(April 26, 2006)—RealPage, Inc., a leading provider of on-demand software and services to the multifamily industry, today announced that it has successfully launched an innovative convergent billing service for clients using its OneSite© property management systems and Velocity™ utility and billing services.
OneSite Leasing & Rents, the core property management system in the OneSite suite, is now seamlessly integrated with Velocity Convergent Billing Services. The integrated system allows Velocity to print and mail monthly resident bills—including rent charges, utility charges, other charges and resident messages—for any property using OneSite Leasing & Rents.
“The convergent bill option has been very successful for our clients,” said Ashley Chaffin Glover, president of Velocity. “We are very excited to have more than 100 properties using the new service within only a few months of the convergent bill option being available.”
The Convergent Billing Services can also be used to provide paper and online bill presentment for residents.
“When Velocity is combined with OneSite Payments, residents receive high-quality printed bills each month, and then log into the OneSite Payments website to make their payments by electronic check or credit card,” said Kimberly Lang, product manager for OneSite Payments. OneSite customers are able to include Velocity utility charges directly on OneSite final account statements, which are presented to residents at move-out.
One of the early adopters of the convergent billing option was Lawson Realty Company. Velocity is providing convergent billing and submeter maintenance service for Lawson properties in Virginia.
“Velocity’s ability to integrate with OneSite has streamlined the entire process for my site managers, creating a more efficient and effective team,” said Keith Bubier, regional property manager for Lawson. “While we were originally skeptical of the value of convergent billing, we now feel that this method of billing, which includes rent and other charges on the utility bill, has increased both the amount that we collect from residents, as well as the speed of those collections.”
Convergent Billing Services also features powerful options for utility cost allocation, including water submetered reads, hot water gas RUBS, heat run-time submetered reads, electric submetered reads and boiler gas submetered reads.
Velocity offers the only truly integrated solution for resident billing in the multifamily industry. Its three primary services—Convergent Billing Services for utility bills, convergent billing and vacant cost recovery; Submetering Services for installation and maintenance and Invoice Processing Services for invoice scanning and payment processing—help staff eliminate the need to export and import data files as well as reduce the need to communicate resident activities such as move-ins, move-outs and lease status changes to billing companies.
Additionally, Velocity also offers Vacant Cost Recovery Services. Velocity can receive all of a property’s utility invoices, identify the invoices that should be charged directly to a resident and post the utility charges along with a cost recovery charge directly to the resident ledger in OneSite Leasing & Rents.
For more information on Velocity and other RealPage products and services, please visit www.realpage.com.
About RealPage, Inc.
Located in Carrollton, Texas, a suburb of Dallas, RealPage provides products and services to more than 20,000 apartment communities across the United States. Its four on-demand product suites include OneSite® property management systems that automate the leasing, renting, management, and accounting of conventional, affordable, and student housing properties; CrossFire® property marketing systems that help boost occupancy and build retention; M/PF YieldStarTM asset optimization systems that maximize asset valuation and investment return through revenue management and market intelligence; and VelocityTM utility and billing services that help accelerate payments for resident charges.