I'm not sure how many times I've heard this advice. It's one of those mantras that gets spouted to all new property investors and while it is really good advice, people very rarely explain what it actually means. A lot is written in property investment about researching the right area, finding the right property, and making sure it ticks all of the requirements of a good investment, but once you’re through settlement and have tenants in place, many people just sit back, close their eyes and hope that it performs the way they need it to.

When I first started investing in property, I wanted to make sure that I didn't fall into this trap. I'd dreamed of investing in property since I was a kid attending open homes with my mum, and I was serious about making it work. I'd listened to the advice and was ready to treat my investments like a business and so I did what most investors do and turned to the trusty excel spreadsheet. While this served me well for a few years, as I continued to fill my sheet with formulas, charts and statistics, I became frustrated with the limitations of the tool (or my abilities within it). I wanted an easy to use platform that gave me the ability to manage and track all aspects of my portfolio, from small cashflow decisions to macro performance. I searched for an existing tool but couldn't find anything that first of all didn’t cost most of my rental income but also that actually met my needs, and so I set to work building my own.