Did document management get lost in the shuffle as you shifted to a paperless office or remote work environment? Your team may now struggle to track down files and keep versions organized as they send copies back and forth. Fortunately, it’s never too late to achieve the level of organization, accessibility and security that you need. Paperless made easy Paperless documentation is an industry standard. Yet without the right technology, managing electronic documents can be even more challenging than paper files. Users face a series of challenges related to organization, access, storage, searchability, security and integration. Yardi Document Management for SharePoint integrates with Voyager property management software and Microsoft 365 to eliminate paperless documentation challenges. Centralized storage Centralized document storage can take place on local servers and in the Cloud. The latter permits secure access to documents for staff in office, in remote work environments and on the go. Work together from anywhere Improve collaboration without redundancy or version control issues. When combined with the power of SharePoint, interconnected document management software empowers users to collaborate. With Cloud syncing, each team member stays up-to-date with the latest developments. Document management also integrates with Microsoft 365 and other Yardi applications to improve accessibility to and security of your documents. Secure and accessible Managing permissions and end-user access can be a pain point for organizations. Skip the hassle of creating new profiles and credentials within your document management system with Voyager integration. SharePoint permissions will reflect your security settings in Voyager. As a result, users can access files quickly and securely with no VPN required. Intuitive organization Folder structures and hierarchy make organization simple. You can track version history of documents as well as individual contributions from users over time. Such tracking makes it easy to...

With seventeen communities—and more on the way—each submitting 100-200 invoices a month, Linda Adams was shuffling a lot of paper. As the Accounting Manager for Northbridge Companies, a New England-based senior living provider, much of her time used to be spent digging up receipts or tracking down paper records across various decentralized offices. “When I had questions, I had to call another office and ask them. They’d have to find the invoice, scan it, send it to me for review. It was very time consuming on both ends.” But now, solving a discrepancy is “easy, easy, easy,” thanks to Yardi PAYscan. In 2011, Northbridge adopted Yardi’s Procure to Pay vendor management and electronic invoicing platform to streamline invoicing across all properties. The new system allowed the accounting department to access invoices and check whether payments had cleared without having to pick up the phone to call another office. In other words, team members could self-serve, reducing internal dependencies and churn. But time savings wasn’t the only benefit of a new system. PAYscan eliminates copying, mailing, and storing paper—and minimizes touch points that can lead to lost invoices and data entry errors. “There’s no need for us to use up valuable office space with paper invoices anymore when it’s all right there electronically. Once the tax returns are done, we can throw the documents out,” Linda says. “I can go back and look at invoices from 2012, and it’s right there. Plus, I work from home a few days a week, and it really cuts down on all that lugging paper back and forth.” The Northbridge team appreciates PAYscan’s versatility, too. “You can make the approval process as intricate or as easy as you want, which I love,” said Linda. Customizable workflows, flexible payment options...

At one point, Georgia-based apartment community developer and manager Walton Communities’ mission to provide exceptional residential, affordable and active adult housing at a great value in a friendly neighborhood environment was awash in paperwork. Staff members from 20 Atlanta-area properties had to transport from 25 to 60 invoices each to the corporate office in Marietta every week. “Along with the money spent on paper, gas and car wear-and-tear, this obligation took our staff members away from leasing and resident service,” said Jennifer Price, IT systems trainer for Walton Communities. “As we moved to grow our portfolio by 50%, we knew the process would become even more cumbersome. We quickly realized that we needed a more efficient invoice processing system.” That was Yardi PAYscan Full Service, with which Walton Communities’ vendors send their invoices to a secure, centralized email or physical lockbox monitored by Yardi. The Yardi team scans and enters the account data, and the invoices show in the client’s Yardi Voyager platform as invoice registers, ready for review, approval and processing as payables. All the client’s site teams have to do is review, add details and approve—without driving anywhere. With invoice processing off their hands, Walton Communities’ staff members can focus on their core business of leasing, resident service and property maintenance. Yardi PAYscan Full Service adds even more convenience by automatically attaching purchase orders, a major time-saver for maintenance and procurement teams. Yardi PAYscan Full Service extends the benefits Walton Communities gains from the Yardi Procure to Pay Suite, an end-to-end procurement, vendor management, invoice processing and payments solution. “Leasing and customer service are the core of our business. Yardi PAYscan Full Service lets our staff concentrate on these activities, rather than dealing with invoicing and billing,” Price said. “The process of...

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...

