To be successful in commercial real estate, you need up-to-date information about your properties. Or if you’re a proptech firm, you need to get your customers’ property data into your software. However, it is challenging to access data when real estate firms have third-party property managers. Did you know that you can automatically pull data from your third-party managers? You can, and it will save both of you a ton of time. Let’s explore how to integrate with Yardi when you have third-party property managers.
Yardi has a few ways to pull data, including nightly database backups and log shipping. Most property managers have other clients though, and they can’t give you access to their full database. In this scenario, you can use Yardi’s report scheduler and Task Runner. These tools will send the data to a SFTP (secure file) where you can process it further.
Set Up Report Scheduler and Data Extracts
- Create custom SQL reports that will generate a consistent format, such as for a rent roll, aging receivables, or financials.
- Upload these custom SQL reports to Yardi and attach them to a report scheduler. There are a lot of small, detailed steps here. If you are not familiar with Yardi, request support from Yardi or reach out to us.
- After you setup the report scheduler, you can send the extracts as a zip folder to your Yardi data storage. You can access Yardi data storage in Client Central.
Set Up Task Runner and SFTP
- Create a Task Runner job that picks up all the data in this Yardi data folder and transfer it to an SFTP. Task Runner has a predefined setting for SFTP where you can input the credentials and key pairs. You can also specify the output folder and settings such as “delete after transfer”. This is great for cleaning out the extra files and not wasting space.
- On the receiving end of the SFTP, you can now build robust data pipelines. But before you do this, you will need to create a script that unzips the file and processes the Excel sheet within. This usually requires another programming language such as Python. After you built it once, you can copy and paste this code. Again, if this step trips you up, reach out and we would be happy to help!
- With the files unzipped and each sheet of data parsed and ready to be extracted, load the data into a staging database for processing. You will probably need to clean and scrub the data. The Yardi exports’ Excel formatting may mess up some of the numeric formatting.
That’s it! Now you have an automated and robust way to get data from third-party property managers and save hundreds of hours a year.
We do this all the time for our customers! Having all of your property managers and Proptech data in one spot is super-powerful!
For more tips, be sure to check out our other blog posts. We’re always happy to help!
How to Integrate With Yardi When You Have Third-Party Property Managers