Making pre-printed business forms a thing of the past.

Apartment professionals face a variety of responsibilities, from servicing residents to marketing apartments to completing paperwork and business forms. With so many tasks, it is important to minimize time spent on paperwork so the focus can stay on interacting with current and prospective residents. While more and more property management processes are transitioning to automated, online systems, often paperwork and business forms are still generated using manual methods and pre-printed forms. Manual form generation, while being time-intensive and prone to data entry errors, can make it extremely difficult to enforce the use of standard forms across a portfolio.

Many property management companies are now turning to electronic form generation to save time, limit errors and to better enforce the use of up-to-date and approved forms across their portfolios. Applied Development Co., winner of the New Jersey Apartment Association's "2005 Property Management Company of The Year" award, recently transitioned the Shipyard Community to an electronic form generation process. Applied is a real estate development company that manages more than 5,000 apartment homes in New Jersey.

Four separate luxury apartment communities comprise the Shipyard Community, and each community has its own move-in forms. Previously, all forms were pre-printed at a local print shop and stored in file cabinets at the community sites. The day before a resident was due to sign the lease, a leasing professional would begin to look through the file cabinets to gather the appropriate property move-in forms. Then the leasing agent would use a typewriter or computer to enter the resident- and property-specific information into the forms. Because this process was cumbersome and prone to errors, Applied decided to investigate alternative methods for form generation. After an extensive search, Applied selected an electronic form generation tool.

Electronic form generation eliminates the pre-printing and storing of forms at the community. All of the Shipyard Community's forms are loaded into the tool. A leasing agent can now create a move-in packet in real-time and avoid the "day before" preparation procedure. When the resident arrives to sign the lease, the leasing agent logs into the Web-based tool and selects the specific community's move-in packet from a drop-down menu. Because the tool is integrated with Applied's applicant screening service, the resident's application data and the community's specific terms are automatically populated into the forms. The leasing agent completes any missing data and simply presses a button to print the forms.

"With electronic form generation, we have eliminated the expense of pre-printed forms," Audrey Spina, Senior Property Manager for Shipyard Community, said. "Because the tool is so user-friendly, we train new leasing agents to use the tool in less than 10 minutes. Also, electronic form generation reduces leasing agents' stress and enables them to spend more time with residents and prospects. Because of the initial success with electronic forms, we plan to roll out this service across our entire portfolio."

As property managers and owners continue to look for ways to simplify and automate processes, electronic business form generation provides a proven method for increasing organizational efficiency and accuracy. Electronic forms simplify the rollout of updates and make it easier to enforce the use of approved forms across a portfolio. As pre-printed forms become a thing of the past, leasing agents are spending less time on paperwork, which gives them more time to focus on applicant and resident service.

Applied Development Company uses FormsPLUSSM, the Electronic form generation tool from First Advantage SafeRent. First Advantage SafeRent can be contacted at 800/999-0350.

RELATED ARTICLE: Electronic form generation--a product selection checklist.

To take advantZage of the time and cost savings associated with electronic business forms, selecting the right product is critical. An electronic form generation product should provide the following capabilities:

[] Automatically populates paperwork with data from the applicant screening process.

[] Limits manual data entry by pre-populating paperwork with community-specific information.

[] Provides an easy method for updating paperwork and for propagating it to all communities in a portfolio.

[] Ensures that the brand and legal terms are represented professionally and consistently across a portfolio.

[] Enables owners and agents to organize paperwork into packages so they do not inadvertently forget key documents for lease or move-out packets.

[] Limits unauthorized overrides of the applicant screening decision by generating only leases for applicants with "accept" or "conditional" decisions.

[] Generates paperwork in both hard-copy and electronic formats for ease of printing and sharing via e-mail.