Summary
Notes
Transcript
My thought process is more of a solution for billing back on their side because they all bitch and complain about it all the time. And I'm kind of tired of hearing it and I'm not taking it on because I don't have time myself. So currently if they need to bill something back to a tenant, we use this law. And be mindful, it is only going into October, and we've already made almost 300 invoices this year.
So, like, they're coming, they're claiming a number, and this is me posting it to, like, the accounts. Okay. So that's just the log.
So they're filling out for that log, you have X amount of columns of information that you need for every one of those. It has.
The invoice number, which just is the next number in the line. Yeah, just rolling. The date you're creating it, the tenant name, what it's for, the amount, who created it. Yeah. Make Kathy sign off because half the time they're wrong and have to be caught.
Who's the one that gives the information? The individual property managers?
The individual property manager should be... - I'm going to use that as a request.
Yeah, no rush.
Sounds good.
I'm kind of just telling them what our current process is. - Okay, cool. - So like, when they get an invoice, it's either out of the mail or it's being imprinted off. When they're coding it to give it to me and get it approved, they should be capturing that as a bill back that needs to go back to the tenant. Like the tenant needs to owe their owner money back. That's what this is doing.
And do all the individual property managers have access to that log and they're asked to go into the log and fill in for theirs?
Each one is doing it. Like here, Kathy did these. I did these. Trey did those. Grant's in it. Beau hasn't had to do any of them yet. Yeah. So it's like each person that's assigned to that property is grading them accordingly. Okay. Unfortunately, it's all in Excel and it's not a friendly Excel. Like Olivia, it's all old.
Why is it old?
It was created before I even started here. Okay. Sometimes the templates, like, they're very finicky. Gotcha. So, like, whatever customized thing here, nobody uses that. They key it here. They put this information in. All this information, they're typing everything out on here. And then it's totaling down here.
Okay. So you're thinking potentially the invoice request form as well as the invoice generator pairing is kind of like what I'm doing for Olivia.
Yeah.
If there's a way and then store it in a more user-friendly kind of mainframe database.
I think ideally.
Excel sheet and then have potentially like Bo be more of like making sure everything's in line on it, but the other people it's more just filling out a potential form. Yeah.
Is there ways of doing approvals in there at all?
What do you mean approvals?
Like when they submit a new form? That's like a status thing. That's what we were talking about with Olivia, I guess. I don't really want two forms. I think it's a one and done in a way, but we also have to send it to the tenant. And I have to post it on the tenant's account.
When you're saying approvals, do you mean like having you or Bo approve their...
Entry?
Bo or Kathy approve the entry?
Okay. Yeah, there's definitely ways. I'll give you a quick rundown, Bo, of what I'm doing for Olivia. There's a different form that kind of starts it. We're basically trying to standardize and make the entire process from a deal, a listing, or an under contract piece from the get-go all the way through the invoice at the end be basically fed into this overall process. Mainframe for Olivia takes it out of the hands of multiple emails coming into her with various information, making her manually input it, just taking the human error side of it out as much as you can automate it.
And then at the very end, you can upload documents, whatever else is needed. All of these fields are extremely customizable. I could put whatever details you all would need potentially for your invoices on there. You can make X amount of them required. You can make some optional depending on how common those fields are needed for every invoice for property management. And then just submitting the invoice request.
Typing these out every single time that one of your property managers needs new information inputted. They're simply required to go into a form that prompts them very specifically on what they need to give, what needs to fill in, and then automatically will map back to wherever we're storing it, whatever sheet that is. So the sheet that Nikki was showing me. It seems like they're going in, they're manually typing that stuff into the log, and then they're going into an invoice and then manually typing the invoice out, correct?
They're having to print the invoice then into PDF and then attach the invoice that as a copy to the tenant of what they're paying for. The reason that happened is we found that we were double billing people. So we didn't know what they actually invoice for, so we're buying the invoice back for more R security.
I think on top of that, seeing how you guys are manually typing into the spreadsheet and then also having to review it, it seems like that's an added step that doesn't need to be there. And this, this aspect right here can completely re like, come from that spreadsheet. So if they come in here and they fill out a form with whatever fields property management needs for it, hit submit, and it gets added to, basically would just add in that entry to your log as if you typed it in manually.
But it can also go ahead and auto-populate this aspect of it to create the invoice right from there as well. So the only thing that anybody property manager would be doing is just filling out this form and then they have everything already done to have it stored in a log as well as an invoice being created and if there's ever any issues that you see too everything's customizable for this example i made sure to have an error on here where the names all in the same line just to show that like
And is this system where you could upload... That PDF of the copy of the invoice and then it would pull it over to the invoice to send it as a package together.
