AppFolio Property Manager

Accept payments

Store documents

Print and mail annual reports

Difficult to email select audiences

Can't create online applications for all user groups

Hard to set up automatic dues for any other time period than monthly

Prior to purchasing AppFolio Property Manager we used a texting app so we could mass text tenants. AppFolio allows us to text them by their unit along with their guarantors (if needed.) We use this feature daily. It is so convenient when we need to reach out residents quickly.

The online payment system makes it easy for our commercial and residential tenants to make rental payments. The system has also lessened the work of out Account's manager since it's all in once place now and we do not have to enter payments into a separate system.

Navigating AppFolio Property Manager is extremely easy. When we have new hire, it does take any time for them to become comfortable with the system. The main page dashboard makes it simple to get from point A to point B and beyond. The Search engine on AppFolio Property Manager is so efficient. You can search almost anything- phone number, first names, last names, addressed, license plate numbers to successfully find what you are needing.

We work with mostly college students. As you can imagine there is a lot of roommate drama which brings lease changes. Or perhaps tenants forget to renew their lease agreement and new residents sign and we have to move people around to different addresses. There is NO feature that will allow you to delete a tenant. There is not way to make changes of address once someone is entered. And the "tenant transfer" feature is not useful for us.

We have some issues using the email feature on AppFolio Property Manager. The "letters" feature will allow you to send out an email/ letter and will attach it to everyone's account. If I want to send a personalized email- I have to send it to one resident and BCC the other tenants and their guarantors, anyone blind copied will not have the email attach to their account. So this feature becomes almost unusable for us because of that.

Sometimes it's difficult to receive customer support. The chat feature is helpful but, most of the time the question we have is not easily answered and we are passed off to several other people.

Multi-entity accounting management

Checking printing: We have multiple bank accounts tied to our account and utilize blank check stock. Appfolio automatically prints the routing numbers and account numbers at the bottom of the blank checks based on which property we are paying a bill from.

Tie-in with their Investment Management tool gives our investors a great resource while keeping our investments in sync with our accounting software.

Customer support is horrendous. It can take weeks to get a live person on the phone and once you get someone, they typically will need to escalate your issue.

If you have multiple bank accounts at different banks, the bill-paying feature has trouble properly defaulting to the right bank account.

Multiple bank accounts also have issues tying incorrectly to the Cash section of the balance sheet.

Ease of use

Customer Support & FAQ Articles

Organization of the Website

Ability to Customize

Application Screening

Constant Updates to Site

Customer service hours could be extended

Quicker application results

Ability to better keep track of follow-up for prospects

Tenant portal.

Collect tenant payments via ACH.

Ease of data entry.

Customer service is awful.

Only one bank account allowed per specific GL account number.

Should have a dedicated support line with techs who know the program.

Scheduling Showings with Integrated Calendar

Creating Leases

Accounting Functions are STELLAR

Accounting is not as user-friendly for the general Property Manager type, the folks who are actual accountants, like a dedicated accounting person will be fine.

Rental Comps are limited and can be quite OFF on the numbers since it only takes into account Appfolio rents...not any other integration. I use this for a bird's eye view only.

Scheduling Tasks with a team has come a LONG way in recent years. It still needs some integration to split tasks among users.

Wonderful user experience. I can log on to the interface, see exactly what is going on for the day: move-outs, move-ins, who owes rent, late fees, etc. You can also modify your screen exactly how you want it!

I love the quicklinks. You can see who is delinquent with their rent and automatically add late fees or even send a quick email/text.

LOVE the option to text the entire property. Ex: the pool shut down for emergency cleaning, and I was able to send out a quick text so that all tenants were notified, even if they were out of state.

There are so many reports that I still need to view and see their value, sometimes it's hard to see with so many options available as a user.

Would love to be able to message a prospective tenant their showing time without entering in so much information. Sometimes a quick email, phone number, and name would be ideal to contact them as opposed to so much information as a guest card.

One more con would be the timeout of the website. I understand it's for security, but sometimes it will time out after a few minutes of inactivity. It would be nice to have a longer time out period.

