Accruent acquired Lucernex in 2017 to boost its IWMS or asset management portfolio. Lucernex Lease Administration & Accounting is a real estate lifecycle management platform emphasizing compliant financial contracts and accountancy.
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Entrata
Score 7.2 out of 10
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The Entrata Platform, from the company of the same name headquartered in Lehi, is a property management platform designed for leasing management of multifamily properties and tenants. The Entrata platform features a general ledger and accounting management, invoice management, as well as lead management with in-built marketing suite.
I believe Accruent is well suited for companies with a large amount of leased assets that need to be accounted for under the new accounting standard. Companies with fewer leases would not need an intricate tool of this size. It is suited for both real estate and equipment leases, which makes up the entirety of our portfolio.
As an all-in-one solution (website, email marketing, SMS, online inventory management, leasing data, renter management), Entrata is very effective and provides solid integration with ILS (internet leasing services like Apartments.com and Zillow) for pushing out data updates. However, Entrata's website solution is turnkey, and lacks customization features standard in any generic CMS, requiring a redesign and new site template to just add new content.
The classroom and web-base training experience were very well-executed. Instructors and SME's in training were knowledgeable and helpful.
Upper management oversight of the projects provides the customer with confidence knowing that if escalations need to occur, issues will be handled.
Management was quick to make it right and switch our team when they recognized that there were some fundamental pieces missing from our initial SOW for our project.
I send customer communications almost exclusively through Entrata because everything ports into a customer activity log. It's simple and great for record keeping.
Invoices and payments can be handled from start to finish within Entrata. Expenses port directly into the property budget, allowing users to make informed buying decisions.
Within Entrata, a prospective customer can move from expressing initial interest to applying, signing a lease, and eventually renewing a lease. All documents and activity are housed within that customer's profile. It is the cleanest and most efficient method of leasing that I've encountered.
We were misled that we would be utilizing Lucernex employees on our implementation. We have subcontractors from Sense Corp who do not seem that they are very familiar with the software. They often have to take questions away to ask (presumably Lucernex employees).
The implementation process is very inefficient. The upload templates are not straightforward, and there are "required" fields that are not designated as "required". Also, the sheer number of upload templates that need to be populated does not seem like the best way to get our information into the software. A guide to denote what each field on the template actually represents would be helpful.
You can tell that Lucernex is benefiting from the influx of business from ASC 842, and is trying to onboard as many clients as possible at the same time. This has caused a lack of attention to our implementation, and it shows with some frustration on our side with the implementation process.
The user interface could be much more user-friendly and intuitive. Tools are disjointed, and some reports and integrations are several click-layers deep and not as accessible as they should be.
The integration with Google Analytics and Google Tag Manager for event tracking on-site is severely limited and lacking.
I've used Entrata with three companies, all of whom have had an in-house liaison to the company. Consequently, I haven't had to work directly with Entrata support on very many occasions. However, I have personally seen feature requests added to the platform in a timely manner. That kind of service is rare in this industry.
The trainers were knowledgeable and engaging in presenting the materials, and their emphasis on important concepts was helpful (I would rate the trainers themselves a 9!). However, I do not believe there's anything we learned in the in-person training that could not have been taught via live web-classroom. Traveling a significant distance (in our case) to Austin, TX for only approx. 12 hours in the classroom was (in my opinion) not necessary, since the same material could have been presented via live web-classroom and saved us the expense and travel-time. I would encourage Lucernex to consider moving to a live web-classroom format in the future; an online live format would still allow for participation and questions from the participants while saving clients' time and money
We chose Lucernex based on the commitment of building and maintaining the customer/vendor relationship to grow the product, the end user ability to configure the system and the systems functionality to complete all of our lease management needs.
The one competitor with whom I have significant experience is OneSite. Simply put, Entrata is better at every single thing. It has a cleaner, more aesthetically pleasing interface. It is more intuitive. It functions better in more browsers. It has more property management tools and more functions available to customers.