This is one that should not only have that information right there. It should have said Piedmont Natural Gas, the time period for that invoice, and then the percentage. They get billed back 81% of what the invoice is actually. This is not at all what I would have thought would have been created, but you can tell that people don't have time to do it. So if a system could help generate something for us with giving it this basic information.
It's not consistent. It's not consistent. And none of them, because you have three people at that time creating them. Nobody was consistent with them.
I think where you're going with that is, I mean, you would have a utility and then you could set up electricity, gas, water, and then you could almost set up like a, like you can even go broader and go like property maintenance or something, or you could go. HVAC, plumbing, whatever. Because as you know, it's all based on lease. And so it depends on landlord-tenant responsibility, but then we always have the option to kind of manage and kind of handle it with a fee associated.
We used to not have nearly as many, and we're already at 300, and we still have a whole other quarter left. So we probably have 100 more invoices we're going to be creating.
Basically, what would be most beneficial, I think, to visualize while building it then would be To have potentially they can be blank examples or just examples for each of kind of the core types Go ahead and make it to where it'll populate the stuff that's always on there and then also have the fields to where you can customize it accordingly For the electrical Nikki what would you like to have on there?
I'll give you an example. But I think what we're saying is If in that comment section, correct me if I'm wrong, in that comment section, if you're going to write the account number or whatever, we can make the account number a required field and then it would auto populate. Correct. Exactly what I was just doing. We're not having to type. So we could go down and for like make a utility where it's type, account number, date range, and then for HVAC, we could put something like, you know, so HVAC.
elementary book problem or whatever. And then I guess we would also need at the bottom of the invoice to do a line that says supervisory fee.
Some of the stuff that we've talked about before, and until we get to the bottom of it, we have different personalities. I know. To where uniformity, in just my opinion, in two weeks, is a really good thing. Because... And I think that something like this would save time and create uniformity. So I think taking the extra time, even if it takes a couple months to roll out, to have required fields to fill in, and then it pre-populates so that everything looks the same.
you know for me yeah i agree and i would love if at all possible to get this by one one yeah doing something like i don't see any reason why i can build these more reason i say that it's easier for me yeah going into that busy season where i'm posting these still yeah i'll i build this stuff like i'll build stuff for gant and i like on the weekends and stuff just because i know that it'll help like i'll show y'all something just shows it in action trust that it won't be
Yeah, 100%. So like, for example, like you see the last name right here. If I put in Johnson, you see it going out throughout it. Again, they're different. And I can, based on the type of invoice, like I was saying, These are different types of letters. If we're writing for a self-storage, I'm going to go to here, and it changes the verbage on there.
I just think that this is essentially what you're wanting. You could potentially see it in real time while inputting it, and then when they hit submit, you're going to get a PDF of this, attach whatever documents you want to it, but also I want this to feed a database because there's no reason that needs to be an extra step. Because they're just going to type the same thing twice, and people mistype.
That's fine. I'm just going to need... The more examples, the better for things that you've run into in the past. The fields that are going to be required on every one of these that go into not only the invoice, but go into the sheet. Yeah. I think the sheet probably has more fields than the invoice includes. Is that correct?
But you still want them to type it all in because there's no no reason in the world why anyone should need to fill out this form with all that information and then go to a sheet and fill out that sheet it should feed it and that way you just you keep your records it's consistent if there's something that's on the invoice it is in that log sheet there's no discrepancy there there never will be because it's fed by the same thing yeah um well we're talking about it this this might be stupid and in more like detail but nikki is there
I looked at DocuWare for what you're talking about. It was going to cost $14,000 to implement and then $400 a month. But the problem is that the invoice is still going to have to be scanned into it because you still have to have that backup for IRS rules. Yeah.
We are printing out every invoice. Every invoice for every property.
Everything's paper still. For what? I hate it. For every property we manage. For what reason? Why are you printing them out?
We all go to the AP email. So what we do, she gets all the invoices. Got you. digitally yes like PDFs whatever and then she prints it off and sets it in a basket and then the property manager for that property looks at it writes the GL code and the property name and then me or Kathy initial and sign off on it then that goes to a box and Nikki picks it off and then uses that geocoding that information to input it into our system.
You'll send, like from your email, you can send the invoice directly to the system. It will take AI and try to notate every vendor, the property, the amount, what the coding could be, make sure that the W-9 COIs are on file, that they're required to meet those requirements.
I know what he's doing. There needs to be a different solution there because it used to be that I was coding all the invoices and now I got way too tasked down with it. I'm like, this is a waste of my time. Gotcha. You don't need your CFO doing that.
