East Brown Cow improves cash flow and collections with MRI RentPayment

East Brown Cow is a real estate investment, development, and management company curating over 1.2 million square feet in Portland, Maine. Its portfolio includes mixed-use office, retail, hospitality space, and structured parking. The firm is a major proponent of environmental stewardship, urban design, preservation of open space, and new technology.

Business Challenge

East Brown Cow recently expanded its portfolio by acquiring and redeveloping several high-profile properties in downtown Portland. The company soon found that payment processes were taking longer to complete than expected, which prevented timely recognition of their revenue streams.

Many of these commercial tenants paid their rents manually with checks. Others paid through ACH or third-party software programs within their own tech stack. While the electronic payments were more convenient than checks, these outside programs didn’t work well with East Brown Cow’s systems. Sometimes they would not receive payment notifications, forcing the accounting staff to check online banking records throughout the month to confirm the payments.

The manual payment processes and confirmations were taking away too much time from servicing their tenants. East Brown Cow decided to implement electronic payment options that would integrate easily into their accounting systems without causing any service interruptions.

Solution

East Brown Cow quickly found that most rent payment solutions are designed around residential needs and were hard to integrate. Adapting these solutions for commercial real estate would end up costing more than they were worth.

Enter MRI Software. East Brown Cow had been using MRI’s commercial property management platform for years, supporting functions including vendor management, job costing, budget planning and forecasting, and more. With such a diverse range of tasks managed in a unified platform, it was a natural extension to add MRI RentPayment to help tenants manage their payment processes more efficiently.

The MRI RentPayment solution gives tenants real-time visibility into their outstanding balances and lets them set up automated recurring payments, reducing the workload on East Brown Cow’s staff. Because the solution is intuitive and easy to use, it makes payment processes easier for the organization and its tenants. It’s no wonder that most of East Brown Cow’s tenants adopted the payment platform.

MRI RentPayment has made tenant payments predictable and timely, accelerating cash flow, reducing the need for collection efforts, and allowing tenants to get a real-time look into their outstanding balances.

– Nate Lamy, Director of Finance, East Brown Cow

Business Impact

MRI RentPayment has helped East Brown Cow streamline the rent payment process effectively for staff and tenants alike.

Improved cash flow and collections

The solution has made tenant payments predictable and timely, with more payments received within the first five days of the month. Tenants can get a real-time view of their outstanding balances, while a recurring payments option automates their payment process. East Brown Cow spends less time and effort on collections, accelerates cash flows, and makes tenant billbacks and year-end CAM/tax reconciliations more efficient.

Easier remote payments with check scanning

The solution’s check scanning feature was a huge help and time saver for East Brown Cow’s staff. East Brown Cow takes pride in its relationships and deals with several local community banks, each with its own unique deposit system. The organization can now process all checks directly on a single scanner – regardless of the bank – saving time spent on sorting deposits by bank or in-person deposits at the bank.

Stronger planning capabilities

Along with more efficient cash flow and collection efforts, East Brown Cow has improved budgeting for operations and constructions. MRI RentPayment integrates with Nexus payables for invoice approval and electronic payments. Software integrations also let the organization create more sophisticated reports and analysis, strengthening cash planning and strategic decisions.

With MRI RentPayment, East Brown Cow’s team can continue their growth with new acquisitions, larger tenants, and more complex projects – without the extra expense of increased staff.

MRI RentPayment has greatly saved time and improved our cash flow and collection efforts. MRI as a whole has allowed for improved budgeting for operations and constructions. The integration between platforms is vital to us as we operate with a small team. The efficiencies allow us to continue tackling more complex projects without increasing our staffing.

 – Nate Lamy, Director of Finance, East Brown Cow