Topic: App Folio Software...anyone using this?

So my company just switch over to this internet software program appfolio. I'm taking the two hour class now for training and just wonder if anyone is currently using it and what their thoughts were on it.

Hi we are considering it and switching from rent manager. Have you been happy with your move.

DO NOT DO IT!!!! How you can have a management software that dose not track your traffic or marketing is beyond me. I had to create a leasing excell sheet just to track my prospects and marketing. Also you can not take a unit off vacancy even if you pre-leased it out. So if your team is not ontop of it or have allot of units to lease you will double up on the units. The accounting end of it was not very good either. Customer service was horrible when you called for help. I will not work for a company that has App Folio... seriously it was not a very good software program. I would recomend AMSI or YARDI they are both functional and easy to use. Hope this helps you in your decission. Seriously think of being able to properly track your traffic and marketing dollars.

We used DIY for a few months and it was a total nightmare as well! So many gliches with it and too many ways of changing past entries... Customer service was a nightmare as well... they would fix the problem from their end but never explained to use what we did wrong so we could fix it the next 100 times it happened!

Hi,
I am in charge of product development here at AppFolio. Just to clarify, we recently released prospect/lead management functionality into the product.
Thanks!

I think they all have good points and less than good points. Sometimes it is not the fault of the provider; they are providing what the Corp office has asked for. I have used Yardi--3 different versions, MRI, Esite, Lead2Lease, Max Lease to name a few. The modules that were used were determined at the Corp level, which I think is a mistake. I understand that property software is a huge investment ($5000 EACH license for MRI at one company!) In my opinion, site managers should always be part of the decision making process when it comes to Property Software. Great leasing folks want a way to track prospects, Corp folks want great reports, site staff wants an easy way to post rents, Corp folks want great reports, etc. Ask the folks on the front line—what is going to help THEM, what is going to make THEIR job easier!!

Editor Note:

Hi Phil,
Can you please contact us about your post?

Brent

I have highly recommended Appfolio and my Company has found it to be a lot more user friendly than some of the other applications out there. While no one software is perfect, I have used just about everyone available. Appfolio is constantly evolving and is a program I would recommend in a heartbeat!

I just did not have a good experince from the training of it to calling the help desk to being an onsite team memeber using it. I also heard the accountants several times complain about this software program. Thankfully I do not work for that company anymore that used it and am now on Yardi which is awesome!

:) I was unhappy at first since i was used to yardi tenant pro then appfollio. Then i learned it and it made life easier. dont let your boss know.Anything new is always makes you insecure until you learn it. Not a paid appfollio fan :) :)

Can you please let me know where that feature is as we have been advised by appfolio that it does not exist. Not a current fan of the product and seriously considering switching back to rent manager where you have control of your business.

I can tell you that since I first started this discussion I have had a better experience with Appfolio. I think the biggest problem with my first experience was the lack of training from the corporate office. Now I'm in the marketing/training roll and was able to call on my experience with this from two years ago.

When my company decided to go to Appfolio I devised a plan that had me going to the regions and teaching a live class on using Appfolio. In addition we have monthly training sessions to go over Appfolio. While it is not perfect it is easier to use. I still wish I could have control over the choices for how a lead heard about you.

The system is affordable and easier to use then some software program. I have faith that if I keep submitting request to the development department they will build an awesome system to track my marketing dollars.

I do have one question has anyone created a cheat sheet for the Guest Card leads? Like what they mean and what type of traffic should go under it. I have not found one and need to get this out to my properties as many of them are listing their traffic as email but the lead came from ISL.

I have been using the program for the last 5 years and it has been wonderful. The program is easy to use and extremely user-friendly. Enjoy it! it is a very good management program.

We have just switched over from Buildium. Our main reason to swich was due to the lack of automation with Buildium. I was promised that this would be available during the sales pitch from Appfolio only to now find out 2 months and several thousand dollars later that it is not. My tenants are not automatically sent late notices. Owners are not notified of work orders or tenants non-payment. And the 'owners portal' is a joke. Nothing more than a report that must be sent by my staff. Yes, they have a username and password but they only see the report we sent. They cannot pull reports on their own, see notes made, see much of anything actually. I am so ready to switch and we are only 3 weeks in!

RL

We are in the process of switching from Onesite to ResMan... We almost went with Appfolio, however decided that ResMan would give us more of what we needed. Appfolio had a lot of "free" stuff, however, ResMan seems more of what we want and need.

I would have to agree with those on here that have said don't use it. We are a year in and it has only gotten worse. Starting with mis-representation at the beginning to changes at the property level that we knew nothing about and did not authorize. Even the help desk has been less than useless. This is all from my personal experience, but I'd rather hire a group of monkeys, at least then eventually something would go right.

Brian Donahoo
Appfolio
50 Castillan Dr
Goleta, CA 93117

April 7, 2014

Dear Mr Donahoo;

I was recently "sold" by your staff on Appfolio and paid for the service which was not delivered as promised. The best explanation I could receive is that you staff was incapable of delivering the necessary training unless we hired accountants and/or other IT profressionals. I did hire an assistant whose job was to integrate out current Quickbooks system to your system, and she was totally dedicated to the project, and had entered all of the date and spent months preparing via the webinars and training.

