Physical and economic occupancy
Occupied units against rentable units, and collected rent against gross potential rent, by property, unit type and floor plan — so a building that is full but under-collecting is not mistaken for a healthy one.
Power BI consulting for property managers, owners and asset managers
Occupancy, rent roll and NOI dashboards from your PM software, built by a senior Power BI consultant for property management
A fixed-fee build for management companies, multifamily and commercial owners and HOA managers whose numbers already sit in Yardi, AppFolio, Buildium or RealPage but never on one screen: physical and economic occupancy, rent roll and lease expirations, delinquency and collections, maintenance work order turnaround and cost per unit, turnover and make-ready days, NOI against budget by property. One written price, typical delivery in 2–4 weeks, 30 days of hypercare included.
Representative dashboard — sample data
What you get
The numbers site teams, accounting and owners argue about
Every build covers the measures that decide a renewal offer, a capital request or an owner call — not a generic KPI template.
Rent roll and lease expirations
Current rent against market rent by unit, a rolling expiration schedule by month, renewal rate and trade-out on new leases, read from the same rent roll accounting already reconciles rather than a second copy.
Delinquency, aging and collections
Balances aged by 0–30, 31–60 and 61-plus days, delinquency as a share of billed rent, promise-to-pay follow-through and evictions in progress, ranked by the property where the balance is growing fastest.
Maintenance work orders and cost per unit
Open tickets by age and priority, time to first response and to completion, repeat visits to the same unit, vendor spend and turnaround, and controllable maintenance cost per unit per month by property.
NOI and budget variance by property
Revenue and controllable expenses against budget and against the same period last year, with the variance lines opened up to the general ledger detail behind them, so the owner call starts from a reconciled number.
Turnover, vacancy days and make-ready
Move-outs by reason, days from notice to move-out to rent-ready to leased, make-ready cost per turn and vacancy loss in dollars, so the slowest step in the turn is visible by property and by vendor.
How it works
Three steps from PM software exports to a Monday portfolio view
- 1
Walk the month-end, then scope
A free consultation covers how you define occupancy and gross potential rent, where work orders and vendor invoices are recorded, which properties sit under which ownership entities, and what the regional manager and the owner each check first. We reply with a written scope, one fixed fee and a delivery date.
- 2
Connect, model, reconcile
We pull the rent roll, ledger and tenant balances from your property management platform, work orders from maintenance ticketing, leasing activity from the CRM or applicant tracking tool, and budgets from wherever they live, then reconcile occupancy, revenue and NOI against the month-end packs your accounting team already signs off.
- 3
Deploy and stand behind it
We publish to your governed workspace with row-level security by property, region or owner, walk site managers, regionals, accounting and owners through their own views, hand over documentation, and stay on for 30 days of included hypercare.
What a property management reporting build actually covers
Property management companies are not short of records. The management platform holds every lease, charge, receipt and work order down to the unit, the general ledger knows every expense by property, and the leasing team’s CRM knows every lead and showing — and the Monday portfolio meeting still runs on a workbook somebody rebuilt from a dozen platform reports over the weekend. Owner reporting is worse: each ownership entity wants its own package, on its own cut-off, with occupancy defined its own way. The work is engineering the layer underneath: joining rent roll, ledger, maintenance and leasing data on property, unit and lease keys that actually match, agreeing what each measure means, and modelling it so it survives an asset manager disputing an economic occupancy figure. Microsoft’s own Power BI documentation (opens in new tab) describes the data, model, report and service layers involved, and a portfolio dashboard that survives a month-end close needs all four built deliberately.
Property data suits a disciplined dimensional model unusually well, because almost every question is a charge, receipt, work order or lease event sliced by property, unit, tenant, ownership entity and date. Building it that way — along the lines Microsoft sets out in its star schema guidance (opens in new tab) — is what lets one model answer “which properties are losing economic occupancy to concessions” and “which vendor is slowest on make-readies in the west region” without a new export each time. It also means an acquisition, a disposition or a property moving between regional managers is handled once, in the model, rather than in every report that mentions it.
