Enhance Your Maintenance Relationships With AppFolio Vendor Portal
When you invest in managing your vendors efficiently, it can pay off in multiple ways, including reduced maintenance needs, less resident turnover, and happier owners. Whether you manage your maintenance operations in-house or via a third party, it’s important to have an effective vendor management system that can streamline your operations — from onboarding to payment processing — while enhancing efficiency and service quality. By streamlining your vendor processes through the AppFolio Property Manager Vendor Portal, effectively managing your vendor partnerships becomes much simpler.
Last modified: June 4, 2024
By: Peter Gerhardt
The Importance of Managing Strong Vendor Relationships
Having strong partnerships with trusted, reliable vendors is key to giving your property management business a competitive edge. Poor maintenance practices or weak vendor relationships can have a significant impact on your property's net operating income, and over time, this can lead to increased property damage and potential renter turnover due to delayed or substandard maintenance.
One of the key factors in guaranteeing the expected return on investment for owners and investors is developing mutually beneficial relationships with vendors you can trust. Vendor management is the process of managing all interactions with those who service your properties to ensure that maintenance, coordination, and liability protection are executed effectively and efficiently. This includes activities such as onboarding vendors, handling service requests, monitoring performance, managing invoices, processing payments, and resolving any logistical issues that may arise.
Common Challenges When Managing Vendor Relationships
With a shortage of skilled tradespeople, vendor relationships can be critical for your business, but they can also be challenging for property managers. Here are some common challenges:
Inconsistent communication: It can be hard to keep track of conversations when multiple members of your team are calling, having conversations in person, or sending text messages and emails. Instead, consolidate your communication efforts into one place where your vendors, team members, and residents can coordinate any maintenance needs.
Delayed payments: If you’re manually scanning invoices or entering receipts from vendors, that can be a time-consuming process that is prone to mistakes. Additionally, if you’re still cutting and mailing paper checks to pay vendors, this can have a negative effect on your reputation and service level if it results in delays. Consider using online payment tools that can increase the speed of processing invoices and making payments to vendors faster.
Failure to keep up with compliance: One of the most important aspects of your maintenance operations is tracking vendor compliance, which involves ensuring that all vendors follow safety, insurance, and contract regulations. If you’re not collecting compliance documents from vendors, this can expose your business to liability and risk. Adopting a vendor document management system allows you to easily keep track of your vendor compliance documents — all stored in one convenient place.
AppFolio Property Manager Vendor Portal:
A Better Way To Manage Vendors
The AppFolio Vendor Portal Document Management provides a way for your vendors to upload their own documents directly to the vendor portal. Once a document has expired, or is soon to be expired, you and the vendor will receive a notification in AppFolio. Your vendors can conveniently upload the relevant documents in the vendor portal, where they're automatically saved to their vendor profile. Once this step is complete, you’ll receive a notification when the document has been uploaded for your review, ensuring you’re always in compliance.
AppFolio has invested in multiple solutions that can help you engage your vendors in an intuitive, easy way. The AppFolio Property Manager Vendor Portal makes it easy for vendors to work with you by providing a centralized place to manage all work orders related to your properties. Once vendors have access to the portal, they can view work order details, upload invoices, add notes/photos, and mark their work as completed directly on the work order. This fully mobile experience enables vendors to make updates from the field or on the go, improving communication between your teams and residents.
Additionally, the vendor portal allows vendors to be paid quickly, seamlessly, and securely. The Vendor Payment Preferences feature empowers vendors to select their preferred payment method and upload their payment details on their own — eliminating the need for your team to collect banking information manually while offering vendors the flexibility and instant payment possibilities they’re looking for. With the new Instant Pay option, vendors can pay a small fee to receive their funds immediately and eliminate the bank processing time. Your team still has total control over the payment process, empowering you to build stronger relationships with your vendors.
Transform the Way You Manage Vendor Relationships
By using the AppFolio Vendor Portal to manage your vendor relationships, you can keep your maintenance operations efficient and organized. Existing AppFolio customers can invite vendors to sign up for the Vendor Portal by visiting this helpful article.
If you’re not yet an AppFolio customer and would like to see how our one powerful platform can help your business reach new heights, sign up now for a free customized product demo.