I have seen people shred invoices before. Oh, yeah. I've seen that happen where they're throwing it away and I'm like, why are you moving it over there? I haven't paid that thing yet. So it gets lost and then we get vendors reaching out like, hey, this is outstanding. Like, Oh, we don't have that. Can you please resend it? Like we're playing dumb sometimes. So there's no audit history behind it right now.
And it's like, I don't know where it's left off. My brain knows where it was left sometimes and I know where it's sitting. So I try to make mental notes, but I don't need to keep those mental notes. I mean, be like, okay, it's gone.
Invoice store there as well as a physical like a PDF copy That's what I'm used to and then if a hard copy is Needed you know you just print it.
In a perfect world. We get, let's say we get 15 invoices on Monday. You take those invoices and you scan them in and then they go somewhere stored. And then you code from there in a perfect world.
So you already used to have that. They do have that option where you send the invoices all and then they upload it themselves. for your manager, if it's not, you'd have to go through AVID and then pay $2 in invoice. And then have to still import it and make sure the code is right.
Because what I'm worried about is I don't know in my mind right now how important Anybody would be privy to that, but I guarantee you if certain ownership groups knew the way we did things, they would pause and say, you guys are really dated, and that worries me.
I printed out with me learning that I have this. So I saw that list of codes you have. You said that they don't, they're not stagnant. They switch up.
I add more than delete. We'll come to a situation where
No. They're going under the vendor. Like, if they get an invoice, they're going in here. This is how my brain works. Going to the vendor and keying it, like, let's just say it's a duke. and then they're going to transactions, I would say, "Okay, here's the short name. Okay, that's the account number. How is it previously coded?" Yeah.
And if it's done wrong the last month, it keeps going wrong.
We've had one owner get audited, and we had to have somebody stand behind the copier for probably four hours making copies of the invoices once a week. Yeah, that's a problem. And it wasn't an easy task, but it was like, it came down to me or Kathy doing it. And then we finally had like somebody else have the time to help out. But people are getting bogged down in the areas they don't really need to be.
Yeah, we're at a spot now with technology and the way that documents are getting people and stuff that it should never be a case of you having to re-scan back in a physical copy of something to assist them to get to somebody. Like there should be, however you're receiving the invoices, which... Primarily should be digital, I'm assuming. Yes. I would say that most of ours are other than utilities.
A lot of them have been transferred over to being digital. And I've pushed for that.
Yeah, I wonder if we're thinking about it wrong in some sense, that we're trying to solve both. I mean, I wonder... I'm not smart enough to know, but I wonder if... Are we going about it the wrong way with... I mean... Because we're a little ancient or a lot ancient with this, should we take baby steps? And instead of like the Avid or the 14 grand or whatever, is there something that we should look about just a system to get invoices online to start with, like a storing mechanism?
And then from there, may we take a step of Do we create something like this to help and then we just kind of piece together rather than like the, I guess what I'm trying to say is rather than the WETSs, is there a toy or an option? Yeah, I'm sure that there is.
Let's look at this one. Well, I asked AI, chat GPT, I was like, what's the system? But it looks like there's a smart bills. Maybe we can look at that. It might already be integrated. So.
I like Claude. I think Claude is really good for research. It's good for privacy when you're dealing with stuff that doesn't need to have any risk of that. I was an applied math and stats major out of school. I worked in data analytics for my first year out of college. I did research and published research on the NFL. I started with AI kind of right when it kicked off in like 2022-ish when it was, I mean, chat was out there through all of college, but once people started realizing the capabilities of it.
It produces good stuff. You see it and you're like, wow, this is perfect. Hit send. But there's so many aspects of it that still need like that human care to it that I think a lot of people are overlooking right now. Makes sense. But for research and stuff, I mean, I could go in there like two days ago and say, give me 35 self-storage properties in North and South Carolina that are basically not owned by institutional owners, have not traded in the last 15 years, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.
I think for the specific buildbacks, I would say examples of different pretty standard invoicing, whether it may be for electric, HVAC, or... This out of the other and the required fields that your property managers are filling out into that log sheet consistently for every single invoice.
You can also, for that log sheet, you could just copy it and make an empty one so I don't have access to anything and just send me the sheet too. And I can look through it and see what columns you guys have on there. It's up to you how you want to do it. But if I have access to that, what I'll do is create a form similar to this, similar to the letter one that I showed you, that will have the fields required for the log sheet.
