New Innovations Drive Productivity in Property Management Accounting and Spend Management

In the property management business, the ability to streamline business efforts and become more efficient is essential to keep in step with the pace of the industry.

“This year at RealWorld, my group’s presentations will focus on some fantastic additions to the RealPage Financial Suite that are going to deliver huge benefits to our clients,” says RealPage’s Alan James. “We’re going to look particularly at Financial Close Management, Spend Management and Job Costing, and how we’ve applied automation to these functions to make them faster and simpler than anyone thought possible.”

Financial Close Management drives industry innovation

The recent introduction of Financial Close Management to the Financial Suite is already causing a stir in PMC accounting departments, and for good reason. A task that has always involved laboriously copying and pasting trial balance data, reconciling subsidiary ledgers to the trial balance and attaching supporting documentation has been reduced to the click of a mouse. The software completely automates the creation of month-end, year-end and preliminary workpapers. And it keeps a comprehensive history of closes, complete with all data, workflows and documentation, in one place, for easy access by approved owners, auditors and lenders.

“Using a spreadsheet as most still do, it can take anywhere from two to eight hours to close each property,” says James. “Now the whole process can be completed in a fraction of that time. I think we’ll have a whole bunch of folks flocking to this session to see it; it’s a real game-changer that has everyone talking.”

Another highlight of the sessions will be Spend Management and Job Costing, added to the RealPage Financial Suite in March of 2019 and tightly integrated both with Accounting and with one another.

“You’ll manage spending from an easy-to-use, centralized workbench,” explains James. “This is not just a dashboard where you can monitor what is going on. It also enables you to execute the tasks associated with spending and job costing, from procurement through payment, without jumping around. And you can easily create varying approval workflows depending on who need to approve various types of expenditures, depending on dollar amount, type of purchase or other criteria.”

Full visibility from a centralized location

James also touts the software’s ability to drill down through multiple levels of both operational and capex spending, from the portfolio level all the way down to a particular unit. “You can both see everything you need to see and do everything you need to do from a centralized location,” he says.

“We think people are going to be amazed when they see the leaps we’ve made this year,” concludes James. “It’s a great time to attend RealWorld and experience the enhancements in person, and we’re expecting a big crowd at our sessions this year!”