{"id":4669,"date":"2013-01-03T05:00:40","date_gmt":"2013-01-03T13:00:40","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.yardi.com\/blog\/?p=4669"},"modified":"2021-02-03T16:44:13","modified_gmt":"2021-02-04T00:44:13","slug":"a-paperless-reality","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.yardi.com\/blog\/a-paperless-reality\/","title":{"rendered":"A Paperless Reality"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"online<\/a>It\u2019s the time of year to make resolutions, and Steven Rea of Roscoe Properties<\/a> tells us that the Austin, Texas property management firm has set some ambitious property management technology goals for 2013.<\/p>\n

\u201cThis is still very much an analog business,\u201d observes Rea, who has been in the industry for ten years and worked his way up to Vice President of Administration after starting at Roscoe as a site level property manager. \u201cMy goal for our company, and a way our company set itself apart, is as a digital company in an analog world.\u201d<\/p>\n

With that goal in mind, Rea and Roscoe Properties owner Jason Berkowitz are using technology best practices to make the properties they manage operate efficiently, for their employees and residents alike. Two of their goals for the year are ambitious by industry norms, but attainable given the progress they\u2019ve pushed forward so far.<\/p>\n

\u201cI want to be able to say that we have 95 percent of our residents pay electronically and we have a 100 percent paperless office by January 2014,\u201d Rea said confidently. Currently, 65 percent of the Roscoe portfolio submits monthly rents electronically; up from 10 percent two years ago, with some portfolios the company manages boasting over 80 percent electronic remissions. In January 2013, Roscoe Properties will manage 3,000 rental units, the majority in Austin, with 700 units in San Antonio.<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019ve got my accounting department almost paperless, just making use of the technologies we already have. It used to be that accounting departments would have file cabinets and banker boxes full of invoices. We still have those file cabinets, but they\u2019re all empty,\u201d Rea said.<\/p>\n

\"residents<\/a>A last remaining barrier to an all-digital office has been the historic need for paper records. Though Roscoe now rarely executes a lease that isn\u2019t filled out and signed electronically (the company uses Blue Moon Software, the exclusive distributor of the official lease forms approved by the Texas Apartment Association), sometimes there is a need for copies of lease documents, such as a property sale or client request.<\/p>\n

\u201cThere\u2019s not yet an efficient way to provide a client or a third party with a full set of lease files. That\u2019s the biggest obstacle. I think that Sharepoint<\/a> is going to offer me that solution \u2013 that\u2019s my hope, and that\u2019s what we\u2019re going to try to do.\u201d He was referring to Yardi Orion for Sharepoint<\/a>, which leverages SharePoint tools, and combines the financial and operational data in your Yardi Voyager system with Yardi Multifamily Suite ancillary services to provide business intelligence, document management, corporate websites, and employee portals<\/p>\n

Rea mentioned that RentCafe\u2019s electronic lease option is now seamlessly integrated with Blue Moon, eliminating a time-consuming need for data entry duplication. Roscoe\u2019s property marketing websites<\/a> are provided by RentCafe from Yardi Systems, and the company uses Yardi Voyager as its data and accounting platform<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Saving time is a major motivation for Rea, who estimates that he has shaved at least two days off his site teams\u2019 monthly workloads by pushing electronic payments alone. And the move has also helped out with the monthly bottom line.<\/p>\n

\u201cCompanywide I have over 94 percent of rent in the bank on the morning of the fourth of each month. Electronic payment and ease of payment is a big piece of that,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

Converting residents to an electronic payment plan hasn\u2019t been difficult. Roscoe Properties doesn\u2019t charge an additional fee for ACH transactions, so the resident has no reason to attempt to avoid a surcharge by writing an old-fashioned check.\u00a0 When residents are signing their leases \u2013 electronically \u2013 at the leasing office and ask to write a check for the deposit and first month\u2019s rent, agents take them to a computer and sign them up for monthly ACH withdrawals on the spot.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe less time my site staff has to spend processing checks, the more time they can spend serving residents, handling maintenance, and doing the things they need to do for retention,\u201d Rea noted.<\/p>\n

