Gaining Efficiency and Offering Better
Customer Service with AppFolio

How has AppFolio allowed you to easily onboard your employees during your transition?

With our previous software, it was very difficult to get new employees up to speed. They had trouble even pulling ledgers and reports for day-to-day operations. The process took several steps and was just plain cumbersome. It took a new user months to learn the old system and pull information from it. With AppFolio, new users get up and running quickly and are able to find almost anything with the universal search feature.

Before the switch, we faced some resistance to change but ultimately we knew we were switching to a better product. Our employees now love AppFolio and have said many times over they would never go back.

How has AppFolio allowed you to access data in real-time?

Before AppFolio, everything was on paper and our files were a mess. Files were missing, leases were missing, and documenting communication with residents was non-existent and usually got lost in emails, which could be lost forever if an employee left. That all changed when we switched to AppFolio. Being able to document communication through texting, email, or notes about phone conversations has really helped us look back at previous and ongoing communications with residents. Now, we can use notes to document everything on a resident’s page. We also use the texting and email features directly from AppFolio and the communication is recorded directly in the tenant record. We have been able to transition to doing everything online where we never lose a thing. It is all in AppFolio.

“When we switched, we had a lot of bad data that the AppFolio team assisted in cleaning up. The diagnostic reports in AppFolio have helped tremendously and we now have confidence that the data we are using in AppFolio to make decisions is correct.

How has processing payments online changed the way you run your business?

It used to take us days to process rent, sometimes up to five days of work. Because of this, posting late fees took even longer because we had stacks of rent checks to go through manually. Using AppFolio, over 60% of rent payments are paid online and AppFolio posts the rent automatically to the resident’s ledger. This has cut processing time in half, saving us 2 full days of work processing rent payments. Late fees are also posted automatically after the grace period so we never have to worry about making sure to enter the charges.

How has AppFolio streamlined your maintenance processes?

Before AppFolio, tracking work orders was non-existent, all done on paper and many work orders or materials were never billed to clients, which was a huge problem. Everything is digital now and maintenance technicians get work orders directly on their phones and take pictures of their work before and after. Missed or dropped work orders are a thing of the past because they are all logged and reviewed. Having this process online has made the entire workflow easier for our staff.

How has using AppFolio affected your leasing operations?

With our previous solution, posting new and upcoming rentals to our website was cumbersome, delayed and was completed by one person once a week. That all changed with AppFolio. Now, managers and leasing agents can post updates to our website within minutes. We went from posting listings when the painting was finished to postings and pre-leasing units 30 days prior to the unit even being vacated.

Our team has jumped on the AppFolio train and has not looked back. An onsite manager who joined us a few months ago told me that she doesn’t ever want to go to another software now that she has seen what AppFolio can do. She wants all her lease applications and signings to be online because she says it’s such an easy process.

Now that our managers are fully brought into online marketing and leasing through AppFolio, it has been extremely positive for our leasing efforts. We are doing it all online and they love it. As a manager, the best part of online leasing for me is that it logs all communication so I can review issues if something goes wrong. It’s really a win-win for everyone.

In the last year, almost every single one of our leases has been completed by e-signature. In the first half of the year alone, we signed over 300 leases and 90% of them were done fully online. It’s been a game changer.

How has AppFolio enabled you to improve your processes and offer better service to your residents?

AppFolio is helping us improve with new processes every day. We love all of the updates and improvements to the software and I constantly look at how our team can implement them to improve our business processes and be more efficient.

AppFolio has enabled us to be more mobile friendly and our residents have greatly benefited from everything going online. Now that they can see their work orders, leases and other information on their resident portal, we’ve cut down on questions coming to our office staff and complaints about missed work orders have dropped to almost zero.

With AppFolio we are ultimately able to provide better customer service to our tenants and clients which is one of our #1 goals. In the future, I hope to continue our processes improvements so we can operate with even more efficiency and continually offer the best service possible.