Deliverables for a typical engagement: the report files and semantic model in your own tenant, tested measures for occupancy and gross potential rent, rent roll and expirations, delinquency and collections, maintenance turnaround and cost per unit, turnover and NOI variance, workspace and row-level security configuration, a refresh schedule with monitoring notes, and written documentation. Timeline is typically 2–4 weeks from kickoff, stated in your scope before you commit, with 30 days of post-delivery hypercare included.
The property measures we settle before we build
Definitions decide the headline number here more than anywhere. The same rent roll produces very different occupancy, revenue and NOI figures depending on choices nobody writes down, so we agree them with your asset management and accounting leads first and encode them once in DAX measures (opens in new tab) every page reuses. The table below is the conversation we actually have during scoping.
| Property measure | What it answers | The definition we settle first |
|---|---|---|
| Physical occupancy | How many of the units that could be rented actually are | Whether model, down, employee and corporate units sit in the denominator, and whether a unit on notice with a signed future lease counts as occupied, pre-leased or vacant |
| Economic occupancy | How much of the rent the property could earn it is actually collecting | Whether gross potential rent is market rent or in-place rent, and whether concessions, bad debt and vacancy loss are netted before or after the ratio is taken |
| Rent roll and trade-out | Whether new leases are being signed above or below the leases they replace | Whether trade-out compares to the prior lease on that unit or to the floor plan average, and whether amortised concessions are folded into effective rent |
| Delinquency rate | How much billed rent is not being collected on time | Whether the numerator is total tenant balance or rent only, at which day of the month the snapshot is taken, and whether balances under eviction or in payment plans are separated |
| Lease expiration exposure | How much rent is up for renewal in each coming month | Whether month-to-month leases count as expiring every month or as a separate bucket, and whether renewals already signed drop out of the exposure figure |
| Maintenance turnaround | How quickly a resident’s request is acknowledged and closed | Whether the clock starts at submission or at assignment, whether it pauses while waiting on parts or resident access, and whether emergencies are reported with routine work or separately |
| Controllable cost per unit | What each unit costs to operate before the owner-level items | Which ledger accounts count as controllable — usually repairs, turnover, payroll, marketing and administrative — and whether capital items and insurance are excluded |
| Days vacant and make-ready days | How long a turn takes and where it stalls | Whether the clock runs from move-out or from notice, and whether the end point is rent-ready, leased or move-in, since the three produce three very different numbers |
| NOI variance to budget | Whether the property is performing to the plan the owner approved | Whether variance is reported on the accrual or cash basis the owner expects, and how reclassed and accrued expenses that land after the month closes are treated |
| Renewal and retention rate | Whether residents stay when their lease ends | Whether the denominator is leases expiring or notices given, whether transfers within the property count as renewals, and how skips and evictions are excluded |
None of these has a universally correct answer — they have a correct answer for your portfolio, agreed once and then applied consistently. For an outside reference point when you sanity-check a vacancy trend, the US Census Bureau’s Housing Vacancies and Homeownership survey (opens in new tab) publishes national and regional rental vacancy rates your own figures can be read against.
Where property management data actually lives
Nearly every property management build draws on the same five or six systems, and each one carries a familiar snag. Naming them early is what keeps a scope honest — this is the checklist we walk through during a consultation, not a promise that every source is reachable on day one.