Roscoe is still assessing how it will use tablet computers in its daily operations, and the company was one of two who recently beta tested Leasing Pad <\/a>and suggested changes and refinements to the new Yardi product.\u00a0 Along the way, one resourceful leasing agent used having a tablet in hand to lease a unit to a couple \u2013 even though one half of the duo couldn\u2019t make it to the showing. The agent used the iPad\u2019s video camera to shoot a quick movie of the unit, focusing in on amenities important to the couple. After emailing the video to the male half of the couple stuck at his office, they were able to decide to take the unit right then and there, no second tour required. Rea has suggested that agents could use Apple\u2019s FaceTime product for similar results.<\/p>\n

Rea tells us that the fact that he and Berkowitz are both members of the Millennial generation that\u2019s become such a focus of multifamily marketing these days has probably aided their tech-friendly approach, but it doesn\u2019t define it. They\u2019ve found that an in-person appointment works better than a form letter to handle a lease renewal, for example, especially when there is a rent increase involved. And they ask their staffers to write thank you notes to new residents and prospects \u2013 with a pen, on card stock.<\/p>\n

\u201cPeople are so inundated with automatic stuff. You want to automate everything that should be automated, but from a pure service and people standpoint, there are some things that shouldn\u2019t be automated,\u201d Rea observed.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe didn\u2019t set out and say we want to be a super tech-forward company. We want to be the best property management company, have a high level, professional quality product and service, and compete with any management company out there. For us, the difference has been that we are not afraid to enact change.\u201d<\/p>\n

Sounds like 2013 is going to be another year of innovation at Roscoe Properties \u2013 we can\u2019t wait to see what they\u2019ll do next!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

It\u2019s the time of year to make resolutions, and Steven Rea of Roscoe Properties tells us that the Austin, Texas property management firm has set some ambitious property management technology goals for 2013. \u201cThis is still very much an analog business,\u201d observes Rea, who has been in the industry for ten years and worked his […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":413,"featured_media":4678,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_s2mail":"yes","_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[331,443,239,330,327,328,329],"class_list":["post-4669","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-technology","tag-electronic-rent-payments","tag-home","tag-leasing-pad","tag-paperless-leasing","tag-paperless-office","tag-property-management-software","tag-roscoe-properties"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\nYardi Blog<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"It\u2019s the time of year to make resolutions, and Steven Rea of Roscoe Properties tells us that the Austin, Texas property management firm has set some\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"noindex, follow\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"A Paperless Reality\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"It\u2019s the time of year to make resolutions, and Steven Rea of Roscoe Properties tells us that the Austin, Texas property management firm has set some\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/www.yardi.com\/blog\/a-paperless-reality\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"Yardi Blog\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2013-01-03T13:00:40+00:00\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:modified_time\" content=\"2021-02-04T00:44:13+00:00\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:image\" content=\"https:\/\/www.yardi.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/15\/2013\/01\/onlinepayment.jpg\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:width\" content=\"230\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:height\" content=\"185\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:type\" content=\"image\/jpeg\" \/>\n<meta name=\"author\" content=\"Leah Etling\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary_large_image\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:label1\" content=\"Written by\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data1\" content=\"Leah Etling\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:label2\" content=\"Est. reading time\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data2\" content=\"5 minutes\" \/>\n<script type=\"application\/ld+json\" class=\"yoast-schema-graph\">{\"@context\":\"https:\/\/schema.org\",\"@graph\":[{\"@type\":\"WebPage\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.yardi.com\/blog\/a-paperless-reality\/\",\"url\":\"https:\/\/www.yardi.com\/blog\/a-paperless-reality\/\",\"name\":\"A Paperless Reality - 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