Great Goals

Barkan Management Company

By Joel Nelson on Oct 17, 2016 in People

One of Jim Merski’s favorite quotes, rooted in a 17^th Century Italian proverb, is “Good is the enemy of great.”

“Our goal is to be great,” says Merski, chief financial officer of Boston-based Barkan Management Company Inc., a Yardi client that manages 147 residential communities with more than 23,000 units, primarily condominiums, along with other residential and commercial properties.

Merski has lived that philosophy in his 2 ½ years with Barkan by focusing on process improvement, reporting and consistent financial processes—aiming, he says, to “bring our company to a much higher level of customer service, with a focus on reaching excellence.”

Merski understands that excellence in condo management requires accommodating the human element.  “Accounting is not numbers. Accounting is communication. We need to break down the results of operations to the lowest common denominator for our board members, many of whom are non-financial people. They are volunteers, so we want them to get their arms around what’s going on very quickly,” he says.

Colorful Numbers

Barkan has enlisted a number of Yardi solutions in that effort.  For example, Yardi-built modules translate financial information in the company’s Yardi Voyager^® property management and accounting platform into color-coded graphics.  This includes current and historical accounts receivables, payables, budgets and operating funds, along with replacement reserve funds, total cash, and changes in cash over a 12-month period.

“The objective is to help a non-financial user of the financials (board member, trustee, director) to understand what’s going on within minutes of looking at the charts and graphs, without having to dive into the numbers.  Anyone can see at a glance how the month went,” Merski says.  “Voyager gives our clients and site property managers a very nice sense of how their associations are doing on a cash basis.  Feedback from them has been very strong.”

This convenient data presentation helps the professional number-minders as well.  “Just by looking at a bar graph, I can see if we had net income for the month but a net loss year to date, and determine if we’re on the right track,” Merski says.

Efficiency Boosters

Another tool that makes life easier for Barkan’s clients is CondoCafe^®, an online service platform that integrates with Yardi Voyager to allow real-time access to financial information.  “CondoCafe gives condo boards a powerful set of tools, including access to tenant ledgers, ownership information and document posting.  Having that capability within Voyager is easy, convenient and cost-effective, which is important because condo associations generally are on tight budgets,” Merski says.

Regarding another important aspect of condo management, Merski says, “We were challenged by our clients to provide automatic responses immediately upon submission of a maintenance request. We responded by adopting Yardi Maintenance™, which delivers automatic email responses at four stages, which is very much attuned to what our clients require of us.”

Barkan shored up its internal operations with Yardi PAYscan™, an element of the Yardi Procure to Pay™ that converts invoices into electronic transactions and automates approval workflows.  “Moving an invoice quickly among approvers is a fundamental tool of good accounting, and we do that with PAYscan.  Within two days, we go from initial invoice scanning to cutting a check.  Eliminating manual touch points is essential to effective processes and efficiency,” Merski says.

Unified Business

Performing multiple operations seamlessly is the bedrock of Barkan’s search for excellence.  “To me, the holy grail of financial accounting, and the biggest challenge in any organization, is integrating operations with accounting in a single database,” Merski says.  “That’s a sign of organizational growth, and Voyager gave us a unique opportunity to do it.  Integrating our best practices with Voyager’s workflows was a huge step in instituting consistent processes for accessing information, which is so important to good financial accounting.  We also wanted condo board members to have something that was easy to use.  Giving them the ability to easily download information fulfilled that mission.

“We’re trying to get of the point of anticipating client needs. When they approach us, we want to say ‘Yes, we’ve thought of that, and we’ve got you covered.’  The Yardi portfolio of products is well suited to put us in that position.”

Which will take Barkan even closer to great.