Real estate work flow automation software can be used across the lifecycle of a building, and while most applicable for property management, the tools also serve key functions in the development process. Property operations, such as leasing, rent payments, tenant management, and maintenance requests, are all tasks owners and managers can benefit from automating. But finance teams also face workflow challenges that are equally complex, if not more so — from manual budgeting, to outdated forecasts, and messy draw reporting. That’s where workflow automation really pays off for developers looking to streamline operations and keep projects on track from start to finish.
Here’s everything you need to know about real estate workflow automation software, and how it can help your team:
What Is Real Estate Workflow Automation?
Real estate workflow automation for development and property management is the use of technology to reduce routine manual work, such as data entry, document management, and lead or vendor information. Property managers can use workflow automation to facilitate a variety of tasks, such as rent collection, tenant communication, lease screening or application management, and maintenance requests. Owners will see dual benefits of automating these processes; employees appreciate the menial work by cutting down on tedious and repetitive manual entry, as well as increased tenant satisfaction improves from faster response times. Development professionals workflow automation to manage financials, budgets, timelines, and for document management. Reducing the amount of manual data entry with automation has benefits across the development lifecycle, reducing tedious administrative work and lowering the risk of errors.
Why Real Estate Finance Teams Need Workflow Automation
Real estate finance teams use a variety of workflows that could benefit from automation, such as document management, capital deployment and timeline scheduling, and budget or vendor data organization. Finance teams have historically spent a lot of time managing these processes in cumbersome spreadsheets, a workflow that is prone to error and often results in siloed information. Building institutional knowledge is also more difficult when financial teams work in spreadsheets, as information can’t be easily passed on when team members leave or are onboarded.
Leveraging automation has multiple benefits for real estate development finance teams, who too often rely on these outdated and error prone spreadsheets that require manual entry. Better data pipelines enabled by automation mean your team can operate off reliable insights instead of making gut decisions. Eradicating tedious manual entry also means less chance of errors in the data being used.
Here are some key areas where automation will boost efficiency across your real estate finance
1. Budget Inputs Without the Bottlenecks
Current Pain: Managing budgets in manual spreadsheets requires time-consuming manual entry, and the process is prone to manual errors that result in inconsistent data. Fixing errors also requires a lot of rework from finance teams, creating further bottlenecks in the budgeting process.
Benefits of Automation: Leveraging standardized templates has many benefits for developers, speeding up financial reporting and reducing the odds of your team overlooking key information. Templates also boost collaboration and communication on your team by setting clear expectations and allowing for historical knowledge to be easily passed on if team members leave the firm. Data can also be extracted from different sources and compiled into a central location. The ability to put together budgets quickly and reliably will also benefit your team and timelines, allowing your team to make approvals more efficiently.
Leveraging modern real estate development technology can help you build budgets faster and mitigate risk across your financial processes. Northspyre’s end-to-end development platform includes AI functionality that automatically extracts key insights from incoming project documents and indexes the information as searchable data. Your team can also look at historical performance benchmarks to inform early project planning. Data entry automation also reduces the chance of error in your budget management, and prevents bottlenecks that derail project timelines creating issues for your team and stakeholders.
2. Forecasting With Confidence
Current Pain: Financial teams are often operating without the necessary visibility into financials, relying on gut-level decisions or outdated forecasts. Budgeting errors cost time and money, and in the current market, there’s less room for mistakes than ever before.
Benefits of Automation: Modern development software improves your financial team’s forecasting capabilities in several key ways. By centralizing data in a real-time platform, you make sure all information is updated and nobody on your team is operating off old or stale data. Predictive analytics help teams unlock identify patterns, evaluate performance, and optimize overall portfolios. Ensuring your team has access to reliable financial data also improves your reporting pipelines, allowing you to bolster your reputation with capital partners.
Finding a platform with the ability to improve forecasting accuracy and offer a real-time, portfolio wide view of source utilization and multi-year cash flow projections can transform your financial operations. Vendor analytics and costs data also let your team surface insights about who bids low, who submits frequent change orders, and who delivers reliably. Finance and procurement teams who leverage vendor data can further minimize risk and select positive partners who consistently perform well. The ability to centralize data will increase transparency across your team and investors, resulting in faster approvals and potentially expediting the capital deployment process.
