How Heritage Shankara solved their accounting problem using TheHouseMonk – A Case Study

The Problem:

Heritage Sankara is an apartment society, which like any apartment society, had its unique challenges in accounting and finances. Heritage Sankara was using rudimentary systems like accounting notebooks, physical invoices, vouchers, purchase orders etc; due to the lack of efficient accounting tools the following challenges were being faced:

1. Inflow of monthly maintenance before due date of 5th <50%
2. Average time spent by accountant in the office performing the following tasks in a month:

• Statement reconciliation- 25 hours
• Drafting and releasing letter of intent, purchase orders, invoices- 13 hours
• Collecting and depositing offline payment- 20 hours.
• Miscellaneous activities- 7 hours.
• Total –   65 hours (paid Rs. 250/hour= Rs.16,250/month)

3. All documents such as Bills, invoices, expense reports were all managed offline (hard copy paper) increasing the chances of destruction, data and information loss.

The Solution:

To tackle the current scenario Heritage Sankara owners association implemented TheHouseMonk apartment management solution and to streamline the operations there were a few norms were agreed upon, one of which was mandatory online payment of maintenance fees thereby completely negating human interaction for statement reconciliation. All the residents and facility management staff attended a 4 hour orientation where all the features and functionalities were explained in detail through various activities, presentations and interactive videos.

Result:

Implementation of TheHouseMonk brought in a lot of positive changes in the Accounting and finance department of the apartment society. The results are listed below:

1. Inflow monthly maintenance from the resident before the due date rose to >85% from an average of <50% due to the introduction of online payments by TheHouseMonk as the cause of late payments were majorly due to the non availability of the resident in his/her apartment when the facility manager comes to collect the dues. Online payment have enabled the residents to pay their monthly dues no matter where they are and instant invoice generation means that they don’t have to wait for the physical copy of the same to arrive from the association office thereby saving both the facility manager and the resident’s time.
2. The average time spent by the accountant in a month drastically reduced 85% from 65 hours in a month to about 10 hours in a month there by saving the association Rs. 14,000/month in accountant salaries. The breakup of the time saved by the accountant below with the pre-THM hours in brackets:
   Statement reconciliation- 2 hours (15 hours)
   Drafting letter of intent, expense report, purchase orders etc- 1 hour (8 hours)
   Offline payment- 0 (10 hours). This was achieved by passing a rule where no offline payments by residents were allowed.
   Miscellaneous activity- 7 hours (no change)
3. All society related financial documents were digitised and transferred into TheHouseMonk system preventing loss, damage, destruction of financial records. The physical finance record took up roughly about 20% of the association office space which has been freed up post TheHouseMonk implementation.

Inference: Overall, The apartment management software implementation at Heritage Sankara has been a success as this has managed to save:

1. Time: 85% reduction in man hours spent by accountant without an efficient accounting tool.
2. Money: Direct savings of Rs. 14,000/month from the accountant’s salary due to the reduction of man hours spent.
3. Space: 20% of the association office space freed up post digitisation of all financial records.

Quotes from users

“Online payments for monthly society maintenance is one of the most useful features as as I’m not in the country for 6 months in a year. Post TheHouseMonk implementation I pay my maintenance with a click of a button from any corner of the globe”
– Mr. Aditya Ramasamy, Heritage Sankara resident and Merchant Sailor.

“First few days of every month I used to run around the apartment making sure to collect all dues and nowadays with a few steps I’m able to raise invoices to all the apartment at once and post that I just have to check the system to periodically to monitor the inflow of payments.”
– Shekar, Facility Manager Heritage Sankara apartment