| Source | What it carries | What it feeds | Common snag |
|---|---|---|---|
| Property management platform (Yardi, AppFolio, Buildium, RealPage, Entrata, MRI, Rent Manager) | Properties, units, leases, charges, receipts, tenant balances, move-ins and move-outs, notices | Occupancy, rent roll, trade-out, delinquency, expirations, turnover | The rent roll is a point-in-time report, so occupancy history has to be rebuilt from lease and move events or captured by a scheduled export, or last quarter’s trend cannot be shown |
| General ledger and accounts payable | Income and expense by property and account, budgets, accruals, vendor invoices, capital versus operating coding | NOI, budget variance, controllable cost per unit, vendor spend | Each ownership entity keeps its own chart of accounts and fiscal calendar, so a portfolio NOI needs an account mapping agreed before any total is trustworthy |
| Maintenance and work order system | Requests, priorities, assignments, status changes, parts and labour, vendor dispatch, inspections | Turnaround, open ticket aging, repeat visits, cost per work order, vendor performance | Status timestamps are overwritten rather than logged, so time-in-status has to be captured going forward before a true turnaround can be measured |
| Leasing CRM and applicant tracking | Leads by source, tours, applications, screening results, approvals, lease signings | Lead-to-lease conversion, cost per lease by source, leasing agent performance, pre-leasing | A prospect exists in the CRM under one name and in the management platform under another once approved, so conversion has to be matched on application or unit rather than on person |
| Budgets, market rent surveys and pro formas | Approved budget by property and account, market rent by floor plan, underwriting assumptions | Variance to budget, loss-to-lease, gain-to-lease, actual against underwriting | They live in spreadsheets with no property or unit key, so the budget has to be mapped to the ledger structure before a single variance line is right |
| Utility billing and smart building data | Utility invoices by meter, resident recoveries, submeter reads, sensor alerts | Utility cost per unit, recovery rate, consumption anomalies flagged as maintenance | Invoices arrive a month or more in arrears, so utility cost has to be accrued or lagged deliberately or the current month always looks artificially cheap |
Where a source cannot be reached directly, we agree a reliable export path during scoping rather than assuming one, and we say so in the scope. Restricting what each site manager, regional or owner can see is handled with row-level security (opens in new tab), so one owner never opens a report and finds another owner’s NOI in it.
Who this is for
It fits third-party management companies running properties for several owners, multifamily operators with a regional structure, commercial and mixed-use landlords, HOA and community association managers, and owner-operators who have grown past the point where one controller can hold the portfolio in their head — wherever the Monday meeting still opens with a workbook somebody assembled from platform reports over the weekend. A regional manager who wants delinquency by property before the fifth of the month rather than after it. An asset manager who suspects concessions are eroding economic occupancy and cannot show it by floor plan. A controller who needs NOI to move with reclasses and accruals rather than a month-end estimate. An owner who wants one page per entity, on time, every month, without a two-day assembly job.
The operating side is deliberately not the building side. If your question is what is happening on a development or renovation project — job cost, committed cost, work in progress and change orders out of the construction ledger — that work is scoped on our Power BI dashboards for construction companies page. This page is for what happens once the asset is operating: leases, charges, receipts, work orders and ledger lines, modelled from property management software exports, the general ledger, maintenance ticketing and leasing data. Owner-developers who both build and operate often want both, and we scope them as separate, connected builds rather than pretending one model answers every question.
This page is the property-management-shaped version of our wider fixed-fee Power BI dashboard development service, so nothing here is a different engineering standard — only a different vocabulary. Two questions usually come up before a scope is signed, and we have written both up honestly: what a Power BI dashboard build actually costs, with the factors that move a fixed fee up or down, and which Power BI licenses a small business actually needs, which matters here because site managers and owners who only view reports are often licensed differently from the two or three people who build them. Management companies whose lease files, inspection reports and owner packages still sit in shared drives often pair the build with SharePoint document management for lease and owner files, so the document behind a number is one click from the number itself, and many add Power Automate alerts when a balance ages past thirty days or a work order breaches its target so the dashboard pushes rather than waits to be opened. Before you brief anyone, our guide on how to choose a Power BI consultant lists the questions worth asking before you hand over rent roll and ledger data.