Longtime Yardi client Gary Shaw, president of Arizona-based commercial property manager Arcadia Management Group Inc., is a fan of doing business with a single connected solution. “Going with the single stack approach was a no-brainer,” he says, referring to Arcadia Management’s use of Yardi Voyager, Yardi Procure to Pay, Yardi Inspection and other products from the Yardi Commercial Suite. “It’s so much more efficient housing several business operations in one place rather than updating software in separate databases for finance, maintenance and other operations.” Although highly successful as a third-party management company, “we are constantly looking for ways to improve our business processes,” Shaw says, which is why Arcadia Management Group frequently volunteers as a beta tester for new Yardi products. Too Many Databases An unresolved dilemma recently gave Arcadia Management a chance to go first again. The company kept some documents, such as invoices processed through Yardi Procure to Pay in the Yardi cloud. Other content, such as vendor management activities uploaded from VENDORCafé and various lease and property documents, were kept in Microsoft SharePoint. “Maintaining security on multiple systems was hard on our users. I didn’t want to continue running multiple databases. That produces duplicate effort as well as inconsistent security permissions,” Shaw says. “I wanted our document management functionality to become completely integrated with our business the way our other Yardi products were. “When Yardi approached me with a new solution that linked Voyager with SharePoint, it patched a huge hole in our document management system.” Centralized Content Management That solution is Yardi Document Management for SharePoint, which integrates Yardi Voyager business data with the Microsoft SharePoint platform to create a single, centralized content management solution. Arcadia Management Group became the first beta user in May 2017. “Going between Voyager and...

With thirty years of experience in nursing and senior care, Rhonda Knisley understands the power of ditching paper records for digital data. For the last three decades, Rhonda Knisley has watched healthcare change from paper archives and prescription pads to digital data and mobile record keeping. All along, she’s focused on providing senior living residents with personalized care while being at the forefront of some the industry’s newest technologies and services. Rough and Rewarding “When I started my job 30 years ago, I walked into the building and down the longest hall. There were 35 residents all lined up on one side of the hallway in their wheelchairs. I looked at them and thought to myself, ‘This may be the worst job I’ll ever have,’” she admits. “But then I absolutely loved it! I walked in as a floor nurse and within six months, I was the director of nursing. Within a year, I was the executive director of nursing. In the end, I became a consultant. Overall, it’s been very rewarding.” As Director of Nursing for First Community Village, Rhonda Knisley has done everything from coordinating software implementations to running multi-facility nursing operations. “I loved working in the continuing care arena,” she says. “I’d see people come into the healthcare center and then transition back into the community, and I can see how they are able to stay connected with their friends and family.” A Multifaceted Population Headquartered Ohio, National Church Residences is the nation’s largest not-for-profit provider of affordable senior housing and services with 340 communities in 28 states and Puerto Rico. At First Community Village, a National Church Residence property located in Arlington, OH, the community residents encompass a varied demographic. “We have a very affluent population, and because it’s Upper Arlington,...

Commercial property manager Arcadia Management Group Inc. has saved money and enhanced tenant services by expanding its Yardi Voyager® property management and accounting system with products from the Yardi Commercial Suite™. Arcadia adopted Yardi Procure to Pay™, an end-to-end, paperless procure to pay system that includes purchase order and invoice processing and customized approval workflows.  The solution has produced “out of this world” results, according to Gary Shaw, president of Arcadia.  “Completing approvals and vendor payments electronically has saved time, money and the environment,” Shaw said.  “Our per-invoice cost has dropped 60% with Procure to Pay.  We process about 5,000 invoices per month, so that translates to thousands of dollars and a lot of paper.” He added, “Procure to Pay also speeds up our common area maintenance reconciliations.  With the invoices captured in Yardi Voyager, we no longer have to photocopy paper invoices and send them to vendors with the reconciliations.” To increase the level of service to its tenants, Arcadia adopted another Yardi Commercial Suite product, Yardi COMMERCIALCafé™, which gives Arcadia’s tenants a portal for submitting maintenance requests online or from a mobile device.  Allowing tenants to submit requests through the portal enables Arcadia to respond to and fulfill work orders much more quickly, driving higher productivity and increasing tenant satisfaction.  “A key advantage of COMMERCIALCafé is that our work order system is now integrated with Voyager, eliminating duplicate data entry.  Our previous work order system was separate from our property management platform, and recording actions in two databases was inefficient,” Shaw said.  Yardi COMMERCIALCafé also allows tenants to pay rent online, review accounts and update profile information. Also integrating with Yardi Voyager and providing online and mobile access is Yardi Inspection™, which Arcadia uses to set up, schedule and perform unit and...