A new year means a new budget, and if you’re like most real estate and property management firms, you’re taking a close look at your tech stack to see where upgrades can make the biggest impact.
Many teams are grappling with real estate tech stacks that can’t keep up. Common issues include disparate systems that don’t share data, manual workflows that slow everything down, and outdated tools that can’t scale with portfolios. That’s why modernizing with automation, integration, and AI has become essential for teams looking to stretch their budgets and ensure operational efficiency in the year ahead.
In this article, we’ll explore the most common problems with today’s real estate tech stacks and how to fix them with strategic investments to help maintain existing properties and grow your portfolio.
Problem #1: Your ERP Can't Do It All
Your ERP may be your go-to system for managing accounting, budgets, and tenant data, but chances are it falls short when it comes to automating invoice and payment workflows. As a result, finance teams spend hours, sometimes even days or weeks, manually entering invoices, routing them through lengthy approval chains, and cutting stacks of paper checks to pay suppliers. The work isn’t just cumbersome. It’s error-prone and can cause delays, which can take a serious toll on the business.
Nearly all (96%) of real estate firms surveyed for AvidXchange’s 2026 Trends Survey said they are focusing their investments in AI, machine learning, and automation.
While more ERPs are introducing native accounts payable (AP) automation functionality, investing in a best-in-class AP automation solution helps enhance what your ERP can do.
💡AI-enhanced automation from AvidXchange:
- Integrates with top real estate ERPs like Yardi, MRI, and RealPage
- Automates invoice capture, approval routing, and payments to dramatically cut the time and cost it takes to handle AP
- Scales with your business by supporting multiple entities and accounting structures
Problem #2: You’re Missing the Insights That Drive Smarter Decisions
The real estate industry generates a wealth of data, but much of it is scattered across systems. Invoice and payment data live in one platform, occupancy rates and maintenance expenses in another, and budget and forecasting data are trapped in spreadsheets or an ERP.
Trapped in silos, these valuable insights could empower teams to make smarter business decisions and more accurate forecasts.
Access to these insights and the ability to make better decisions are major drivers for tech investments. In fact, 37% of those surveyed said they plan to increase spending on business intelligence and analytics, while 50% plan to increase investment in AI and machine learning.
When we asked those who have already invested in AI tools where they have seen a return on their investment, 40% said AI has led to better decision-making through faster or deeper data insights.
Integrating analytics with accounting and property systems gives finance teams a single source of truth, enabling smarter forecasting and faster decisions. Here are just a few of the ways real estate firms are using AI to enhance operational efficiency.
How real estate firms are using AI:
- Identifying under-performing buildings by analyzing where maintenance and repair costs have gone above and beyond typical spend, and where occupancy and use rates are dipping.
- Forecasting property demand and setting rental rates based on historical and seasonal data.
- Analyzing historical repairs and seasonal patterns to forecast maintenance issues, such as elevator repairs or HVAC failures, before they lead to larger expenses.
💡 When evaluating AI solutions for real estate, look for software with embedded business intelligence (BI) features or the ability to export data into your third-party software to help you leverage these valuable insights for data-driven decisions.
Problem #3: Integration Gaps Are Slowing You Down
There’s another common pain point with fragmented data in real estate: lack of integration. When your ERP, AP system, and banking platform aren’t automatically integrated, your team has to enter the same information in multiple places. This not only increases the risk of errors, but also slows down approvals and makes reporting harder.
Improving integration is an important strategy for many of the respondents in our survey with more than two-thirds planning to improve the way systems in their current tech stack work together or invest in new tools that better integrate.
By investing in integration, Wheeler Real Estate Investment eliminated manual data entry, helping ensure accuracy, faster close cycles, and better visibility, while saving about $47,000 annually. They did it by automating AP with AvidXchange’s AP solution, which seamlessly integrates with MRI.
💡 Things to consider when evaluating software for your real estate tech stack:
- Not all integrations with accounting systems are the same. Is it file-based, or do they have an API? Is it simply an integration, or do they have a strategic partnership? Deeply embedded integrations and relationships will offer a more seamless experience for your finance team.