Fixed-fee project tiers
Three common shapes cover most property management requests. Every fee is fixed and put in writing after your free consultation — the table shows scope and typical timeline, not prices, because an honest price requires seeing your sources first.
| Tier | Scope | Typical timeline | Fee |
|---|---|---|---|
| Occupancy and rent roll starter | One property management platform as the single source: physical and economic occupancy by property and floor plan, rent roll with expirations and trade-out, delinquency aging, move-ins and move-outs, and refresh configured | About 2 weeks | Fixed fee — scoped after your free consultation |
| Operations and maintenance pack | Management platform with the maintenance system and general ledger alongside it: work order turnaround and aging, cost per unit, vendor performance, turnover and make-ready days, NOI against budget, and role-based views for site managers and regionals | 2–3 weeks | Fixed fee — scoped after your free consultation |
| Owner reporting governed rollout | Leasing CRM, budgets and utility data blended with the platform, maintenance and ledger across ownership entities: account mapping across charts of accounts, occupancy history rebuilt from lease events, one owner package per entity, row-level security by owner and region, certified datasets and admin documentation | 3–4 weeks | Fixed fee — scoped after your free consultation |
Whatever the tier, you own every artifact — report files, semantic model, measure definitions and workspace settings live in your Microsoft tenant from the first day. We serve all US states remotely from our Orange County, CA base.
Related services
Other ways we make Microsoft easy
Power BI Dashboards
The wider fixed-fee dashboard service: semantic models, DAX, governed reporting and Fabric migration for any industry.
SharePoint Consulting
Lease files, inspection reports and owner packages organised by property and entity, so the document behind a number is one click away.
Power Automate Consulting
Alerts and workflows for aging balances, overdue work orders and expiring leases, so exceptions chase people instead of waiting in a report.
What a dashboard really costs
An honest fixed-fee cost breakdown and the factors that move the number on a Power BI build.
Power BI licensing for small business
Pro, Premium Per User and Fabric explained for teams where most people only view the reports.
How to choose a consultant
The questions to ask before you hand anyone your rent roll, ledger and resident data.
FAQ
Property reporting questions, answered
Every build includes discovery with your property operations, leasing and accounting leads, connections to your property management software and general ledger, a semantic model, validated occupancy, rent roll, delinquency, maintenance and NOI measures, role-based pages for site managers, regionals and owners, governed workspace deployment, and written documentation.
Most builds start from the reporting exports or APIs of platforms such as Yardi, AppFolio, Buildium, RealPage, Entrata, MRI or Rent Manager, alongside the general ledger and any maintenance ticketing tool. Where a platform offers no usable connector, we agree a reliable scheduled export path during scoping and state it in the written scope.
We settle the rule before we build. Physical occupancy counts occupied units against rentable units, economic occupancy compares collected rent against gross potential rent, and both depend on how model units, down units and employee units are treated. We agree one definition with your asset manager and label it on every page.
Yes. Row-level security in Power BI filters every page by property, portfolio or ownership entity based on who is signed in, so an owner opens the same report and sees only their assets. Regional managers see their region, and executives see the whole portfolio, all from one model.
The fee reflects how many systems we connect, how consistently property, unit and lease codes match across them, and how many role-based views operations, accounting and owners need. After a free consultation you receive a written scope with one price, and that price moves only if the scope does.
Typical delivery is two to four weeks from kickoff. An occupancy and rent roll starter from one property management platform lands at the short end; a multi-entity owner reporting rollout blending the general ledger, maintenance and leasing data with row-level security by owner sits at the longer end. Your scope states the delivery date first.
Book a free consultation
Get more from the Microsoft tools you already pay for
Tell us what you’re trying to fix — a report, an approval process, an intranet, a Copilot rollout. We scope it as a fixed-fee project, you approve, and a senior engineer delivers in 2–4 weeks.
- Fixed-fee scope agreed before any work starts
- Senior, US-based Microsoft engineers — no handoffs
- Typical 2–4 week delivery
- 30 days of post-delivery hypercare included
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