With tenants, owners, and vendors across numerous buildings and locations, property management companies juggle a mountain of financial transactions and queries each month. The companies often find, however, that conventional tools such as spreadsheets or property management software do little to aid cash flow management, support ACH payments or provide important features such as accounts payable or accounts receivable automation.
As Mark Lindsay of Lindsay Leasing explains it:
“When you have 50 properties, and each has many transactions involved, it can get very challenging to manage all that cash flow and make sure everything happens on time—because it’s not acceptable to collect rent late or pay owners late or pay any vendor late.”
Property management companies are now turning away from paper checks and P.O. Boxes and gravitating to digital payments and receivables to streamline operations and create a competitive advantage. Here’s how your property management company can tap into that power with BILL.
Automated invoicing and reminders
Digital payment solutions such as BILL enable property management companies to automatically invoice tenants online for their rent each month. It will also allow you to set up automatic reminders for tenants, which often decreases the number of late payments – all important factors for cash flow management.
Ability to accept payment in different forms such as ACH
When you migrate to digital payments, you free yourself from the rigors of paper-based monetary exchanges. Property managers no longer have to drive around town picking up checks or make runs to a bank or P.O. Box.
With BILL, invoices are sent online and payment is made online as well - either by ACH, credit card, PayPal or more. Money flows immediately into the correct accounts and with no delays, creating a strong foundation for cash flow management.
Managers using BILL will receive notifications of bounces or insufficient funds immediately. With this information, they can quickly reevaluate other scheduled payments to owners or vendors that may be depending on those tenant payments.
Tenants also appreciate the variety of options for payment that best fits their personal or business preferences.
Organize and pay bills from vendors
With invoices for services such as pool cleaning, pest control, and landscaping for multiple properties, coordinating and keeping track of payment for them can become immensely challenging. Property managers, however, can introduce a new level of efficiency and speed into the process with BILL. The solution offers document management, online payments, payment history, scheduling and more.
Rick Mubarak of Mubarak Realty and Property Management, a company that manages more than 80 properties, says that it used to take 30 minutes per property to pay bills. That added up to roughly 40 hours a month. Now, he says, BILL has reduced that time by 83% – about 5 minutes for each property.
Increased visibility into cash flow
With a perpetual cycle of money entering and leaving multiple accounts, cash flow management can be a daunting task. BILL has a cash flow calendar that gives property management companies insight into their finances.
BILL also integrates with leading accounting systems such as QuickBooks Online and Xero to keep financial information accurate and to avoid tasks such as double data entry. Whatever happens in BILL will be automatically shared with your accounting solution.
Competitive advantages with BILL
“BILL really gives us a competitive advantage because we can pay our owners faster than any other property management company in the area.” — Mark Lindsay, Lindsay Leasing
Not only are owners paid faster, rents are collected faster and timely payments to vendors can pave the road for potential rate reductions in the future. More importantly, property management companies can take the time savings offered by BILL and devote it to business development.
Learn how your property management firm can gain a more competitive edge.