Property management firm cuts monthly reporting by 85%

Situation

The client is a family-led commercial real estate firm that has spent nearly four decades repositioning historic industrial properties into design-forward office, retail, industrial, and mixed-use space. Its portfolio spans roughly 25 properties and serves tenants ranging from small businesses and co-working users to national retail brands. The firm manages that portfolio in-house and runs its accounting through AppFolio. The reporting AppFolio produced out of the box did not match what leadership needed, so each month the team exported three to four reports per property and manually combined them into a custom cash flow report, including adjustments to get balance sheet items where they belonged.

Across a portfolio that mixes office, retail, industrial, flex, and event space, that added up. The team estimated the monthly reporting cycle took about 15 hours of manual work, and the process had to be repeated every month. The work was tedious, time-consuming, and dependent on someone carefully assembling the same reports the same way each cycle.

The firm also explored whether AppFolio API access could automate the data export itself. ProsperSpark worked directly with AppFolio to evaluate the options, and the solution was designed to work with the firm’s existing subscription rather than forcing a plan upgrade, with the option to connect via API later if the firm chose to.

Solution

ProsperSpark built a custom Excel report tool that automates report assembly while keeping the client’s existing AppFolio workflow in place.

The workflow is simple. The team exports the source reports from AppFolio into a designated folder. Inside the workbook, a macro-enabled button lets the user select that folder, refresh the data, and generate cash flow statements for a chosen month and property. A batch function produces the reports for all selected properties in one run, with print-ready output for leadership review.

The build included:

• • A folder-based import process that pulls multiple AppFolio exports into one controlled workbook
  • VBA-driven report generation by property and month, including batch runs across the portfolio
  • Custom cash flow statement formatting with the client’s balance sheet adjustments built in
  • Print-ready output designed for monthly leadership reporting
  • Review and troubleshooting sessions, plus testing support as the team put the workbook to work

ProsperSpark delivered the work iteratively, reviewing the client’s source files up front, building a working draft of the tool, then refining it through client testing and follow-up sessions.

Results

The monthly reporting process went from hours of manual assembly to two steps: export the data from AppFolio, then run the macro to batch the reports.

Based on project scoping, the export step takes roughly 4 minutes per property (about 100 minutes across the portfolio), and the refresh-and-batch step takes about 5 minutes for all properties combined. That puts the full monthly cycle under 2 hours, compared to the roughly 15 hours the team was spending before.

Just as important, the reports are now assembled the same way every month. The custom formatting and balance sheet adjustments are built into the tool, which reduces the risk of inconsistencies from manual assembly and makes the output easier to trust for leadership review.