Then with the examples of the invoices that you guys give to me, I will create some templates for them, but also pick which of the fields from the log sheet are interacting with the invoice, interacting in real time right here. Allow personalization, so if there's anything that ever auto-populates wrong, you can always change it down here. So it's not like everything needs to be automatic. Allow Spot to upload documents if you'd like.
For example, that one that Nikki showed where there was another document attached to the invoice that wanted to be included. give you the option to do so. And then whenever you hit generate invoice, I'm going to have all that information get tracked into a log database that you guys are mainly filling up now. So basically it'll be a one-stop shop for all the property managers for build backs, for creating invoices and logging all the information properly.
And then from there, I mean, I can even have it, um, The invoice itself I could have stored on the log sheet if that would be beneficial. It would just tie it directly into that project, but that's up to you guys. That's one of the main reasons I like Notion. So this is the thing I made for Olivia, but Gant and I use Notion all the time. So this is Gant and I's dashboard. It's every project that we work on.
It It has follow-up timelines depending on urgency, whether it be under contract, listings, working projects. We also have individual follow-up timelines for all of our developers that we talk to. If it's been more than 60 days and we haven't spoken to them, it comes up on the main screen. This just sits on our TV upstairs all day and just allows us to keep up with our projects.
So, A, all of our contacts for them, but if I ever want to know where an LOI is, I can click there and have it immediately. You get a call, and it just stores it for all the time, gives us data for our closed deals because it never leaves the system. We'll just archive it when we finish it up. But I log every single contact that Gant and I have. Emails, letters, meetings, phone calls. I think it's good metrics for us to have.
It's helpful. How much... Does this run a month? So it is a free platform. Olivia's version is free. I spend $20 a month on it because I use it pretty intensely for our workflow. It allows us just to have a few more options and the casting capabilities, but you can see I've been tracking our metrics for this stuff now for, I guess, six months. Probably.
Yeah, Rob was really impressed when you showed it to him.
Along with this, every contact that we have in there can be sorted by their product type. So if we have a new BTR opportunity that comes online, I can go and just click BTR and it'll pull up all of our developers that are tied to it. So just so that we can have it all in the same place. And then every new contact we have gets added into our contact book and it just grows.
Yeah, because I think, you know, I definitely want to stay close and work with you because I think that that's one of the biggest things that I'm seeing is such a good foundation. There's nothing broke, but we, as we, like I was at a, A meeting with UNC Charlotte today to take one of their buildings and you can talk it all day long. You can talk through the physical property, but I mean, we are a couple steps behind when it comes to stuff like this.
And I think all this circles back to a point you made at the very jump of this is just Everyone can be really good at what they do, but they all come from different backgrounds and strengths, whether it be writing, whether it be diligence, conciseness, whatever that may be. So finding ways to standardize it but also allow them to still be good at their job is the hard part with anything.
Everything. Before I started, there was 10 bank accounts. All paper. Yeah. Only checks. And I was like, we can't do that anymore. And I think that's... And I started with paying the broker's ACH. And once I got comfortable with that, I was like, I don't...
For the benefit, I mean, in the benefit of property management, I mean, in the near future, we're about to see the whole new invoice intake, deal intake system be rolled out for 26 brokers. Yeah. So if that goes well... Yeah. then, I mean, it's not going to be a jump at all for them. It's going to be like, oh, yeah, get it, change it, do it.
And I'm all for that because... I think it will help these guys. And we have a young team. I mean, Graham and Trey are young, sharp. I mean, they, I mean, they, I think will embrace stuff like this. And then, you know, Kathy's just at a disadvantage because she's done it for so long and it's been her baby that she's a lot like Nikki now. She just has everything in her head. So it's not that she doesn't want to go.
She's been the most willing to change things up than anybody. It's just, she's, got so much knowledge stored in her head, you know, um, so, but yeah, I'm all for it. We'll work on getting you the requested stuff.
And then, um, I say we sit through the, I'll find a video on your university about the smart bills. You should look at their maintenance one too.
Yeah. Yeah. Because, um, I'm surprised a couple of our vendors aren't requesting like work order numbers and stuff. And, um, You know, there is some to be said to track other than email. Like that's where things get lost in the shuffle to where if you create a work order, you can see that, you know, you have five that are open that need to be followed up on and then 10 that have closed for the month so you know you're good.
I know this system. I don't think we pay for it. We're going to have to reach out to our salesperson anyways because we don't have smart bills.
Did I mention to you about writing on the same day as next week? Yeah, it's exciting. What day? Monday, 11.30. Perfect. I accepted it actually on a fancy... Good deal. Down at their office. Oh, that's exciting. Right around the corner. Yeah. I really don't need to send it to you. I just go.