Heartland Properties, Inc. (HPI) is a property management company that manages rental properties on behalf of owners. The company offers a comprehensive collection of services to these owners, including advertising the property, interviewing potential renters, negotiating leases, inspecting and maintaining the property, and collecting rent from the renters. The following is a brief description of the kinds of data Heartland Properties is concerned with.
HPI has offices in several cities throughout the Heartland. Each office is identified by an Office Number. Each office has an address (Street, City, State, Zipcode), and telephone and fax numbers. Each office also has a year in which it was opened.
Employees of HPI are assigned to work at branch offices. Each employee has an employee identifier, first and last names, a social-security number, as well as a home address and telephone number. For each employee, HPI keeps track of when that employee was hired, the employee's gender, and job title. For each employee, HPI keeps track of a single next-of-kin who may be notified in the event of an emergency.
Employees are divided into three categories: Managers, Associates, and Administration Assistants. Managers are salaries employees and a given a monthly allowance for maintaining a company car. Associates and administrative assistances are both hourly employees, and HPI tracks their hourly rate.
Each office has one senior manager, and several regular managers. Each manager manages up to 10 associates and administrative assistants.
An example of the form used to record these details is shown below.
Owners own the properties HPI manages. Owners may be either business or private owners. In either case, an owner is given a unique owner number, and HPI records the owner's name, address, and telephone number. For owners that are businesses, HPI also must record the name of a contact person.
Each property has a unique property number, as well as an address. Moreover, the property is managed by a particularly HPI office. Each property has a type (house, apartment), a particularly number of rooms, and a particular number of baths.
In order for the business to work effectively, HPI must be able to identify quickly the properties that are of potential interest to a client. Consequently, when a client approaches HPI, the company records the client's maximum monthly rent, the type of property (apartment, house), and desired number of rooms. The basic client data include a unique client number, the client's name, address, and phone number. HPI also records the employee who initially interviews the renter.
When a client, a potential renter, approaches HPI, a process begins which continues until HPI's association with that renter has ended. Following the preliminary interview, the following stages may be followed:
One of the services HPI provides to owners is the regular inspection and maintenance of the properties. Each property is inspected no less frequently than every six months. Whenever a lease ends, the property is also inspected. For each inspection, HPI keeps track of the date, property, and HPI employee making the inspection. The employee's comments following the inspection are also recorded.
Each day, each HPI office prints out a list of all of the properties currently available for rent. An example of such a report is found below.
Periodically, management wishes to see a record of the inspections performed on a particular property. One such listing appears as follows:
