usually CSV or Excel. That is the data this system needs to rebuild your rent roll. Inspection photographs, stored documents and the trust ledger do not export this way, and they do not come across.
- 2
Run the import, dry run first
Start the import from Palace with your owners, properties and tenancies files, doing a test run first. It tells you exactly what it would create and every record it would skip, without touching your existing records. Read that result before you do anything else. When it looks right, run the import for real to load it.
- 3
Check what the import brought across
Every property that comes across gets its seven compliance items created as unknown, not compliant, because the old system not flagging a problem is not the same as the property meeting the standard. The paid-to date from the export becomes an opening charge in the rent ledger, so check that your arrears figure looks right from the first minute before you rely on it.
- 4
Run both systems side by side
Keep Palace running and use the new system alongside it for a short period. Log new activity, arrears steps and notices in both, and compare the arrears list, inspections due and compliance register against what Palace shows. This is how you catch a mapping mistake before it becomes a notice served on the wrong date or a rent figure your owners see.
- 5
Switch Palace off
Once the numbers match and every property manager is comfortable working from the new system day to day, cancel Palace. Keep whatever export or archive Palace gives you for anything that did not come across, such as inspection photographs and stored documents, since those stay wherever you have put them and are not rebuilt here.
Where the real effort goes
The import handles owners, properties and tenancies. The real work is everything specific to your agency: your inspection cycle, any custom fields you have added over the years, house rules for arrears, and deciding how far back your rent history needs to go. That is judgment, not a script. Enterprise DNA does this mapping and runs the whole move when they install and run it for you.
Not ready for a call?
Get your Palace switch plan by email
We will send you the step-by-step plan for moving your business off Palace, what the move really involves, and how we would do it for you.
Sent. Check your inbox.
Your Palace switch plan is on its way.
Rather talk it through? Book a call arrow_forwardThree ways to run it
Run it yourself, have it shaped to your agency, or have it run for you
Open source
Do it yourself
Free
- 1 Clone the repo
- 2 npm run demo, then open the folder in Claude Code
- 3 Type /arrears
- 4 Import your Palace export and point it at your own database
Built around your business
We customise it
One setup fee
- check Your inspection cycle, arrears house rules, agency agreement and owner statement layout written in
- check Your Palace owners, properties and tenancies brought across, with every property's compliance items checked one by one
- check An inspection app with a camera and offline mode, or an owner page, if your team needs one
- check Handed over for your property managers to run
Omni by Enterprise DNA
We run it for you
One setup fee, then a monthly retainer
- check Everything in the customised version, installed and connected to your mail, your accounting system and the trust account you already run
- check The week's arrears steps, inspections due, compliance checks and owner summaries prepared for you
- check New owners and rule changes added as you grow, at no extra per-property cost
- check It runs inside Omni, our managed Command Centre, with the rest of your business
Questions
Instead of Palace, answered
Our Palace bill is not that big. Is this worth a call? expand_more
Maybe not, and Sam will tell you. A small agency on the NZ$200 minimum pays NZ$2,400 a year before GST, and that alone is rarely the reason to move. The call is worth it if you pay for several add-on products, if your rent roll is growing, or if your team spends hours each month rebuilding reports and explaining owner statements the system will not let you change. You leave with the yearly number either way.
Where does the trust account go? expand_more
It stays exactly where it is. This system never holds rent, never receipts a payment into a bank and never pays an owner. It keeps a rent record so the arrears maths works: what was charged, what came in, what is owed. Trust accounting is a regulated obligation with an auditor attached under the Real Estate Agents Act 2008, and it belongs in the system that already carries it.
Our property managers do inspections on an iPad. Does this replace that? expand_more
The free version does not include an inspection app, so keep whatever you use for the visit itself. It handles everything around the visit: whether the inspection is past your cycle, whether the 48 hour entry notice went out, the findings room by room, the maintenance they turn into, and the branded report. When we build your version, an inspection app with a camera and offline mode can be added so it all lives in one place.
What happens to years of rent roll history? expand_more
Owners, properties and tenancies export from Palace's reporting module and come across in one step, with a test run first that lists everything it would create and skip. The paid-to date becomes an opening charge, so your arrears figure is right from day one. The free version does not bring across inspection photographs, stored documents or the trust ledger; when we do the move for you, we bring across what you need.
Our property managers are not technical. Who runs it? expand_more
Nobody needs to be technical. A property manager asks "who is behind on rent and what do we do about it" in plain words and gets the answer with the next legal step named. If they can write an email, they can run this. When we run it for you, the weekly checks are done before Monday and your team reads the results.
Find out what Palace costs your agency each year
Bring last month's Palace invoice. In 30 minutes Sam works out what your agency pays per year, including the add-on products, what your property managers actually use, and what one system you own would replace it with. If it is a fit, we build it and run it. If it is not, take the free version and run it yourself.
Property Management for Claude Code is free and open source, published by Enterprise DNA.
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