3. Draw Reporting Without the Headache
Current Pain: The draw request process is one of the most critical steps in the development process, allowing for loan funds to be dispersed as a project moves through the lifecycle. Developers without the right tools to facilitate the draw request process will struggle to pull together siloed information, resulting in fragmented reporting. Draw packages compiled without the necessary data can result in a lack of transparency for capital partners, and will slow down the development process significantly. Leveraging the appropriate construction draw management software automates reporting, compliance checks, and approvals, meaning developers move through the draw process without the headaches.
Benefits of Automation: Draw request automation is extremely beneficial for development teams, creating auto-generated, standardized packages. Instead of digging through emails, spreadsheets, or other disparate files to put together a draw request at the end of a month, a modern real estate development platform with automation capability can allow you to compile comprehensive draw reports in hours. Northspyre allows you to integrate draw workflows with your budget and performance data, allowing you to instantly create audit ready draw reports. Build strong relationships with lenders and investors by offering access to a funding portal with 24/7 access to historical and real time draw packages. You can further bolster your reputation with vendors by delivering draw[packages 75% faster with all the linked documentation necessary to ensure on time capital deployment.
Best Real Estate Workflow Automation Tools
There are several real estate workflow automation tools currently on the market, and selecting the right one will depend on your team’s unique needs. Development teams looking to invest in real estate process automation will need to consider the size of their portfolio, who on the team the tool will need to serve, and whether or not the unique functionality compliments existing workflows. Here’s a closer look at a few common platforms development teams use and how to know if each is going to work well to boost efficiency and deliver higher returns:
1. Northspyre
Focus: Real estate developers, owners, and finance teams
Who it serves: Northpyre is an integrated development management platform built by and for real estate developers, owners, and finance teams managing mid- to large-scale projects from end-to-end. Portfolios with commercial, multifamily, and mixed-use projects are especially well suited for project and budget management on the platform.
Workflow automation focus
- Budget Management: Northspyre leverages automation well for teams looking to conduct financial analysis and manage budgets. The platform automatically compiles data including project costs, vendors, and transactions in one integrated platform. You can uncover budget performance and the reasons behind change orders, spot trends across similar projects, and benchmark spending patterns to improve outcomes. Automatic audit trails of every budget transaction and approval process gives visibility into who made the change or approval, why, and when.
- Forecasting: Northspyre allows you to get real-time visibility into your cash flow without the tedious administrative work or spreadsheet reconciliation. The platform helps you accurately forecast spend, monitor actuals, and assess performance with real-time, automated cash-flow reports. Integrated scheduling means reports update automatically, eliminating the need for manual tracking and reconciliation.
- Draw Reporting: Eliminates the need to dig through emails, spreadsheets, and other files to put together draw reports, automatically completing comprehensive, compliant, and transparent draw packages. Development teams can prepare draw reports up to 75% faster, tying directly to budgets and vendor performance data. In addition to giving internal stakeholders increased visibility, this also simplifies the funding process for capital partners and reduces reputational risk.
Strengths
- Northspyre is purpose-built for development finance (not property management), meaning the platform has automation functionality your team can take advantage of across a project’s lifecycle. From early-project planning to stabilization, automation boosts efficiency and allows team members to do their jobs better
- The platform has proven results among developers, automating up to 80% of manual admin work and allowing teams to scale portfolios without bringing on additional team members
- Development teams can integrate Northspyre cleanly with existing reporting pipelines or accounting tools already at work in the tech stack, including MRI, Yardi, or Sage300.
- Executives get real-time visibility across the project lifecycle, increasing transparency and allowing risks or challenges to be addressed in a timely manner before things get out of control
Limitations:
- Northspyre isn’t designed for tenant management, maintenance requests, or other day-to-day property operations. The platform is designed for teams focused on acquisitions, development, and capital project delivery.
2. Dealpath
Focus: Acquisitions, investors, and finance-first development teams
Who it serves: Dealpath is built for real estate acquisitions and development teams, including institutional investors, developers, and asset managers. The platform facilitates pipeline management and underwriting, allowing teams to evaluate opportunities and collaborate more efficiently across the deal-making process.
Workflow automation focus:
- Pipeline Management: Dealpath centralizes deal tracking and offers real-time status updates for team members. The platform can track pipeline from source to close and automatically create role-based workflows.
- Underwriting Support: Improve investment decisions with standardized financial models, assumptions, and scenario analysis to improve consistency across deals. Built-in scenario analysis enables teams to assess risk and compare outcomes to make faster and data-backed decisions.
