The implementation seemed straightforward. A major REIT had contracted a large offshore IT team to configure its new Yardi Voyager environment. The developers were talented, experienced in enterprise systems, fluent in SQL, and capable of building custom integrations. Six months later, the project was over budget, the go-live was delayed twice, and we received the call.
What went wrong? The same thing that goes wrong in roughly 70% of real estate technology implementations: the team knew the software but didn't know real estate.
The Knowledge Gap Nobody Talks About
Property management software isn't like other enterprise systems. When you implement an HR platform, payroll is payroll. But when you implement Yardi, MRI, or any property management ERP, you're dealing with an industry that has its own language, its own accounting standards, and decades of accumulated complexity.
Take lease abstraction, extracting critical data points from lease documents and configuring them in your system. It sounds simple until you realize that a single commercial lease can include percentage rent clauses tied to tenant sales thresholds, CAM reconciliation schedules that vary by expense pool, escalation structures that compound differently based on anniversary dates, and termination options that trigger different financial treatments.
A generalist developer sees a lease as a document with fields to populate. An experienced PropTech consultant recognizes a living financial instrument that affects revenue recognition, tenant billing, audit compliance, and downstream reporting. The difference is asking questions a generalist wouldn't know to ask.
When SQL Isn't Enough
We recently completed a recovery engagement for a property management company whose previous partner had built custom reports against the Yardi database. The reports worked technically. But the numbers were wrong in ways that only surfaced during the year-end audit.
The developers understood SQL perfectly. What they didn't understand was how Yardi stores lease data across multiple related tables, how CAM pools calculate recoverable versus non-recoverable expenses, or why the same tenant appears differently in the rent roll versus accounts receivable ageing.
The ASC 842 Wake-Up Call
The lease accounting standards under ASC 842 and IFRS 16 perfectly illustrate the generalist-versus-specialist gap. Companies needed to reclassify leases, calculate right-of-use assets, and generate new disclosures within existing systems.
Generic IT teams approached this as a data migration exercise: extract lease terms, apply formulas, populate fields.
Except that lease modifications don't all receive the same accounting treatment. Variable payments based on an index require different calculations than those based on usage. Companies relying on generalist teams for ASC 842 compliance faced restatement risks when auditors began asking questions.
Our functional consultants work alongside technical teams because compliance isn't just configuration, it's interpretation, requiring people who have implemented these standards dozens of times.
The Real Cost of Domain Ignorance
When a generalist team misconfigures CAM reconciliation, the error doesn't appear immediately. It surfaces months later when tenants receive incorrect billing statements or when year-end true-ups show unexplained variances.
We've seen implementations where percentage rent thresholds were configured as flat amounts rather than breakpoints, and where escalation clauses were set to simple interest when the lease specified compounding. Where security deposits were recorded as revenue rather than as liabilities, each error was made by technically competent people who didn't know what they didn't know.
The cost isn't just fixing mistakes. Incorrect invoices damage its tenant relationships, audit findings question internal controls, and management reports no one trusts.
Building Teams That Understand Both Worlds
At Assetsoft, we've spent 25 years building a team bridging technology and real estate. Our consultants include functional specialists who understand lease administration, implementation experts who know Yardi and MRI inside and out, and technical developers who grasp why integrations matter and what happens downstream.
This isn't about being better than generalist teams; it's about specialization that matters for property management. Before proceeding with your following implementation, ask your consulting partner: How many lease abstractions have you personally reviewed? If they hesitate, you have your answer.
Assetsoft is a global technology consulting firm specializing in Yardi, MRI Software, and PropTech implementations. Contact us to learn how our industry-specialized consultants can help with your next project.
