Making Paper Vanish

With Yardi PAYscan

By Mike Sederholm on Jul 17, 2018 in News

Accounts payable and accounts receivable are traditional hotbeds of activity for property managers, especially for large organizations with many properties and units under management.

Boyd Management Inc. (BMI), has streamlined AR and AP by replacing thousands of paper invoices and check payments each month with electronic files that can be processed by staff with the convenience and efficiency of mobile devices.

BMI began as a property developer and construction company in the late 1970s. The company built its first property in South Carolina financed under the United States Department of Agriculture’s Rural Development (RD) program. BMI still operates that property today, 40 years later.

“We developed a lot of properties in the 1970’s, 80’s and 90’s. As tax incentive housing programs reformed during that period, we got a lot of calls from other RD property owners to buy them out. We grew significantly and are now the largest owners of USDA-financed properties in the country,” says Babbie Jaco, vice president and partner at BMI.

Today, BMI oversees more than 350 residential properties in North Carolina, South Carolina, Georgia, Florida and Alabama. The regional portfolio adds to the challenge of a centralized accounting team that serves multiple properties, many in rural areas. Subsidies under management include everything from USDA and HUD 50059 to Low Income Housing Tax Credits.

Through its affiliate, WWJ, LLC, BMI has also rehabilitated large portfolios of properties with creative financing and partnerships. “In 2008, we teamed up with Greystone Affordable Initiatives, CAHCEC, multiple state Housing Finance Agencies and other groups. Collectively, we developed our trademark housing preservation program, and the results have been phenomenal,” says Jaco.

Through tax-exempt bonds and various affordable housing financing tools, the cooperative has preserved and renovated more than 6,000 units, with more than $170 million in construction costs expended as of 2018. “We fast-track major renovations with the goal of completing eight to ten units, every day. Keeping that pace, we normally complete each project in six to twelve weeks. Commitment to that rapid work schedule has helped our program be a success and a blessing to all involved.” says Jaco.

Accounting for it All

BMI’s extensive development, property rehab work and management activity comes with a large accounting workload. BMI makes more than 100,000 payments per year. In the past, BMI employed a large team who hand-processed invoices. All of that has changed since BMI implemented Yardi PAYscan.

BMI’s former process may seem familiar to traditional property managers. Site Managers would tape invoices to a sheet of office paper, use a rubber stamp to place a general ledger coding grid on the paper, fill in the general ledge code, initial for approval, stuff the invoices into a large envelope and then mail the package to their supervisor for approval.

Once delivered, supervisors would then open the package, review the invoices, initial, place them into a new envelope, then drive to the post office to send everything to BMI’s corporate office.

“All of that activity had to be accomplished under strict payment deadlines. We used to get ten heavy postal buckets a day at our corporate office. It all had to be opened, sorted, distributed and keyed on our end. We were desperate for a solution,” says Jaco.

Yardi PAYscan Eases the Burden

Yardi PAYscan streamlines accounts payable by converting paper invoices into digital files that appear automatically in the Yardi Voyager Affordable Housing dashboard. Accounts receivable is similarly made more efficient with full-service payment processing – checks and other forms of payment are handled offsite, and funds are automatically deposited into BMI’s accounts without manual processing by staff.

The benefits of Yardi PAYscan for BMI are most noticeable by the lack of file cabinets overflowing at the office. “Instead of a pile of paperwork each day, we get instant, electronic invoices in Voyager, which can’t be lost. Yardi PAYscan has turned thousands of approvals each month into fast, online transactions,” says Jaco.

BMI supervisors use iPads to review bills to approve, reject or send back to the site manager for more information. They can also add notes and/or redirect bills to be paid from a capital improvement account. “Transactions are seamless throughout the accounting department. The response time is instant, and the supervisor has more control over the entire process,” says Jaco.

Audits are also easier as reviewers no longer spend excessive time looking through file cabinets to find backup documentation. With Yardi PAYscan, reviewers access Yardi Voyager and drill down to transaction level data, which provides an image of the bill paid.

“PAYscan is the solution. It has changed our business for the better improving efficiencies with real savings in terms of soft costs and time. Because an invoice can literally be received, processed and paid in the same week, our vendors are thrilled,” says Jaco.

Is your accounting team still paying bills and processing payments manually? Cut the paperwork from AR and AP, and gain easy to process digital files that appear on your dashboard each day. Visit Yardi.com/PAYscan and schedule a demo today.