- Collaboration: Data from deals is compiled into shared dashboards for acquisition teams and executives. Real-time The ability to automate the process allows for deals to move more quickly through the pipeline and reduces the need for back-and-forth.
- Reporting: The platform offers portfolio-level insights into deal flow and performance. Expedites the deal-making process by surfacing relevant comparables and monitor portfolio exposure.
Strengths:
- Dealpath is a well-known tool in the acquisitions niche, and is often used by real estate professionals to improve deal-related decision making and reduce friction in the underwriting process
- The platform offers strong functionality to facilitate deal pipeline visibility, allowing teams to track progress, flag issues and identify opportunities. It also is useful for ensuring underwriting consistency, and collaboration across large deal teams.
Limitations:
- Dealpath is designed for the front end of the investment lifecycle, such as sourcing, pipeline and underwriting, and may not dovetail well into the next stages of a project lifecycle
- Since the platform does not extend into budgeting, forecasting, vendor procurement, or project delivery once deals move forward, teams will need to seek out other automation software to facilitate these processes.
3. Appfolio
Focus: Property management
Who it serves: Appfolio is a property management tool designed for small to mid-sized property managers who need functionality to facilitate the day-to-day operations of residential and commercial buildings.
Workflow Automation Focus:
- Rent collection with online portals that are available to tenants and automated reminders about upcoming payments. Payments are automatically recorded and tracked in the system.
- Maintenance request tracking, supporting maintenance through tenant request to completion or payment. Automation features can also “triage” requests to help teams prioritize maintenance emergencies over non-urgent fixes.
- Lease renewals and tenant communications are streamlined through renewal-offer templates and automatic notices to residents. Appfolio also provides lease expiration reports so your team can automatically see which leases are coming up for renewal.
Strengths:
- Appfolio’s UX is modern and user friendly, with built-in ability to sync with accounting and mobile friendly features property managers can use on the go.
Limitations for development teams:
- Appfolio’s functionality is only for the day-today property and tenant operations and doesn’t feature any budgeting, forecasting, or project lifecycle functionality to help team members
4. Yardi
Focus: Add
Who it serves: Yardi is a property management software used by larger property management firms, institutional real estate teams, and enterprises.
Workflow automation focus:
- Property Operations Functionality: Yardi offers end-to-end functionality for property operations, automating aspects of the leasing, rent collection, maintenance, facilities management.The platform automates leasing and provides dashboards to show renewals and expirations, offers real-time payment tracking for rent collection, and tracks maintenance requests from submission to completion.
- Strong Accounting & Compliance Modules: Yardi supports general ledger (GL), accounts payable (A/P), accounts receivable (A/R), bank reconciliation, and owner/investor reporting.
- Yardi Breeze (SMB) vs. Yardi Voyager (enterprise). Yardi Breeze is a property management system for leasing, rent collection, maintenance and accounting. Yardi Voyager is an enterprise level platform built for larger real estate firms who need asset and facilities management capability.
Strengths:
Yardi’s multi-module platform has deep functionality and is scalable. The system is used across the commercial real estate industry and may be familiar to new team members onboarding with your firm.
Limitations for development teams:
- Yardi is an operations and accounting first platform, and may require customization to make work for development workflows
- Development feels like an afterthought in most reviews, as the platform is not designed for the kind of budget inputs required by commercial real estate finance teams. Yardi also may fall short in terms of the forecasting capability required for commercial real estate and lack the functionality necessary to boost efficiency in the draw reporting process not designed for budget inputs, forecasting cycles, or draw reporting.
How to Get Started With Real Estate Workflow Automation
Real estate teams looking to prioritize workflow automation can take several steps to evaluate how the technology will best serve their teams. First, audit workflows to identify areas where team members are slowed down by manual entry and errors are requiring time-consuming reconciliation. Once your finance team identifies high-friction areas, whether that’s in budget management, financial forecasting, or the draw request process, you can select the automation tools that are built to help development finance teams address these concerns. Northspyre is designed specifically to help development teams overcome manage budgets better and avoid obstacles across the project lifecycle. The platform’s automation capability, from increasing efficiency in putting together budgets to ensuring accurate data driven financial forecasting to quickly compiling accurate and comprehensive draw reports, can play an essential role in your financial team’s ability to deliver successful projects.
Book a demo and see how Northspyre helps finance teams remove friction from workflows.