On the date that were were set to integrate the data, your "team" called and informed me that they could not support the trnasfer. Additionally, I was promised by Mr Vinihoo that somewone in accounbting would be contacting me concerning the refund an April 4.

That day has come and gone, and I can not seem to get any response from Armel, Waggoner, or Vinihoo.
There may be financial and or other difficulties with Appfolio, but I implore you to do the right thing as your company promised. And if you require IT professionals and accountants as customers, then you should advertise as such and not oversell the service. I expect a full refund as promised.

Sincerly

EVAN S HOWELL
PROFESSIONAL ENGINEER
REAL ESTATE AND PROPERTY MANAGEMENT
9219 KATY FREEWAY STE 155
HOUSTON, TX 77255
713-461-5555
FAX: 713-461-5598

cc: Klaus Schauser
Michael Randolph
Aimee Miller
Brett Little

After spending months with their team, they called and said they would not support us unless we had accounting professionals. RUN !!!

Evan,

Sorry to hear you’re frustrated. Using AppFolio Property Manager, or any property management software with built-in accounting, does require accounting knowledge and typically our customers have accounting expertise required for their business operations. It sounds like we did strongly encourage you to invest in additional accounting expertise in order to effectively use our accounting software. The team does agree that AppFolio isn’t the right fit for your business and my understanding is this has been resolved to your satisfaction. We wish you the best of luck in the future.

We just getting out of Appfolio. Big disappointment. We tried to use it for book keeping for 2 months(but kept using our old system just in case) then gave up entering any new data because we could not get the accounts to reconcile with our old software. It was our summer busy season, so we had to keep using it for the website only. We hoped to be able to catch up in the fall when things slowed, but could not get help. Does not deliver what is promised and sales team told us many things that turned out not to be true. Customer service after the initial implementation is very slow. Help requests are only allowed by email and generic responses with link to the help video page. Someone may email you back 1-3 business days later if you request a person to contact you in the request. From there, you try to set up a time to talk, or they just call you back unannounced when you are not in front of your computer. At that point, you either went ahead and tried to figure out the issue yourself, hoping that if you did it incorrectly, the ramifications to the general balance sheet will be fixable later. Or, like we did many times, had to use our paper trail or old software to function and get people paid.

They require you to go live before you to view the software, and then it is difficult to learn it and still run your office. I knew 2 weeks in that we needed to train and then start over with implementation because we could not pay our owners using it that month, but Appfolio said they would not do a do-over. I even offered to pay another set up fee to do it and they said no.

Probably a growing pains issue, but their growing pains were costly to my company. The new software company we just switched to was perplexed as to why Appfolio could not wipe the data clean and start us over. This new company said they would wipe every month clean for us if needed until we felt we were proficient with the program. They also said they would not charge us while practicing and wave the set up fee if we decided to stay, which is in the contract. Also, the help tech knows every aspect of the software---not just some young person fresh out of college without any industry knowledge. I would not switch to any company that does not allow you to see the product before you buy.

I have been using AppFolio for about 3 1/2 years when I started my own property management company. Prior to that, I had been an onsite manager for 20+ years and had used many different software systems.

My company has grown quickly, we now manage 550 units including multifamily and commercial. AppFolio has played a big part in that rapid growth. Yes, you do still have to have professional team members who understand accounting and are willing to spend time getting to know the system inside and out but if you do take the time to do that, it is well worth it!

There are many innovative features that we love. We require that our team members use the notes to document events with each tenant, property, units, vendors etc. After that, we all have access to detailed information from anywhere. Tenants have multiple electronic payment options and portals for service requests. This saves a huge amount of time at the first of the month. Marketing is quick once you set the property up the first time, you just click to post it in multiple places. Prospective renters can apply and pay online and you can obtain a screening report through AppFolio with very little effort.

We also just invested in new Scansnap scanners for each user. This is a great complement to Appfolio's system and allows us to quickly and easily attach invoices, leases etc for quick retrieval

If you have an owner who you want to have full access to information, you can set them up as a read only user. With Appfolio's pricing, you get unlimited users so why not?

We do love AppFolio and were sad when our biggest competitors switched to Appfolio. We felt that we had a real edge when we were the first to have it. In the past 3 1/2 years that we have been on board, they have constantly been rolling out new features to make it even better. There is an ongoing suggestions forum where users can vote for their most wished for new features. I am sorry to see that others are not having a positive experience with the transition as we have!

What software did you switch to, J? We looked at AppFolio and everything else and went with Entrata, but are currently in the implementation phase, so I can't share my thoughts on the product until we've been using it. Your experience with AppFolio sounds like what I expected, which is why we didn't choose them (the reviews for support were all terrible). AppFolio also couldn't do a lot of basic things we need in our business. So far as I can tell, there isn't any property management software that's great, they all seem to have pros and cons, with each option I looked at having features I wish the other had. In terms of ease-of-use, Buildium looks like it's king, but that doesn't (currently) have online lease signing, inspections, etc., and their support reviews are the same as AppFolio (awful). I'll be keeping up to date with all of these companies, as I think any one of them could become "the best" in a few years, as none of them are stellar in all respects, and the bar is pretty low in property management software (niche market, way too expensive).