- How many integrations do they have with accounting systems? Certain software solutions may integrate with your current ERP, but what if you change accounting systems down the road? Avoid vendor lock-in by choosing software with a deep roster of integrations. AvidXchange offers 240+ integrations with accounting systems today.
Problem #4: Your Portfolio’s Growing—But Your Team Can’t Work Any Harder
Part of the problem with today’s real estate tech stacks is that existing tools leave far too much manual work for people. Finance teams are saddled with repetitive work, like entering invoice data and chasing approvals for scores of suppliers.
Their plates are overflowing, but when new properties are added to a portfolio, there’s an exponential increase in invoices and payments to process and suppliers to please. People can only do so much, and headcount rarely scales at the same pace as growth. Without the right automation tools, teams have to manually process every new invoice, which leads to overtime and burnout, and eventually limits the firm’s ability to scale.
More than 70% of finance teams report feeling the strain of being asked to do more with less, especially in an environment where hiring is constrained not just by budget, but also by a tight labor market. To tackle these challenges, 50% of respondents are implementing new technology and automation tools.
Automated AP, for example, digitizes invoice processing, eliminating manual data entry, paper handling, and check printing. By removing repetitive “paper-chasing” work, it can help boost morale and help with employee retention and talent acquisition.
Richmond, Virginia-based Peak Property Management provides a powerful example. By automating with AvidXchange, the firm reduced its invoice processing time by 75%. What once took 40 hours per week can now be done in 10 hours.
“AvidXchange has freed up so much time for the finance team as well as our property managers. They can focus on retaining our current clients and fostering those relationships by giving them a higher level of service.”
Problem #5: You Haven’t Brought Supplier Payments into Your Tech Stack
When investing in your tech stack, don’t forget supplier payments. If your team is still printing, signing, and mailing paper checks or uploading manual ACH files to banks, they’re wasting precious time. The manual process creates delays, exposes firms to check fraud, and adds extra reconciliation work.
The federal government’s efforts to phase-out paper checks signal a broader shift toward electronic payments across industries, including real estate. At the same time, rising fraud threats make manual, paper-based processes increasingly risky. Finance leaders can’t afford payments to sit outside their digital workflow.
According to the 2025 AFP Digital Payments Survey, only 26% of B2B payments are made by paper check. Our research mirrors these findings with firms moving toward electronic payment methods for vendor or supplier transactions, yet only 21% exclusively use ePayments. What’s holding them back from increasing their use of ePayments? Sixty percent cited security or fraud concerns as a top barrier.
AvidXchange’s payment automation software helps protect real estate and property management firms from payments fraud in multiple ways.
Benefits of automated payments in real estate:
- Eliminates the need for paper checks, the number one source of payments fraud
- Offers encrypted, fully traceable digital payments, like ACH and virtual cards
- Replaces manual, paper processes with more secure, automated workflows and provides near real-time visibility
- Provides 24/7 fraud monitoring
💡 When evaluating payment automation providers in real estate, look for:
- Payment solutions that include a detailed audit trail for every payment made
- Licensed money transmitters, which helps ensure that financial regulations are met when sending funds
Ready to Build a Smarter Real Estate Tech Stack in 2026?
The most effective real estate finance tech stacks are connected, automated, and insight driven.
What an optimized real estate tech stack looks like in 2026:
- An ERP or property management software as the financial hub
- Deeply integrated, automated AP for invoice capture, approval routing, and payments
- AI and business intelligence tools layered in for forecasting and analysis
- ePayment solution to replace paper checks and reduce fraud risk
AvidXchange serves as a strategic provider for finance teams, providing AI-enhanced AP and payment automation built for the real estate industry.
Our invoice and payment solutions integrate seamlessly with leading real estate ERPs like MRI, Yardi, Entrata, and RealPage, helping teams eliminate manual work and streamline payments.
To see how AvidXchange can make your real estate tech stack work harder for you—book a demo.
Important Notice: The information presented on this page is based on research and intended for educational purposes only. Anyone seeking to follow the information contained herein should consult their own advisors and conduct their own research prior to doing so. AvidXchange, Inc. and its affiliates disclaim any and all liability resulting from reliance on the information contained herein.