Philadelphia Company on the Cutting Edge of

A Bit of Backstory

The Property Management Group runs a fixture of community associations, multifamily units, and commercial properties in Philadelphia, PA. Their portfolio largely consists of both home and condo owners associations, currently managing and interfacing with 63 board-run associations totalling 781 doors. With AppFolio Property Manager, The Property Management Group has been able to add more units to their portfolio, grow their business, improve in their online presence, and service their customers more efficiently, saving the business both time and money.

Why AppFolio?

In 2016, Matt Bremner was the CFO of The Property Management Group. At the time, the company was operating on an antiquated version of AMSI that had outlived its useful life. He knew that their management system needed to be updated, and began considering new options for his business. Originally drawn to AppFolio for its unlimited licensed user format, Matt quickly recognized the additional value of moving to a cloud-based software and made the decision to implement AppFolio Property Manager. Within the same year of implementing AppFolio, The Property Management Group had the tools and resources available to purchase another management company, growing their portfolio immediately.

Interview with Matt

Today, Matt Bremner is the President of The Property Management Company and oversees major accounting processes, bringing on new properties, bank reconciliation and managing his team. We asked Matt to share how AppFolio impacts his business everyday and discuss the specific features that most benefit his team.

In what areas has AppFolio helped you to increase the efficiency of your business?

It’s the flexibility I like within AppFolio. It’s much easier to allow for exceptions in AppFolio. I have saved a lot of time with the security deposit move out flow, ACH payments, and uploading expenses in the documents tab for owners. I love the texting feature as well as the ability to email each association board. AppFolio gives us the appearance that we are on the cutting edge of technology.

How has your AppFolio Website impacted your business?

Switching to AppFolio was necessary to maintain a more cutting edge website and for streamlining our workflow. We get a lot of compliments on our website, it attracts new clients to our business, and implementing the online owner and renter portals has been the best thing to improve our reputation. Submitting online maintenance requests is nice for our renters as well. I’ve noticed that our website and ability to focus on our clients rather than our workflow has freed up a lot of our time and allowed us to grow our business. It has saved me a lot of time and I can pretty much work from anywhere.

How are you streamlining your payments process for your portfolio?

We have saved a lot of time with online payments. Our old system used a 3rd party online payment system that was confusing and caused us more time and headache trying to reconcile. It is easy to get our customers to pay online.

Tell us about your experience with managing and communicating with your association board members? Are you saving time preparing financials and reports?

I love the Board Member Tracking feature—we can email the entire board and quickly find board member info just by clicking on a tab. This is a great addition to the system.

The reports are good; the 12-month income and expense report is my favorite report to use for both condos and rentals. We also like the annual budget comparison, uploading the budget feature, expense register, etc.

While running a more efficient business, how are you reallocating your time? Are you able to spend more time on serving your current customers and growing your business?

AppFolio’s overall efficiency has freed up my time to be more involved in overseeing my staff’s work by checking activities, notes, email and text correspondence, and reviewing attachments. I have one central location from which I can review all information. In the past, our maintenance and bookkeeping were on separate systems. It’s nice to be able to have owners review their invoices in the documents section, while tenants and condo owners can view their ledger online. Emailing directly from the system is an excellent time saver as well. I also love the ‘export to excel’ feature and online leases have been a great time saver. I love that once I create an ad for an apartment and upload the photos, I’m done.

Would you recommend AppFolio?

I would! I took my time, did my homework and definitely made an educated purchase and I’m happy I did so. Switching to AppFolio takes work on the front end, but the service I received from Grant and Steve during the setup was excellent. Once you’re set up it is a huge time saver - it’s been great and very forgiving, and has given me the opportunity to take on more business. I love AppFolio.