Yardi can help real estate organizations reduce operating costs, streamline workflows, and make better financial decisions. However, realizing these savings depends on how well the system is configured, implemented, and used.
To get more value from existing Yardi investments, the first step is to make sure you’re using the tools you already have available to reduce manual work, improve reporting, and help your team operate more efficiently.
Some of the most common areas where Yardi can help reduce operating costs include:
- Automating manual processes
- Reducing Data quality issues
- Closing Security and workflow gaps
- Reducing Maintenance and Property Operating Expenses
- Underused functionality
How to leverage Automating Manual Processes to save time and money
Manual work consumes valuable employee time.
All too often, employees spend hours transferring data between spreadsheets and systems that could be automated. In addition to wasting time, this can lead to duplicate data entry across departments or systems, and increase the chance of data errors.
Automating areas such as accounts payable, invoice processing, and payment workflows using P2P and payment processing tools can free up staff to focus on higher-value activities.
Some other ways automation reduces employee time needed for manual work includes:
- Reducing duplicate data entry across departments means that fewer people are needed for those kinds of roles, which can help managers use available funds more effectively.
- Standardizing recurring accounting and property management processes, which cuts down the amount of time needed for staff to do repetitive tasks
- Improving tenant and resident self-service through applicable RentCafe functionality means staff can focus on high priority items, rather than issues that tenants can solve themselves
- Using integrations to reduce disconnected systems and manual transfers, allowing staff to focus their time on reviewing information that can be used to improve future planning, such as renewal rates and net absorption.
- Reducing reporting inefficiencies from staff having to manually compile financial reports, operational metrics, and portfolio summaries. Integrating YSR reports with tools like RealTime that can efficiently surface information compiled in YSR reports, and summarize them automatically provides optimal results.
Yardi has a variety of tools that can support automation with accounts payable, invoice processing, reporting, and other workflows. There are also integrations with tools such as PowerBI and RealTime that can be used to augment Yardi’s already powerful YSR reporting platform. To set up these automations in Yardi you may need support from a Yardi Independent Consultant who can help align your business processes with Yardi’s functionalities.
How Yardi can address poor data quality to reduce costs
Poor data quality affects reporting, accounting, compliance, and day-to-day operations. It can waste money in the form of increased work for staff, leading to higher operational costs, as well as through inaccurate reports. Inaccurate information blocks informed decision making, and can lead to issues like distorted profitability reports, delays in filling vacancies or addressing maintenance issues, and inaccurate rent valuations, which translates to lost revenue.
These issues can be addressed by using Yardi to:
- Identify duplicate, incomplete, and inconsistent records.
- Establish data validation procedures.
- Standardize data entry across properties.
- Improve data governance and ownership.
- Reduce the time spent correcting errors and reconciling conflicting information.
- Review data quality during implementations, conversions, and system upgrades.
In order to do the above effectively, your team will need training on Yardi best practices, and may need tools such as Quick Reference Guides to ensure compliance. Because each organization has unique processes, having a team of experts like Lynx can provide you with quality training and resources to ensure your team has what they need to ensure data quality.
Close security and workflow gaps using Yardi to avoid fines and litigation
Working with sensitive data means there is not only an ethical obligation to protect sensitive information, but a legal one as well. Failure to meet regulatory requirements can lead to significant fines, as well as a risk of litigation.
A key part of security is balancing between keeping information safe, while ensuring that information can be accessed by those who need it.
In Yardi, this is done in three ways:
- User Groups, which you can set up to automatically assign specific roles and permission sets to users based on their membership to a particular group
- Roles, which grants them access to the specific menu sets required for their duties. It’s worth noting that due to Yardi’s complexity, some information can be accessed by drilling down, even without direct menu access.
- Permission sets, which allows you to restrict access to certain areas, meaning a user will be unable to access that area even if they possess the relevant menu access through a Role.
Using the three components together provides a layered solution with multiple control checkpoints, meaning that if one layer of security is compromised, the other layers will fill in to ensure sensitive information is protected.
In addition to the above security measures, it is also beneficial to set up appropriate approval workflows to ensure that data stays secure, while still being accessible. Keeping those workflows as automated as possible also helps save time through reducing handoff inefficiencies.
Training employees on how to use Yardi effectively, and how best to protect sensitive data, is also an integral part of a holistic security approach.
How can Yardi decrease Maintenance and Property Operating Expenses?
By improving maintenance request tracking and work order management, property managers can ensure that issues are resolved promptly, before they become bigger and more expensive to address.
Yardi can also be used to track maintenance related data to:
- Identify recurring repairs and opportunities for preventive maintenance to reduce related costs
- Monitor vendor expenses and service contracts to facilitate improved budgeting and identify potential cost savings.
- Use consistent reporting to identify unusual spending patterns to prevent fraud.
- Track maintenance costs by property, unit, or category where supported to identify potential budget overflows and to identify potential bulk pricing opportunities.
- Improve purchasing controls and approval workflows to prevent unauthorized spending, eliminate waste, and benefit from purchasing from preferred vendors.
How to identify underused functionality in Yardi
In order to facilitate Yardi decreasing expenses, you will need to ensure you’re using Yardi to its full potential. To identify underused functionality in Yardi, you’ll want to conduct a System Assessment, which can also help align Yardi usage with processes, and ensure that your team has the training needed to use Yardi effectively.
Once those areas are identified, you may need to augment your existing team with a Yardi Independent Consultant Network member, like Lynx, to assist with configuration, training, security set up, and more.
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If your team is spending too much time on manual work, struggling with reporting, or relying on spreadsheets to fill gaps in your Yardi environment, there may be opportunities to improve efficiency and leverage your existing system for cost savings.
As a Yardi® Independent Consultant Network member with a team of 30+ Yardi experts, Lynx leverages deep Yardi knowledge with extensive real estate operational experience to help clients move beyond implementation and achieve long-term value from their investment.
The right partner doesn’t just configure software: they help transform how your organization operates. Reach out how you can leverage our 25+ years of experience for a smooth implementation.
