Accruent acquired Lucernex in 2017 to boost its IWMS or asset management portfolio. Lucernex Lease Administration & Accounting is a real estate lifecycle management platform emphasizing compliant financial contracts and accountancy.
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AppFolio Property Manager
Score 7.2 out of 10
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AppFolio Property Manager is a cloud-based property management software that allows multifamily and single-family, commercial, student housing, homeowners and condo association, and mixed portfolio property managers to market, manage and grow their business. AppFolio includes accounting and property management functionality, including the ability to: provide instant access to reports & statements, post & market vacancies, apply & lease online, screen residents, streamline rent collection, and…
I believe Accruent is well suited for companies with a large amount of leased assets that need to be accounted for under the new accounting standard. Companies with fewer leases would not need an intricate tool of this size. It is suited for both real estate and equipment leases, which makes up the entirety of our portfolio.
We have 6 apartment buildings that we manage. Every month we were having to drive to each location to collect rent checks. Since using appfolio, we only have a couple of renters that still send in a paper check, the rest pay online, so we are ensuring that our renters are paying on time. Once we have an applicant apply, the old way was to take their scanned application, review, and then pay to have a background check conducted. Now, with appfolio, we are able to have them apply, sign off on the background check, and pay their deposit all in one shot. It has allowed our property managers to focus on other property items rather than conducting background checks.
The classroom and web-base training experience were very well-executed. Instructors and SME's in training were knowledgeable and helpful.
Upper management oversight of the projects provides the customer with confidence knowing that if escalations need to occur, issues will be handled.
Management was quick to make it right and switch our team when they recognized that there were some fundamental pieces missing from our initial SOW for our project.
Checking printing: We have multiple bank accounts tied to our account and utilize blank check stock. Appfolio automatically prints the routing numbers and account numbers at the bottom of the blank checks based on which property we are paying a bill from.
Tie-in with their Investment Management tool gives our investors a great resource while keeping our investments in sync with our accounting software.
We were misled that we would be utilizing Lucernex employees on our implementation. We have subcontractors from Sense Corp who do not seem that they are very familiar with the software. They often have to take questions away to ask (presumably Lucernex employees).
The implementation process is very inefficient. The upload templates are not straightforward, and there are "required" fields that are not designated as "required". Also, the sheer number of upload templates that need to be populated does not seem like the best way to get our information into the software. A guide to denote what each field on the template actually represents would be helpful.
You can tell that Lucernex is benefiting from the influx of business from ASC 842, and is trying to onboard as many clients as possible at the same time. This has caused a lack of attention to our implementation, and it shows with some frustration on our side with the implementation process.
Only a few very technical items that wouldn't necessarily make sense to non-users and I haven't even cared enough to submit requests on the issues. It'd be nice if parking was easier to keep track of on the system. Right now, if you run a report it doesn't show all the information our company requires for the vehicles and therefore we have to keep track of it elsewhere.
Another obstacle we've encountered is that the program charges "by door" so if you have multiple units and properties you can really rack up pricing. That's especially true for large multi-unit buildings with parking.
The system is so intuitive and easy to use. There’s almost nothing in the system that can’t be undone if you make a mistake. Important things also have their own tabs. It’s also easy to use from the resident side which is helpful for in a world where everyone is not tech-savvy.
In our experience, customer support consists of submitting questions to a bot. When the bot can't answer the question it repeats your question back to you. When you ask for customer support, someone says they will email you with an answer. The answer never comes and then your question is closed out. In my experience, customer service reps then direct you to go to the suggestion boards where you realize there are thousands of frustrated AppFolio Property Manager users who are receiving no help. On our particular hot-spot issue, other customers have submitted requests for help since 2015, but no help is forthcoming
The trainers were knowledgeable and engaging in presenting the materials, and their emphasis on important concepts was helpful (I would rate the trainers themselves a 9!). However, I do not believe there's anything we learned in the in-person training that could not have been taught via live web-classroom. Traveling a significant distance (in our case) to Austin, TX for only approx. 12 hours in the classroom was (in my opinion) not necessary, since the same material could have been presented via live web-classroom and saved us the expense and travel-time. I would encourage Lucernex to consider moving to a live web-classroom format in the future; an online live format would still allow for participation and questions from the participants while saving clients' time and money
We chose Lucernex based on the commitment of building and maintaining the customer/vendor relationship to grow the product, the end user ability to configure the system and the systems functionality to complete all of our lease management needs.
Before we used AppFolio Property Manager we used Skyline. Skyline Property Management was super outdated. The tenants did not have access to that program so we had to purchase another program for them to make their payments through. We would then have to manually enter every single payment. Onboarding and transferring data to AppFolio from Skyline was a nightmare and took us several months. AppFolio is so much easier for tenant use.
Wonderful to see how much rent we are drawing in, so we can base budgets off of that. It is a great way to retain that rent and put towards future improvements.
Wonderful way for tenants to pay their rent without us using a separate payment system or ACH payment. They can set up an account with a credit or debit card, or checking account and it drastically helps us with time management!
The help that the AppFolio staff is willing to do, saves time on us trying to troubleshoot.
