AUTOMATION IS NOT THE FIRST STEP
By Tina T. Meeks
Rentvine is rolling out some great automation such as Accounts Payable and Bank Reconciliation. Firms are asking me whether they should turn it all on. Take a deep breath!
Here is my answer and it surprises people: maybe. But not first and here's why - one forkful at a time.
Automation is a multiplier. It takes whatever your books are doing today and does it faster. If your books are clean and your workflows and software settings are set up right, automation hands you time back. If your books are messy and your settings are wrong, automation hands you wrong numbers faster, delivered with more confidence than they deserve.
Nothing in these tools is fully automatic no matter how good the demo looks. A human still has to approve. A human still has to validate what the system produced. The only real question is whether that human is looking at good data, or at a mess the software made visible quicker.
Some firms hear all of this and decide they do not want to automate yet. They want a human handling the documentation. That is a legitimate choice and it is exactly why AP Optimized exists at SCOREE Services LLC. My co-founder, Brianna Meeks, and her team run the day-to-day work: accounts payable, management fees, and owner statements, handled by a team that know property management accounting and workflows trained by a financial and systems controller. My part is the back-end; the forensic level and training side of it all. I work in the settings and workflows underneath it all so the work runs right and the money moves the way it should with my AP Team.
If a firm opts for automation later, nobody here pressures them to jump in the pool before they are ready - one forkful at a time! The order we teach never changes:
First, get the workflows set up correctly.
Then get the data clean and keep it clean. Clean data with real integrity behind it is what makes the KPIs mean everything.
Then, once the foundation holds, we teach you how to take a manual process and move it into automation, one forkful at a time, so your team understands what the system is doing and stays in charge of approving it.
Even though you aren't doing the work on the back-end, knowing the WHY is critical because if you change any operational processes, this halts the back-end and we have to reset and revise.
It takes a Village!
That is the difference between automation that helps a firm and automation that just hides or shows the problems at a higher speed. I've been working with the Claude integration into Rentvine and it is amazing! This is a game-changer for Operational workflows from Leasing to Maintenance to Owner Statements.
If you are not sure your books are ready for the automation your software keeps offering you, that is a find the leaks conversation and it is the right first step.
Find the leaks with SCOREE Services LLC