AppFolio: Real-time Transaction Visibility for Property Owners

The Challenge

AppFolio, a leading platform for property management, empowers property managers to efficiently oversee their properties. As part of its suite, the Owner Portal allows property owners to access crucial insights into their properties. Over time, we - the owner experience team, have noticed a growing need from owners to have more visibility into transactions throughout the month, not just at the end of the month when property managers usually send out owner statements. This prompted us to embark on a journey to deliver this experience.

The then-current Transactions page on the AppFolio Owner Portal only provided owners with limited information: owner contributions and distributions. With such few details, owners can only see a small picture of their properties' financial health, and usually would have to wait until the end of the month to receive owner statements from their property managers, or continuously call the managers with questions.

The existing Transactions page with just contribution and disbursement details.

Defining the Problem

Feedback Analysis

In response to user feedback indicating a desire for more detailed transaction information, we conducted in-depth analysis of user feedback collected between September and November 2023. This revealed recurring themes highlighting the necessity for enhanced transaction visibility.

Discovery

With what we knew from the feedback analysis, we reached out to users who provided the feedback, including both property managers and owners. Although AppFolio's main customers are property managers, the Owner Portal's primary users are small business property owners, who are clients of property managers. Therefore, in developing any solution for the portal, we need to keep in mind the delicate client-service provider relationship between these two types of users.

We conducted 3 calls with property managers and 3 with owners to further explore user needs and validate our initial assumptions. These discussions helped reinforce many themes identified through user feedback in the initial data gathering step, and enhanced our understanding of the problem. After synthesizing the call notes, we were able to identify the following key user needs for our project:

• Owners seek detailed transaction insights throughout the month, akin to the end-of-month owner statements.

• Owners desire clarity on available funds per property to make informed financial decisions.

• Property managers require flexibility in tailoring information visibility for different owners.

To better understand our users' perspectives, I used the findings to create empathy maps that illustrate the context surrounding an owner and property manager when they are dealing with property finances.

Ideation

Mapping Relationships

Since one of the central themes from our discovery was the desire to view more details for expenses, our team first started ideation by focusing on the relationship among bills, payments, and line items within the AppFolio system. These are all concepts under the payables realm, each referring to a level of detail and/or status. We mapped out the relationships among these items and brainstormed opportunities for each part of this map. At the end of this process, we made the decision to present transactions at the line item level to provide an in-depth breakdown of information. This was also one of the more technically efficient approaches, considering the time and resource constraints we had at the time.

We also explored the similarities and distinctions between the Transactions page and the existing Owner Statement report routinely distributed by property managers to owners at month-end. The consensus underscored our commitment to aligning the numerical data with that presented in the Owner Statement. Simultaneously, we aimed to enhance the Transactions page by offering a deeper level of detail and accessibility, enabling owners to select specific properties and timeframes for analysis.

Owner Permissions

From the discovery findings, we understood the importance for property managers to set access permissions for owners to view transaction details. This is due to various company practices and differing natures in each owner-manager relationship. While building the Transactions page for owners, we also worked on a model for property managers to manage each owner's visbility of the page's components.

Iterating Through Solutions

I started with a few sketches to visualize our vision for the new portal. The early ideas closely resembled the Owner Statement with more elaborated interactions that enable details viewing and filters. I reviewed the sketches regularly with my team to discuss ideas and open questions. This process helped us identify and prioritize the most important functionalities of this page.

After several renditions, we settled on 2 to-be-validated variants for the detailed Transactions page: one with a combined section detailing all types of transactions and one with separate sections for different types. At the time, we were not sure which version matched users' mental model more

In the separate variant, transaction types are broken down into 3 main sections: disbursement & contribution (owners' money coming in and out of the properties), unpaid bills, and income & expenses.

In the combined variant, unpaid bills are displayed in a greyed-out section on top, similar to pending transactions in banking apps. The idea here is to help owners picture everything in accordance with the running balance and connect that to the future.