Rental Operations at Scale: 500 Units Across Texas

Client profile

The client is a regional property management company operating approximately 500 residential units across several Texas metros. The portfolio includes a mix of single-family rentals and small multifamily buildings. A central operations team of eight handles leasing, rent collection, maintenance coordination, and reporting for owners. Before changing tools, they relied on a combination of spreadsheets, email, and a legacy accounting package that did not integrate lease terms or maintenance requests.

Challenges before Proforma Studio

Rent collection was manual: invoices and reminders were sent by email or mail, and staff spent hours each week reconciling payments against spreadsheets. Lease terms and renewal dates were tracked in a master spreadsheet that was often out of date, making it hard to plan renewals or spot expirations. Maintenance requests came in by phone and email; dispatching and follow-up were ad hoc, and there was no single view of open tickets or response times. Arrears and vacancy were calculated periodically in spreadsheets, so visibility into cash flow and occupancy was delayed. The operations team spent a large portion of their week on repetitive admin and chasing payments instead of focusing on tenant experience and owner reporting.

Why they chose Proforma Studio

The company wanted a single system where leases, tenants, and payments were in one place, with automated invoicing and reminders to reduce collection effort and arrears. They needed maintenance request tracking from submission to completion so that response times could be measured and improved. They also wanted operational data—actual rents, vacancies, and expenses—to feed into portfolio and proforma views so that owners could see performance against underwriting. Proforma Studio's Rental Management module offered lease and tenant centralization, rent invoicing and reminders, and maintenance ticket tracking, with the ability to connect to the same platform's portfolio and proforma features. The US country context (currency, date format, and local conventions) was important for reporting and compliance.

Implementation

The team rolled out Proforma Studio's Rental module in phases. First they migrated lease and tenant data into the platform, then turned on automated rent invoicing and payment reminders. Tenants receive invoices and reminders by email; payments are recorded and matched to leases so that arrears are visible in real time. Maintenance requests are now logged in the system: tenants can submit requests through a simple flow, and staff assign and track them to completion. Dashboards show open tickets, average response time, and completion rates. Lease expirations and renewals are visible in one list, so the team can plan outreach in advance. Operational metrics—occupancy, collected rent, expense categories—are available at the property and portfolio level and can be compared to proforma assumptions for owner reporting.

Outcomes

Within six months, the company reported a 35% reduction in average days to collect rent (from 12 days to under 8 post-due date), and a noticeable drop in arrears as a share of monthly rent. Maintenance response time—from request to first action—fell by roughly half, with a clear improvement in tenant satisfaction scores on post-request surveys. The operations team estimated they saved at least 12 hours per week on rent and lease admin, which they reallocated to owner reporting and tenant communication. Tenant retention improved: renewal rates increased by 6 percentage points year over year, which the team attributed to faster maintenance response and more consistent communication. Qualitatively, staff described less stress around month-end collection and a clearer picture of portfolio performance for owners.

Client quote

“We used to chase rent and maintenance in spreadsheets and email. Now we have one place for leases, payments, and work orders. Rent comes in faster, we respond to maintenance issues in half the time, and we've freed up over 10 hours a week. Our owners get cleaner reports, and our tenants notice the difference.”