Yard Voyager: A Must See Product

If you're shopping for property management software, then, even if you're a small firm now, Yardi should be on your consideration list. You are planning to grow, right? It will be a selling point if you prospective clients that you use Yardi.

Pros

During my 35 years in commercial and multi-family residential real estate, I have literally watched the real estate management software industry grow up. I have used most of the best property management software companies' products at one time or another. Yardi has been an industry front runner virtually since its release. If you run a large management company with institutional clients, then chances are you already know all about Yardi, because many institutional owners require that their managers use Yardi. If you aspire to manage institutionally-owned ("investment grade") properties one day, then you should take a hard look at Yardi. It is highly competitive cost and feature-wise with its very best competitors. Call Yardi and ask for a demo. At the very least, you will get a taste of what top-of-the-line property management software looks like. I have recommended Yardi software to my property management clients on many occasions. In all fairness, one size does not fit all in the property management industry, and I have recommended one of Yardi's competitors instead more than once.

Cons

What I like least about Yardi also applies to its best competitors. That is, there is a lot of front-end setup required to use its most valuable features. And there is a steep learning curve to be overcome in its use. Intense training of your controller/accountant(s) may be required, and additional training of property managers. As a general rule, you should expect Yardi's implementation cost to equal or surpass its purchase cost. This goes double if you plan to host Yardi on a proprietary server at your company. Again, my comments here apply to Yardi's best competitors as well. The best property management software is powerful, feature rich, highly customizable, and, when properly implemented, speaks well of your company's professionalism in many respects.

A valuable tool to manage all of your rental properties all in one place. Great for many units.

Against all other rental property softwares, this is the most diverse. You can literally use it from everything to commercial, residential and hospice type environments. It is also really great because most people that have worked in the rental property industry are familiar with the program which makes training new hires a lot easier.

Pros

This is a great way to manage every part of your rental property aspects all in one place. Yardi Voyager is extremely helpful in implementing payments to accounts and many more features. There is a reason that Yardi is one of the most popular rental software tools out there. They make handling everything simple and easy. Yardi Voyager specifically is good against multi platform rentals. It's like the big boy of rental tools. Once you have it all configured you'll never use anything else. It will help you with quotes on your new move ins, your lease expirations, your work orders for your maintenance people, it will also help with your occupancy, your vacancy and your foot traffic in your property. There are a lot of reports that you can generate to gauge how you are doing financially in the business as well. Yardi Voyager is an extremely useful tool.

Cons

The only con that I have about the program is that some of the functions that are incredibly useful, can be a bit difficult to configure and set up. Luckily though, any time I've struggled all I've had to do was contact customer support and they literally were able to help me step by step. Very very useful.

Solid Property Management Accounting

Pros

The accounting functionality is solid on Yardi Voyager and gives you a range of options ensuring that simple HOA/Condo financial statements can be completed with ease but also having more detailed setting for clients that require it. The system is completely customizable so that almost any company's business practices can be reflected in the workflow patterns, menu-sets and reporting.

Cons

Some of the new websites and software that are designed for client access to records are pushing the boundaries of what traditional software providers (such as Yardi) currently have on offer. Yardi are in the process of updating to try and match the new offerings that are available though - although the enhanced features are sometimes within whole new modules and options (such as Concierge) which are additional costs on top of the base Voyager package.

Accounting and Property Management

I used Yardi for accounting, lease information, building information, tracking COI's, running budget reports and many other things. Overall it is an amazing product that can help a business consolidate their PM tools all in one.

Pros

The biggest pro for Yardi Voyager is the ability to track multiple properties in one system, this includes COI tracking, AR, collections, lease terms. The other wonderful tool is the ability to keep all the property information in one place (i.e. building size, type, year etc...)

Cons

This program can be difficult when it comes to first time users. You spend quite a bit of time training. Also, there are usual multiple ways to accomplish the same goal (i.e. posting rents on tenant's ledgers) so it can be confusing when beginning the program and trying to understand what buttons so to what and which one you should us for a process.

