Client Spotlight: Brett Weldon

Let me introduce you to Brett of The Springs Team Real Estate Company. Springs Team began a business in 2012 at which time Brett quit his corporate job with Lexis Nexis and moved from Florida to Colorado to open his brokerage. They manage single family homes for individual owners and conduct sales on the real estate side of the business.I asked Brett what he felt were key elements in running a successful property management business as well as what were industry trends as he sees them. He responded that the job is not hard in that you are renting homes, collecting rent, and making repairs as needed. He continues, “The biggest challenge for us is keeping up with ever-changing laws and regulations ... especially pertaining to the accounting part of the business.” The company’s goal is to double their portfolio in the next two years and you can find them at https://www.thespringsteam.com.

Trinity Has a Few Things That She Would Like to AddTrinity is the Office Manager/ Assistant Property Manager. She is a person with many talents and many hats. Previously she was with another property management company in Washington. She has been with the company for four years and moved to the area as a result of her husband’s military career. She is a military spouse in a state that has a lot of active members of the military seeking housing. For this reason, she relates well to those families that are going through relocation.Trinity jumps in with enthusiasm about her account Manager, Caroline. She says, “It’s really helpful to me to be able to call on Caroline to help break things down. She’ll tell Caroline, “I’m not getting it, can you help me through it?” Then once Caroline breaks things down, Trinity can then explain it to the owner.Let’s Talk About AccountingWhen Brett was asked how important accounting was and knowing that his books were clean he rated this at the very top. His company had one bookkeeper and they did understand what a three-way reconciliation was. However, Brett then goes on to explain to me about features that his company weren’t yet using and how APM Help offered assistance with training and implementation of those features.We first discussed Online ACH payments and Brett told me that he had not implemented ACH payments through AppFolio prior to using APM Help. He was processing his payments manually through his bank which he states took much longer.When asked about the Financial Diagnostic Report (FDR), he said that he had not previously used this report. It’s important to know as you are reading this case study that some staff at a property management company are not aware of the FDR because it requires Presidential access or customized access set by AppFolio to see this report.Trinity added to this that she likes how Caroline gave her a sort of punch list which helped Springs Team to scale their business. She’s been able to utilize the features in AppFolio while learning about them from APM Help which allows her to focus on more important items.Healing the Client's Pain Points

I asked Brett, “What pain points did you and your team have while working with AppFolio and with keeping your books clean?” He responded, “The biggest challenge for me was the time it took to get an answer from AppFolio. From day one I was always apprehensive about them not having live support. It seemed every time we submitted a request we would have to wait 24 hours for a response that would come at 4:59 pm once we were walking out the door. It was extremely frustrating.”Trinity hasn’t herself had to reach out to AppFolio support, but she states, the fact that APM has a team of professionals with various expertise, does cut the time down to get a response and subsequent solution to task requests and questions.The APM Help Experience.

The Springs Team signed up with APM Help for Bookkeeping services. Brett tells us how APM Help “made an immediate impact” on his business. He further elaborates that, “in 15 minutes they identified issues within my books that I was not aware of and fixed them quickly and painlessly.” He tells me that he is confident that his books are bulletproof and that gives him peace of mind as well as the ability to spend time making money instead of worrying about how to keep track of it.The biggest thing for Trinity is that "it's been pretty awesome to clean things up that the company didn’t even know existed." This gives Springs Team a better picture of the accounting and allows for every penny to be accounted for. There are no worries of funds being commingled and funds are recorded appropriately. APM Help went into detail and Trinity has confidence that the books are clean. Brett rates APM at the top and says that we tell everyone that he knows in the business that, “APM Help was the smartest decision I have ever made for my business.”