Entrata recently hosted a webinar featuring Rebecca Herrin, Chief of Staff to the CEO at The Collier Companies, Melodie Raab, SVP of Support Services at Asset Living, and Keri Goins, Direct of Operations Systems at Landmark Properties, to discuss key wins from the previous leasing season and what they are doing to prepare for the coming school year. The following are a few of the key highlights from their conversation.

More properties prefer individual move ins

Over the last several years, Entrata has seen a decline in the usage of bulk move-in and move-out tools. While these workflows are still supported, users are proving that it makes more sense and is more efficient to process move ins individually as opposed to as a group. Taking this approach helps you have a better understanding of what work needs to be done at any given point in time. Having a realistic view of how each property is progressing ensures you’re able to prioritize resources and allocate your staff to the right areas as needed.

When you’re scheduling move ins, there’s a certain percentage of individuals who aren’t going to make their appointment or will cancel last minute. By giving them control over when they move in, the likelihood of them showing up at the time is higher than if the properties assigned them a date and time. This process is aided by taking advantage of the move-in scheduler inside of Entrata, which shows residents availability of move-in dates and times based on a schedule created by the property. This will ensure a more efficient, streamlined moving process with less log jams and bottlenecks, resulting in a better experience for residents.

“For our properties where maybe we only have one or two elevators for the whole building, or maybe we just get a lot of traffic congestion at the entrance and exit, [using the schedule] was a great way to say, ‘Hey, here are the times available if you're on this floor. Here's the times available if you're in this building.’” said Goins. “You can still do it all on the same day, but you're just scheduling that out so that you have a revolving door instead of a stuck line of everybody coming and going”

Utilize move in checklist

Building out and requiring residents and staff to use move-in/move-out checklists is another way to make your teams more efficient and take work off their plate and put the responsibility on the residents. It’s a good way to remind them when they need to finish signing documents, sign up for autopay, or opt into receiving text messages. Moving isn’t a one size fits all problem. Each resident is unique, that's why putting them in control of the process makes so much sense.

Residents are able to accomplish all of this on their own time and you’re able to send automated reminders to push them to each step of their checklists. Then all your site teams need to do is do quick checks to make sure the step has actually been completed.

One of the biggest downsides of not centralizing checklists inside Entrata is eventually all that data you have on paper or in Excel spreadsheets will eventually have to be added manually. With that being the case, it makes the most sense to start the process inside of Entrata, so you’re not stuck with all that data entry work that leaves you open to human error.

“We are finding that more and more people are less comfortable with Excel,” stated Herrin. “So having it centralized in Entrata is what we want to do. We’ll be able to see who are our vendors that are overtaxed, who are our vendors who are underutilized, who are the good ones who are getting the callbacks, and setting up the inspections to prep that has been huge.”

Staffing and supply chain issues

With increases in minimum wage and more options available to your potential employees, staffing up has proven difficult across the industry and centralizing operations leaves you with less staff to work with. Because of this, it’s becoming more and more important to have the right technology in place that makes the employees you do have more efficient and enables them to accomplish the same amount of work more quickly, efficiently, and intuitively.

Additionally, give yourself enough time to train employees so they know everything they need to know to be successful. They should have in-depth knowledge of the tools they have available to them to make their jobs easier. Consider taking advantage of services like Entrata’s specialized training and business consulting.One of the biggest hindrances to efficiency is a lack of knowledge, which is something that is easily overcome if you give yourself enough time to onboard new employees.

The group all agreed that one way to combat staffing and supply chain issues is to take advantage of Inspections inside of Entrata to help with inventory control. When you put the resident in charge of completing inspections, that’s one more task that your overburdened staff needs to complete, while also helping identify items that may need to be replaced in the near term.

Similarly, supply chain issues that came out of the pandemic are still a problem for many properties. The best way to overcome this is through detailed and thorough planning that allows you to order things like furniture, carpeting, lighting fixtures, etc. well in advance, so when it comes time to turn over an apartment, you have everything you need.

“It is never too early to start preparing for turn,” said Raab. “You should really start preparing for turn the day after move-in. You need to analyze what went well, what didn't work, what you would do differently, what you would do the same. Make sure you write that down or keep it somewhere handy so that you remember, because six months down the line, you might not remember, or you may think, ‘What did we do last year?’ Start those processes early.”

Take advantage of specials and concessions

One area where Asset Living is having success is building out concessions and specials during certain times of the year that make it easier for site teams to manage. Another added bonus is instead of having to track who has taken advantage of a special or received concessions in a spreadsheet, it’s all inside of Entrata.

“Configuring it took the step out of the staff's hands,” said Raab. “The resident selected their special when they signed the lease and all of that information was in Entrata. It allowed the staff to run reports. It eliminates time-consuming tests and it's right there. You don't have [to track it in] spreadsheets anymore.”

Use student properties as a proving ground

Finally, the panel noted that student properties are a good place to experiment with new technologies like those mentioned previously. The group agreed that if something works in student it will work in conventional.

Learn more

To learn more about what you need to know before the upcoming student leasing season, watch our webinar, Student Turn Strategies that Drive Efficiency.