Making Property Management Manageable

It's been fairly simple to use. I wish it would be just a little more intuitive, but the Yardi Helpful Tools and instructions makes life easier if I have questions. Yardi Support is also amazing and answer almost all my questions perfectly.

Pros

Would I be able to run my apartment/townhome communities without Yardi Voyager? Maybe. Would I like to try? Definitely not. It is a life saver organizer and allows me to stay on top of everything that needs to be accomplished for me and my team. From leads, to financials, to reporting and more Yardi Voyager is my go to software.

Cons

Why can I not run certain reports on Google Chrome?! Biggest frustration and makes me go to Internet Explorer to run some reports, and I wish they made the search function a little more user friendly

A solid, functional tool

Pros

I appreciate the ease in which you can run reports through Yardi and how quickly and dependably the software uploads invoices. It has pretty reliable support features and allows me to do lease administration easily.

Cons

What I like least about this software is that there isn't a quick way to compare invoices as you are coding unlike other programs that I've used. This can make it challenging to easily open other invoices and see missing recurring payments and ways that similar invoices are coded. It also is frustrating how the pathways and names to different functionalities within the program are different for different users. This can make collaboration confusing when it isn't universally the same for all users.

Yardi Voyager for a Commercial Real-Estate Company

Voyager is a great tool and we would choose it again!

Pros

Once set up, Yardi does a great job automating the management of our properties. We have also been able to use automated receipts and payments to allow us to process transactions wherever we are. Yardi has been built around real estate and that is evident!
Customer service has also been excellent. Support reps are dedicated to helping resolve issues and follow up is great.

Cons

Set up is a bit complex and choppy. Support is available and helpful, but there is not a lot of written documentation to rely on. The structure of the system and how it works is not very intuitive and you need help to get most things done.
We are a Mac shop and have had significant difficulties getting set up. However, we got there and are doing great!

Yardi Review

I have enjoyed working with Yardi and learning something new about its functionality every day. It's easy to use and there are always enhancements coming out to make report running and daily use easier.

Pros

Yardi makes it very simple to review all properties we have in the company. We are able to review tenant ledgers, run reports, reconcile accounts, add/delete properties, run trial balances and other report from Yardi Voyager.

Cons

The company I work for has a lot of properties and sometimes Yardi can run a bit slow when many people/departments are utilizing it especially around month end close.

Yardi Voyager

I love the simplicity that Yardi Voyager offers to maneuver from resident profiles and reporting functions. I would definitly recommend Yardi as the top system for any property manager.

Pros

Easy system allows you to view resident profiles, reports and other functions that make property management simple and easy to maneuver.

Cons

I don't like that you cannot open resident profiles and reports at the same time. I find it also at times when searching or populating a field is becomes blank or inputs previous searched numbers or letters making it frustrating to search rapidly and efficiently.

Yardi Voyager

The onboarding was awful. I wanted to cancel the conrqctnhalfway through and we were actually upgrading from an old Yardi platform, not another software. Once getting through that though it is a truly phenomenal product.

Pros

Capabilities are almost limitless. So many options and modules available. It’s expensive but can automate enough workload that administrative staffing can. It really is amazing what it can do.

Cons

The onboarding was brutal. Yardi has no subject matter experts on their teams that actually care understand property management and maintenance and that makes it very difficult to speak the same language. Some of their trainers are great and some are awful. The trainers are not Yardi employees they are independent contractors.

I use Yardi during 90% of my day. I wouldn't be very productive without it.

It helps make my job easier. I can't do much of anything without it. When the system is down or I get locked out... I am useless...

Pros

I think it is very user friendly. I had never used the program two years ago when I started my new job. I caught on immediately. There are options available to get to different tasks more than one way. I am still learning new things, but I feel lost without the program.

Cons

Sometimes the communication between other programs is funky. We use I Love Leasing (Sweet Spot) and the import/export causes multiple leads.