AppFolio Property Manager

Our experience with Appfolio has been great! It has created efficiencies within our single-family division that didn’t exist previously. I’m optimistic that over time they will develop more features that will allow us to be even more efficient.

Avantages

It’s robust yet easy to use, dependable, constantly evolving, their developers listen to their customer’s needs and if possible delivers, issues are handled quickly by their web based customer service team, and it’s affordable.

Inconvénients

The layout of the property financial statements are subpar and difficult for our clients to understand; its not the best software choice to manage commercial or multi-family properties; it’s lack of customization

I think overall it has been a good experience but the on-boarding team should highlight the things we need to do to make it easier down the road when we grow to more that 2 or 3 associations. When doing work for an association we need ways of setting temporary defaults to allow to do billing, payments, reporting etc. without having to enter the association over and over.

Even this survey was not set up right. You ask what the industry was and none of them dealt with what we do like Association Management.

Avantages

It is easy to use for sure and support and on boarding was great.

Inconvénients

The product is too slanted toward rentals or property management with one association. If you had 60 associations in a portfolio you have all your GL Accounts, Bank Accounts, Vendors all together. This is just good design from a functional stand point making customers name things to know the difference. You should keep things separated by Association. Weak design from a data structure point of view making it fit the small companies but not good for the larger portfolios.

Initially, I was thrilled with Appfolio. They had live support, and same day follow up calls when submitting tickets. Suggestions on the user forum were implemented, or at the very least, were updated by Appfolio so we knew they were aware and cared. None of that anymore, but we are regularly being innundated with value added junk that we can pay for if we want it or obscure improvements that seem pretty specialized/not broadly impactful. Meetups, etc. are heavily geared toward sales/recruitment and have virtually no value for current clients. I was fine with shrugging my shoulders as this is often how things go with growing companies, but looking completely unprofessional to my tenants/owners due to unreliable email/text, suppressed fee accounting/commingling problems (that are legit problems, not user error), and confusing owner statements have me in talks to switch. Property managers are dealing with stigma to start with - I don’t need my management software making my company look unreliable/unprofessional/untrustworthy on top of it. Not to mention - I dread having to explain during a state audit why income is “suppressed” from owner reporting.

Avantages

Extremely easy to navigate/train employees to use, tenant rent payment/owner contributions are free with ACH, application-move in flow is smooth, mobile app works well, available property postings look great on my website.

Inconvénients

Suppressed fees amount to commingling, and that is so bad. It could easily be resolved and the idea has lots of votes in the forum yet it remains unaddressed. Not to mention, suppressed application fees can be passed on to an owner before you need to refund the fee depending on the timing and that leads to a nightmare of accounting, and having to explain to an owner why you are unprofessionally having to withhold the money in the next month. I tried to get help from support to no avail (it was repeatedly blown off as user error) so then I started going to their live meetups when they came to town begging for help from support in person to make it clear it is not user error. That led to more dissmissal from user support as being due to user error, so I finally said I wasn’t taking no for an answer. After talking to tons of people, I finally got a support person who understood what I was saying, and all they could offer was a VERY time consuming work-around. The integrated email/text feature often fails and does not notify you that it failed causing huge problems. Notification emails when a lead inquires have started being unreliable. If tenants wait too long to respond to an email I sent via appfolio, they are told the thread has expired. Since every email sent from appfolio is sent from a different spammy looking email address, I get frustrated tenants asking which of the 15 email addresses they should use to reach me. Owner statements are confusing to owners.

Automated reporting, and records management for property managers is efficient and works well.

Avantages

Easy to use and understand at the site level in most respects. Reporting to various owners is automated. Includes free on line payments for our residents.

Inconvénients

The marketing of vacant units to various advertisers was a real plus but this has gone downhill since we originally adopted use of AppFolio.

Fantastic software.

Avantages

User interface and tech support. The user interface is intuitive, more often than not at least, and the tech support is incredibly responsive and helpful.

Inconvénients

It is build on a Cash basis accounting system (extremely helpful for property management but numbingly difficult for COA/HOA management, which is by definition an Accrual game)