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Legacy Upgrades
Conversions
Regardless of the training option that you choose, your HUDManager 2000, HUDManager 2000 Plus and RHSManager 2000 data must be converted to OneSite Leasing & Rents Affordable or OneSite Leasing & Rents Rural Housing. This document is provided to familiarize you with the process you will go through to convert to OneSite. Please review this information so that you can plan your conversion and prepare your staff to minimize problems and down-time.
Planning Your Conversion
RealPage offers two types of conversion options: RealPage Full Service Conversions for HUDManager or HUDManager 2000 Plus and Quick Start. Early in your planning cycle, you should decide which process is right for your company and properties.
- RealPage Full Service Conversion
For the RealPage Full Service Conversion, you will complete a Site Questionnaire instead of the conversion spreadsheets, prepare a backup of your current property management data, and print a series of reports from your current data. You then submit all of these materials to RealPage, who completes the data conversion for you. You will discuss and schedule the conversion with your solution consultant. Typical turn-around time for the RealPage Full Service Conversion is one week. RealPage Full Service Conversion is also offered for RHSManager users as well.
- Quick Start Conversion
Quick Start is an automated conversion system that drastically reduces site down-time and allows you to perform a complete conversion on your own desktop with high-speed Internet access. You perform all of the steps in the conversion process; this allows you to have full control over the timing of the conversion.
When you perform a Quick Start conversion, data from your HUDManager 2000 or HUDManager 2000 Plus backup is loaded into a pre-formatted Excel spreadsheet. You then work through each sheet of the spreadsheet to audit, correct, and complete the data to meet the OneSite data requirements. When your spreadsheet is complete, you will upload that data into a test OneSite property, where you can perform additional audits and data corrections, if necessary. You will run the test upload as many times as needed, until you are comfortable that your data has been correctly transferred to your OneSite property. At that point, the data is uploaded to your “live” production property.
For our RHSManager users, Quick Start will be a conversion option by early 2010.
Develop Your Business Model
Each property management company will develop a business model, which contains a set of company- and property-level system configuration options. The business model includes such things as the chart of accounts and transaction codes that your company chooses to use. As each property is converted, many business model settings are imported into your Quick Start conversion spreadsheets to ensure that the corporate policies are applied consistently to each property as it is converted to OneSite.
If your company has any properties already using OneSite, you will already have a business model. If your company is new to OneSite, you can work with a RealPage solution consultant to determine what those system configuration settings should be, and either you or your consultant will develop the business model. If you choose not to develop a custom business model, you can select the default RealPage OneSite Leasing & Rents Affordable business model. This model is a predefined set of the most commonly used industry configuration options, which you can customize after completing your conversion.
Review the Before You Begin Document
To get a more detailed idea of what you will do during the Quick Start conversion, review the Before You Begin document provided by RealPage. This document provides detailed information on steps you must take to prepare for your conversion, including checking to make sure that the personal computers at your property are ready to use OneSite and perform the conversion, auditing your HUDManager 2000 or HUDManager 2000 Plus data, performing your conversion backup, and printing control reports.
Schedule Your Conversion and Training
Once you understand the process you will go through, you will need to schedule your conversion and training dates. RealPage provides a free WebEx training on the Quick Start conversion process that will prepare your staff for the steps they must take. In addition, RealPage is offering a series of conversion workshops. During these workshops, attendees will receive three days of training on OneSite Leasing & Rents Affordable and will complete the conversion and post-migration of their properties with the assistance of a RealPage trainer. If your site staff cannot attend one of these workshops, you must plan for how you will train your site staff on OneSite and on the conversion process.
Converting Your Properties
Preparing Your HUDManager 2000 or HUDManager 2000 Plus Data
Prior to converting to OneSite, each property should take the time to review the data in HUDManager 2000 or HUDManager 2000 Plus to ensure that it is clean and accurate. As a rule, it is much easier to correct any errors prior to the conversion rather than during or after the conversion. At this point, you will run a series of reports, review them for accuracy, and correct any problems.