One thing I really liked about the initial calls with Entrata was their, "Let's see if this will work" attitude, rather than "We're confident our software will do everything you need!" which is what the people at AppFolio, PropertyWare, and Yardi all said (and we quickly found that not to be the case once we saw demos of the software). With Entrata, we're finding out that the implementation is WAY more involved than it was made out to be. The fees are really high (compared the the other options) and it involves way more work on our part. We're going to give it our best effort, and hopefully it will work well, but for those considering it, just know that their "We'll do the implementation for you" line is false. "Them" doing it "for you" is them sending countless surveys and gigantic CSV files for you to enter every possible thing which their implementation staff can then just import.

Very surprised to hear of any negative reviews of AppFolio, especially with regards to customer service! We have used the software for about five years and we found implementation to be, while stressful (not their fault - mine) quite smooth, but the customer service has been truly exceptional. When we have had issues, we have received very quick replies. I especially love that you can copy the precise link of where you have the question into their customer service request so the person assigned to you (yes, you get the same tech support person each time) can see right away where you are and how to help. Honestly, to us, their customer service has been quite frankly superlative!

AppFolio lacks the ability to scan a rent check directly into the system so it is a 2 step process. you have to have it deposited into the bank and then go into AppFolio to mark it as paid.

It seems like a really cumbersome process and I just cannot get my head around why they decided to leave that check scanning out of the system.

Have you asked them if they plan on adding this in the future? I have found their development staff to be incredibly receptive to customer ideas. I believe that perhaps Appfolio is concentrating, like us, on complete elimination of paper payment instruments and pushing free ACH rent payment. Interested in your thoughts on that!

I was told by sales that there is no plan to add it, but who knows.

We are also looking at Propertyware who does have check scanning functionality.

I like the look of Appfolio, but Propertyware has the check scanning and also seems to allow for more customization of dashboards and reports.

Hi Kirghizstan,

I understand your frustration with the 2 step process Appfolio's check scanning offers. In today's fast paced world, any type of double entry is completely unacceptable. I would like to invite you to check out Property Matrix! Not only do we have a built in check scanning feature, but we also feature complete customization of the entire software from reports to maintenance tickets. No matter which solution you choose, I wish you the best of luck in your hunt for a better property management software.

Good thoughts, thanks for that. I know that Appfolio is dedicating itself to more forward thinking solutions like ACH. Our goal is to have 70% of our tenants paying by ACH by YE 2016. That way we don't have to deal with scanning!!! Hope that helps!

I would like to share my experience with appfolio as a property owner that has had multiple rental managers swap to appfolio. To me app folio is a MAJOR step backwards. The reporting feature for owners is useless if you own multiple properties (I own 60 properties). PDF has very little value to someone like me; that at some point will 1) file an income tax return; 2) present past history in s detailed manner to a lender (bank) 3) want to monitor investment performance. Its a classic situation of fluff with little value. I dont even bother downloading my monthly pdfs anymore as I dont want all the clutter. Instead i pester my managers for CSVs. And I can tell that they are not happy they have to do this. If you want to provide the owners with value that makes them appreciate this tool you MUST allow csv downloads. You don't even have to provide many CSV options. Simply downloading all transaction is sufficient as most people know how to automatically extract information from a CSV. Honestly, i would prefer to find Rental Managers that DO NOT use app folio rather than spend 500 man hours manually imputing information from pdfs. I hope you Rental Managers thinking of using app folio read this and DO NOT switch over until basic download is provided.

I disagree. I own about 600 units and my management company manages about 1,200 total. I am our biggest client and I have never had any issue with reporting at all, in fact our CPA and client's CPAs like to hear we are using AppFolio. The only issue I have with AppFolio, and they know this, is the really poor letter writing module. If only it went into Word or some other work processor other than pdf. In our six years of using AppFolio I have never received a client complaint!

Dear Mike, thank you for sharing your experience here. I work for AppFolio and have brought your comments to the attention of our product team, they are always looking for new ways to improve the reporting functionality within AppFolio Property Manager. If you would like to provide a bit more detail as to why you prefer the reports in a CSV format, I will happily pass those details along to our team as well. Best, Mackenzie

Hi Jolene,

I just read your comments on Appfolio, we just boarded 7/1/23....and yes,...it IS very difficult to get help from them,....we are pretty much forced to ask the virtual assistant. What happened to customer service,....and being available to answer questions? By any chance, did you ever come across ANYONE other than them that is available to train or ask questions? I'd appreciate whatever input you can share.

Liz Wiggins

Does AppFolio have function to support community vote for governance doc update? Aka, manager/board can upload the updated version of doc and all community members can vote in app?