It helps us to keep the Maintenance side of the business very organized. Anyone from our organization can go in and know exactly where a work order is in process (new, waiting, assigned, completed). We know if a work order has been printed and if the tenants are still having an issue we know to contact the Maintenance team. We can build on existing work orders by adding a "-2" or "-3" work order and keep track of the history when managing ongoing issues.

AppFolio makes it easy to see exactly what tenants owe and categorizes charges/credits efficiently on their ledgers. We can tell if there are water/sewer charges, pet fees, electricity allocations, late fees, security deposits, etc... It's all easy to follow and understand and it set up in chronological order.

I also utilize the Reports and Letters section of this software program quite often. It's great to have a uniform format which helps us maintain the professional element by remaining consistent and accurate. It's easy to run a report with tenant information at a certain property for maintenance and send select tenants letters at a large property without everyone being included. It's very intuitive and the formatting has definitely improved over the past two years I've been using the program.

Only a few very technical items that wouldn't necessarily make sense to non-users and I haven't even cared enough to submit requests on the issues. It'd be nice if parking was easier to keep track of on the system. Right now, if you run a report it doesn't show all the information our company requires for the vehicles and therefore we have to keep track of it elsewhere.

Another obstacle we've encountered is that the program charges "by door" so if you have multiple units and properties you can really rack up pricing. That's especially true for large multi-unit buildings with parking.

Support is phenomenal. Response time is great and results are immediate.

By far the easiest property management software I have ever used. If mistakes are made, making corrections is extremely easy and does not clutter up reports, ledgers or other areas of the account.

Posting directly to the website and other internet sites is so simple and quick. No more do I spend time inputting data in my software then again to the website and yet again to internet advertisements. Data is entered once and moved to all of these locations at the click of a button.

The calendar needs a lot of improvement. Currently it will sync with Google calendar but I would like to see it sync directly with my Outlook calendar.

It would be extremely beneficial if lease expiration dates would post to the calendar OR if AppFolio would notify me in advance that a lease expiration is upcoming.

I would like some sort of notification when an on-line payment is made.

The ability to send group text messages and emails would be an added luxury.

I would like to have the ability to add or take away from the Dashboard.

Their search features are awesome and it helps us find Tenants, Owners and Vendors by first name, last name, or phone number. It's great!

Reporting and accounting are very simple and have streamlined several of our processes that used to take hours to do usually can be done in one hour or less. Emailing reports to Owners has now been reduced from 2 days to 1 to 2 hours-that has been a great time saver.

Being mobile friendly has allow our employees and our tenants access to what they need 24/7 and almost everyone uses some kind of mobile device which has helped increase visibility for our units and helps keep our vacancy rate low.

Their support team is always there to help and has been a great asset to have to rely on their help.

There is some reporting that we would like to see for our Owners and Tenants. Their vacancy report is one we wish we could pull in the tenants phone number to be able to have it on our report when we print.

Maintenance also has reporting that we would like to be able to produce from the keys checked out and keys returned so we can stay on top of checking out our units better. We would also like to do reports from the inspections. Being able to print the units coming vacant at the end of any given month and printing it so we know which unit needs to have painting, cleaning and carpet cleaning done would be very helpful. Right now we export the units and copy and paste into a spreadsheet template to have what we need for our maintenance board.

The process to remove misapplied rent or how to refund money to a tenant is a several step process we would like to see simplified.

AppFolio excels at generating reports that are easy to read and understand

AppFolio is also easy to use, and provides userfriendly instructions

Customer support is helpful and analysts are often willing to spend much of their time to help clients learn the product

AppFolio does not have much room for customizability outside of the standard report format

Licensing is sometimes a problem, though the company is friendly about using trial accounts

Program often hangs on mobile devices

Tracking work orders per property.

Tracking vacancies

Tracking rent due/paid

Although, AppFolio has made some recent improvements to the financial statements (yeah), more flexibility and options are still needed.

I know a number of peers shy away from AppFolio because the accounting section operates like accounting software in the late 80's, early 90's.

Sometimes, it takes a great amount of sleuthing to find an original transaction, or retrieve more detail.