Print Tenant Beginning Balances Report
As part of the conversion planning, you will choose a property date for each property. This is the date as of which your property will be converted to OneSite. On this date, you will print one or more HUDManager 2000 or HUDManager 2000 Plus reports that show tenant accounts receivable balances as of the conversion. You will use these reports to enter the tenants’ beginning balance information in the conversion spreadsheets.
Begin Keeping Daily Files
After passing your selected property date, you should begin keeping a file for each day’s accounts receivable activities, such as billing and payments. You will continue keeping these daily files until your OneSite property is fully converted and all activity has been entered through the current calendar date. After your property data has been imported into OneSite, you will enter all transaction activity, one day at a time, for each day between the property date and the current calendar date. At this point, your OneSite property data is current.
However, you should continue processing certifications and even submitting TRACS and HAP files to HUD in HUDManager 2000 or HUDManager 2000 Plus up until you are ready to prepare your final backup and begin working with the conversion spreadsheets. This ensures that you will have the most up-to-date compliance information in your backup file for use in the conversion spreadsheet. Once you make your final backup and start the conversion process, you should not submit any vouchers or TRACS files using HUDManager 2000 or MicroHUD/RENT 2000.
Make Your HUDManager 2000 or HUDManager 2000 Plus Backup
The day before your scheduled conversion date, you will make a backup of your HUDManager 2000 or HUDManager 2000 Plus data. This backup will be used to convert the property data into OneSite.
Print Your HUDManager 2000 or HUDManager 2000 Plus Audit Reports
After making your conversion backup, you will print a series of HUDManager 2000 or HUDManager 2000 Plus reports. These reports will be used to audit the data once it is converted to the OneSite test property.
Begin Your Conversion
When you schedule your conversion, RealPage will send you an e-mail message with your conversion ID, password, and a link to the conversion download web site. To begin your conversion, click the link in this e-mail and enter your conversion ID.
You will then select the business model that you want to use for the property. The system imports property-level settings from your business model into the conversion spreadsheet for your property and saves the spreadsheet to your personal computer.
From here, you can open the Excel spreadsheet and complete the conversion. The spreadsheet is designed to walk you through the process step by step, and includes online help for each worksheet that you must complete. The first step is to import the data from your HUDManager 2000 or HUDManager 2000 Plus backup. You then work through reviewing the data, mapping “old” codes to “new” OneSite codes, entering tenant beginning balances, and correcting any errors that were not corrected previously. The spreadsheets include automated edits and error-checks to help ensure that you do not inadvertently upload corrupt or erroneous data into your OneSite property. In addition, e-mail and telephone support is available with the RealPage conversion support group.
Depending on whether you chose a Quick Start or the Full Service conversion, you will either complete the full conversion yourself or turn the conversion over to RealPage to complete the steps for you. If you choose RealPage Full Service, RealPage will contact you when your conversion is complete. At this point, you can sign on to your property in OneSite.
If you choose to attend one of the conversion workshops, this step will be conducted during the workshop, along with three days of training on using OneSite Leasing & Rents Affordable.
Post-Migration Work
After completing the conversion, you may have additional data corrections to make in OneSite. In most cases, these are errors that were not caught and corrected in your HUDManager 2000 or HUDManager 2000 Plus data before making your backup or in the conversion spreadsheets. In a few cases, these are corrections that can only be made in OneSite.
When all corrections are made, you are ready to advance your property date and begin entering the daily property activities that you recorded in your daily files. This will include all accounts receivable activity that has occurred since your selected property date, as well as all activity (including TRACS and HAP processing) that has occurred since you took your HUDManager 2000 or HUDManager 2000 Plus backup. In most cases, you should have about a week of catch-up work to do.
Questions?
Contact conversion support at (877) 773-5346 or send a message to Conversion Support.
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