AppFolio Property Manager

I like the customization of this software. It is ideal if you manage a variety of portfolios. The dashboard and tasks menu are placed well and easy to navigate. The software uses a tab feature that allows to easily work with different tasks at a time. Excellent reporting features. Great mobile app

HORRIBLE customer service. The software is extremely robust, which will normally be a good thing. However, with that comes a lot of questions. Unfortunately only 1 out of 5 agents can help you. Most issues will have to be advanced to a senior agent . Once that happens you will have to EMAIL what your issue is or wait anywhere from 3-7 days for a scheduled phone call. So if your issue is time sensitive you are simply out of luck. I am seasoned property management professional, and I have worked with many softwares. Appfolio, by far is one of the most difficult I have worked with. There is countless steps to complete
everything. Of course that allows for a lot of customization, but understand it takes a long time to learn it.

Additionally there are promised features that don't work well. For example text messaging. You can text within the software, but there is no push notification. So if you are not inside the software or checking you email constantly, you won't know someone sent a text. So Pointless!!!. That is just one of many.
There is reason there is no free trial and they bound you to a one year contract.

Cloud based. I seriously didn't like the concept of having someone else be in charge of our confidential information but being able to get information over various devises from anywhere is a huge convenience. The cost savings of not having to host the software has been huge. The software is easy to use for the most part but the accounting reports are the software's Achilles heal.

There are allot of things but for the most part it can be summed up to reports and accounting.

For a software that is advertised to make life easier and streamline the process, it falls short.

Reports. Very poor reports and the kicker is that they don't have a Profit and Loss Statement. WHO DOESN'T HAVE A P&L AS A STANDARD REPORT???? I also don't like the fact that you can't customize the reports. If you don't like how something is worded, too bad. You can edit it on a single report for a single owner but you cannot do a global change to all reports such as if you have a "Convenience Fee", it states it as "Mark Up". You're stuck having to manipulate single reports which takes a huge amount of time.

Things that should be simple such as refunding a tenants application or other such fee are time consuming and convoluted. You'd imagine it would as simple as hitting the "refund" button which they have but by doing so it throws off your books and not only refunds the tenant but it also gives that money to the owner??? So now you have to clear up the mess by doing multiple journal entries. The same holds true for other issues. Long story short, we're spending more time dealing with accounting issues because the software did some crazy thing. When you create a support request for the item, they'll help you by saying something like "well this is how to work around this". We're trying to streamline the process to make our lives a whole lot easier, not having to double and triple check reports to make sure we're not giving more monies than we should.

The ease of use and mobile app make this software very useful for property managers. For leasing, the application and lease signing process is pretty seamless once set-up. The Online Portal is also great as it helps cut down on unnecessary emails or calls to the office. Residents can pay rent, submit requests for maintenance, and sign lease renewals all through their Online Portal. The lease renewal interface is one of my favorite features as it has really cuts down on the amount of time I spend drafting and preparing renewals. This software offers a lot and they are always pushing out updates and new features which is great.

The biggest problem is customer support. Some requests take days or weeks to hear back from someone and in property management, we typically don't have days or weeks to wait for a fix to a problem we are experiencing. However, when someone does help, they tend to always be able to resolve our problems. I would also like to see more customization to the software. Little things like being able to add my own "reasons for move-out" to the drop down when selecting a reason for a move-out. Also adding the option for management to select "preferred/available times" when entering a maintenance request for a resident. Residents have this option when submitting via the online portal, but management does not if they are entering a request on behalf of a resident. The work around is just writing it in the access notes, but that seems disconnected since user submitted requests will show the preferred times in a different section so maintenance staff may overlook it since it will be in a different spot than usual.