06/10/2021 | News release | Archived content
A recent webcast on multifamily budgeting shed a spotlight on some great opportunities to fine-tune the process in order to save time, improve accuracy and keep budgets on track.
Participants emphasized that the time to look at your budget creation and approval processes is not when budgeting season is already upon you. Read over the suggestions below, then schedule a time when you can pull all stakeholders together to brainstorm about how to make your budgeting process run more smoothly.
When property managers are included in the planning, they feel more invested. A budget that's dropped upon them simply doesn't feel the same as one they've participated in creating. Property managers have a heightened sense of responsibility about keeping to a budget they've had a hand in. And when the budget is tight, they're less likely to feel frustrated or resentful because unreasonable numbers have been foisted upon them.
Here are some questions to ask as part of this audit: How long did income take to complete? How about expenses? What parts of each of these were slow or cumbersome, and how might you address them to speed things up?
As part of this audit, you can also look at how you performed to budget. RealPage offers a budget variance tool that's great for identifying weak spots you might have over or under-budgeted for in the past.
And finally, you will want to review your reports and worksheets and improve them where you can, adding automation where possible. Keep in mind what worked and didn't work last year.
Ask if there's a report you can build or communication streamlined to ensure that everything possible is being done to get the budget across the finish line as efficiently as possible. Sometimes just opening up this dialogue works wonders.
Share the education. Provide everyone involved in budgeting with the reports and appraisals around weaknesses and improvements, so there's ongoing learning that will mitigate problems and improve the budgeting process in an ongoing way.
Set dates well in advance for training, budget completion and budget review. Even if you don't hit these targets, you're creating a standard that will help you compare and contrast with past and future budgeting performance.
Formalize your training. A haphazard approach to training based on random email, documents and meetings is detrimental to effective budgeting. Learning platforms such as RealPage's EasyLMS make learning systematic, simple and even enjoyable, breaking down lessons into bite-sized pieces and clearly acknowledging what's been learned.
RealPage also offers all-day live training and best practices options through its 'budgeting bootcamp.' This often involves gathering everyone involved in budgeting in one place, with the trainer walking through each step of the budgeting process for multifamily; most clients who choose this option leave at the end of the day with their budgets more than half complete.
Budgets can be a painful part of managing multifamily properties, or a smooth, streamlined process that's neat, orderly and fast. It really depends on the care you take to examine, then improve how you're going about it.
Learn more about RealPage's solution to fast, easy budgeting.