A front desk for property managers — tenant calls handled, day and night

Property management runs on the phone, and the phone is always the problem. Tenants ring about dripping taps during your open homes. Owners ring about statements while you're mid-routine-inspection. And the genuine emergencies — the burst pipe, the dead hot water in July — have a knack for landing at 11pm on a Saturday.

Every call that rings out becomes something worse: a follow-up email, a second call, a complaint to the principal, or — if the water kept running — a damage claim that started life as a two-minute conversation nobody answered.

The usual answers all cost too much. Rostering staff onto an after-hours phone burns out your best people. A traditional answering service takes a message — "a tenant called about a leak" — with half the details missing, so your PM starts the morning playing phone tag; and with the big incumbents, after-hours coverage is an opt-in extra carrying surcharges they don't publish (checked 24 August 2026). Giday answers around the clock, captures the whole request the first time, and (from Starter) escalates real emergencies straight away. It never pretends to be a person: ask, and it says so.

The expensive part of maintenance isn't the tradie — it's the chasing. A report that arrives as "something's wrong with the shower" costs your team two more phone calls before anyone can be sent. So Giday is built to ask before it hangs up:

From Starter, the caller gets a text confirming the request is logged, and your team gets the complete report by SMS and email — one message with everything on it. On Essentials, the report is emailed.

Here's a routine maintenance call, the way Giday runs it:

Giday: Giday, you've reached Northside Property Group — Vera speaking, on a recorded line. How can I help you?

Caller: Hi, I'm a tenant at 14 Curlew Street — the kitchen tap won't stop dripping.

Giday: Let's get that logged properly. Can I grab your name and best contact number?

Caller: Sarah Nguyen, 0400 123 456.

Giday: Thanks Sarah. Is it just a drip, or is water getting anywhere it shouldn't?

Caller: Just a drip, but it's constant.

Giday: Righto. If a plumber needs to come out, is someone usually home, or is entry okay with notice? Any pets?

Caller: I work weekdays — entry's fine with notice. One cat, she's friendly.

Giday: Got it — dripping kitchen tap at 14 Curlew Street, entry with notice, one friendly cat. That's gone through to your property manager, and I'll text you now to confirm it's logged. Anything else?

One call, everything captured, nobody chased. On the phone line where Giday's engine runs today — a Brisbane locksmith, a trade built on urgent access call-outs — messages were relayed to the owner by text throughout the measured window (30 July–22 August 2026), with 1 call in 5 arriving outside business hours.

After hours is where property phones really bite. In that same measured window, 1 in 5 calls landed outside business hours and 1 in 10 on a weekend (30 July–22 August 2026). For a rent roll, those are the calls that matter most — and the ones nobody wants to carry a phone for.

Giday's after-hours handling runs on rules you set, not judgement calls made at midnight (putting calls through and texts are Starter and up; on Essentials, everything arrives by email):

• Genuine emergency — water that can't be stopped, no power to the whole property, a gas smell, a property that can't be secured. Giday puts the caller straight through to your nominated on-call number, or sends you an urgent text — whichever you've chosen. On Flat Out you can add your own escalation words and an on-call roster by day of the week.
• Urgent, but not tonight — hot water down, a tripping circuit. Logged in full, flagged urgent, texted to the team so it's the first thing actioned in the morning.
• Routine — the dripping tap, the sticking door. Captured completely and waiting in the morning's queue, with the tenant already texted a confirmation.

There's no after-hours surcharge, ever — the midnight call costs the same as the midday one. More on the overnight side on the after-hours answering page.

One honest note: Giday captures, routes and escalates exactly per your instructions — it doesn't dispatch tradies on its own authority. Who actually attends is always your call.

A property management line carries three very different callers, and Giday sorts them in the first exchange:

• Tenants get the full maintenance intake above, or their tenancy question captured as a complete message for your team.
• Owners get handled like the clients they are — their query taken in full and flagged as an owner matter. Never buried in the maintenance queue.
• Prospective tenants asking about a listing get their details captured and, where you've given Giday your calendar, an inspection time booked on the spot — booking is included from Starter up.

Your greeting, your agency's name, your rules about who gets put through and who gets a callback. Giday answers as part of your agency, and tells any caller who asks that it's your virtual receptionist, not a person.

Integration promises are where this industry fibs the most, so here's the honest version. Giday's job-system linking (the kind proven with ServiceM8) is included on the Busy plan and up, and you connect it yourself in the dashboard, or we'll do it with you on a call.

Below Busy — and for platforms we can't yet wire — everything still arrives cleanly: complete requests by email (and by SMS too from Starter), and call transcripts from the Steady plan up. Nothing is lost; it just arrives as messages rather than rows in your system. On Flat Out, Giday also drafts replies to emailed quote requests from your price list, with a follow-up, so enquiries that land in your inbox get handled too.

If you run PropertyMe, Console, or anything else — ask us before you sign up, and we'll give you a straight yes, no, or "it arrives as messages for now". No surprises after the paperwork.

Giday isn't a promise on a slide. The engine has been live since late July 2026 answering for a Brisbane locksmith — urgent call-outs, quotes, bookings, messages relayed by text, the lot. The measured window, 30 July to 22 August 2026:

A locksmith's phone and a property manager's phone have more in common than you'd think: urgent access problems, after-hours emergencies, and callers whose details need taking properly the first time. It's the same engine that answers for tradies all day — your agency gets it with the intake and routing tuned for a rent roll.

Every plan answers 24/7 and relays messages; from Starter up it also books into a calendar and texts as well as emails — booking isn't an add-on.

All prices AUD including GST, month to month, no setup fee, no lock-in. Extra minutes are 50c on every plan, and texts past your allowance 15c each. If a bigger plan would have cost less for the month, we email you the figures — moving is your choice. The full table lives on the pricing page.

Put Giday on the line that hurts most — the after-hours number, the maintenance line, or overflow for when reception's flat out. Give it a go — 60 minutes of call time on us, for a week. Card up front, nothing charged unless you keep it, and the trial doesn't start until your receptionist answers its first call — not before.

Your 24/7 receptionist, from $19 a month — first week free.