Customer Story

STRO Realty: Leveraging AppFolio Investment Manager and AppFolio Property Manager to gain efficiencies

“After looking at a lot of demos, it became clear that AppFolio was the system we would be most successful with—not only because of the feature set I had looked at, but looking beyond to the future.”

Steven Matejek
Chief Financial Office, STRO Realty

A partnership with AppFolio

STRO's Chief Financial Officer, Steven Matejek, manages all things finance and accounting for the company. We met with Steven to learn more about how they are using AppFolio Investment Manager to scale and support the growth of the entire STRO operation.

When did you realize you needed a software solution to help with your business and how did you end up choosing AppFolio?

At a certain point you really need some industry-specific software to help you do rent rolls and consolidations—especially cam reconciliations. About four years ago, I had to think about the future of the organization: what we wanted to accomplish, our corporate objectives, and how we would scale to support growth. I wanted a system that went beyond just accounting. We looked at a lot of smaller and larger systems. We looked at AppFolio, kept doing due diligence and gravitating back towards AppFolio for its functionality, its ease of use, and the ability to support the entire organization, not just the accounting. After looking at a lot of demos, it became clear that AppFolio was the system we would be most successful with—not only because of the feature set I had looked at, but looking beyond to the future. AppFolio's investment in R&D was important to me; I wanted a system that would continue to keep pace with us and the industry. And after looking at a lot of the big names, we landed very happily with AppFolio.

Do you use AppFolio to manage distributions?

We do. We have waterfall calculations that start with preferential payment and treat distributions differently, whether it's a cash, cash flow activity, a refinance, or a sale on the property. The waterfall calculations help with that. Calculating this used to take complicated, fragile Excel spreadsheets. Now, you set up your waterfall calculations in AppFolio Investment Manager, and it does it all for you. So it's, it's really great. Without AppFolio, I would be sitting in Excel all day trying to maintain all this stuff, which is just not a value added activity for us.

If you were to recommend AppFolio Investment Manager to a colleague, what would you say?

I would say that the software supports what we're trying to accomplish. It gives us a lot of credibility, and professionalizes the organization— giving both sophisticated investors and non sophisticated investors total access to their information in a secure environment. We used to field a lot of calls, and now the self service saves us a lot of time. AppFolio reduces the opportunities for mistakes and increases security. We're not emailing information, it's all done over a secure portal. So, it's really a time saver and a money saver. Because I don't have to hire another person to do a lot of stuff. AppFolio has really transformed the business.