Pennrose Adds Products

From Yardi Multifamily Suite

By Joel Nelson on Jan 1, 2015 in News

“Our goal is to let our community managers concentrate on helping our company grow and increase revenue,” said Samuel Lopez, systems and implementation manager for multifamily property development company Pennrose Management. “The single solution stack approach that we adopted with Yardi Voyager^® and the Yardi Multifamily Suite™ gives us the tools to do that.”

He added, “We don’t want to add work for our managers; we want them following leads and building relationships with current and potential residents, which is what the Yardi products help them do.”

With a sizeable affordable housing portfolio, a core property management and accounting system that incorporates strong compliance is crucial to Pennrose. “Before Yardi Voyager^® Affordable, we hand-wrote or typed in tenant income certifications (TIC) or HUD compliance forms 50059 and 50058, then figured out the calculations manually. It took 30-45 minutes to type a TIC, whereas Voyager completes it in a couple of seconds,” Lopez said. “The compliance piece has been an awesome addition, not only offering easy access to TICs but also tracking compliance for our Tax Credit and HOME program properties.”

Pennrose improved its leasing process with RentCafe™, a full online leasing and resident services solution. “RentCafe introduced our staff to the notion that people can complete the entire leasing process online in the convenience of their homes, instead of coming to the office. The integration of RentCafe and Voyager ensures unit availability listings are current. Letting prospects go online to set up appointments, complete applications and credit checks makes our managers’ lives a lot easier,” Lopez said.

Another step toward efficiency came with Yardi CHECKscan™, which scans paper rent checks into electronic transactions. “Before CHECKscan, our managers had to do double work—manually type in payments and do receipting, and then go to the bank and scan the checks there. With CHECKscan, you hit ‘post’ and Voyager does the rest. It goes into a ledger and hits our bank accounts with no problem,” Lopez said.

Pennrose is taking steps to add other Yardi Multifamily Suite products to Yardi Voyager, including a resident screening solution and an end-to-end procurement platform.

“If Yardi can do all these things from one platform, why should we burden our managers with multiple passwords and user names? With Voyager and the Multifamily Suite it’s one username and password. Our managers are embracing what Yardi has to offer, which makes my job a lot easier as well,” Lopez said.

With more than 30 years of experience, Pennrose combines quality development and proven management to deliver exceptional lifestyle-centered communities for its residents. With the superior knowledge and unparalleled dedication to get the job done right, Pennrose develops and operates both conventional and affordable communities throughout the eastern half of the United States. For more information, visit www.pennrose.com.