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People's First Properties Banks on Sage Software

Putting people first pays off–as People's First Properties, Inc. (PFP) has discovered. Since 1983, the holding company has grown to include People's First Bank Community Bank with 33 bank branches, Royal American Construction, Royal American Management, and Royal American Hospitality. The management firm alone has 160 apartment complexes and commercial office buildings, and the hospitality arm owns and operates two resorts and a resort rental program, and manages 10 homeowners' associations.

Overall, People's First Properties encompasses 225 separate subsidiaries worth more than $1.8 billion and they manage almost everything with Sage Timberline Office.

Sage Timberline Office is fully integrated financial and operations software, which eliminates obstacles between accounting, project management, and property management. For companies like PFP with diverse real estate requirements, it offers a complete lease-based system for mixed portfolio management.

End-to-End Accounting
People's First started with manual accounting systems, but quickly adopted Sage Timberline Office when it reached critical mass about 15 years ago. "I'm a real Sage Timberline Office fan. We've been loyal to the software throughout the years, staying with it from the OS/2 platform all the way through to its most recent iteration for Windows," says Ed Livingston, vice president of accounting.

"We rely on the software to manage more than 42,000 accounts, which range from the individual property level on up to the corporate office," Livingston continues. "We use it to perform intricate consolidations, send financial information to hundreds of lenders and investors, and even do job costing and project management with its modules."

Paperless Reporting
"Financial reports are great with Sage Timberline Office," says Livingston. "We send financial statements to investors and managers all over the country, and used to dread the process of ordering statements, printing them, stuffing envelopes, and getting them out in the mail. Now we simply use a macro within Sage Timberline Office, which allows us to e-mail or fax reports without printing. This saves us many days of work every month, plus about $40,000 every year for postage and envelopes."

Similar efficiencies have come from direct deposit for paychecks through Sage Timberline Office. "Of our 2,500 employees, 2,300 are paid with direct deposits into their personal accounts. We transfer time data automatically into our Payroll module. This makes it possible to process our entire payroll with only two and a half payroll clerks," Livingston says.

Complete Cash Flow Management
Sage Timberline Office also makes it easier for PFP to pay its bills and manage cash flow. "Our system is complicated, because property managers collect money and deposit it locally. But invoices are paid out of the corporate account. In the old days, we used to use an automated clearinghouse to access site accounts. This proved to be inefficient and took an entire day," Livingston says.

"Now we use our database to determine payables in site accounts," Livingston adds. "We import this information along with the cash balance, select the lesser of the two, and import the data into the Sage Timberline Office AP module. The system allows us to write checks and get them to the bank in about 20 minutes. The time savings are fantastic."

Skinny Headcount
People's First Properties doubled in size in its first five years. In the past 14 years, it has swelled to four times its original size. This presents challenges for administrators like Livingston, who want to keep overhead costs low.

"My job is to make sure that our accountants work as efficiently as possible. That's why I'm so glad we found Sage Timberline Office. It allows us to maintain strict control of cash flow, do powerful financial reporting, and manage several hundred distinct business entities, all with a minimum of staff. We recently doubled our company size, and only increased administrative headcount by 10 percent, thanks to Sage Timberline Office."

Residential Management
PFP uses the Residential Management module in Sage Timberline Office for managing all of its apartment complexes. It provides speciliazed tracking, management, and reporting of daily site activites, while elminating repetitive and time-consuming tasks. Property managers rely on the software for tracking inventory, rent rolls, occupancy, lease expirations, and balances due, using a wide variety of reports. "We look forward to continuing our relationship with both our Sage Software business partner and Sage Timberline Office for a long time in the future."

Ongoing Innovation
Many of the suggestions made by PFP for improving Sage Timberline Office have been incorporated into future versions. "This says a lot for the manufacturer listening to customers, and implementing the things we want most," he notes.

One of these improvements has been the integration of the Sage Timberline Office Residential Management and Cash Management modules. "Cash management used to be our greatest challenge," Livingston says. "Having an interface with the Residential Management module is like getting the holy grail. It's the greatest thing since sliced bread."

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