The Random Investments case study showcases how STRATAFOLIO enabled a commercial real estate firm to streamline rent roll processing and enhance financial oversight. By integrating STRATAFOLIO with QuickBooks, the company automated key processes, reducing manual work and minimizing revenue leakage. This transition provided a consolidated view of their portfolio, improved lease management, and facilitated accurate investor reporting.
Dallas Gray used to own a tech company and now owns Random Investments with his long-time business partner. Random Investments, as the name suggests, has a stake in many different types of investments—one of those being commercial real estate.
Gray and his partner started investing in real estate more than 20 years ago. “We started the businesses around 2001 and used profits from the tech company to acquire several residential and commercial properties in Idaho,” he said.
Like many small and mid-sized real estate investors, Random Investments was tracking everything related to their investments in Excel and QuickBooks.
As the Random Investments partners discovered, the more properties you own, the harder it gets to manage things in Excel and QuickBooks alone. It’s easy to have a missed payment or lease escalation fall through when properties are managed manually in Excel.
Now, using STRATAFOLIO for all their properties, the partners have insight into every property, every unit, and every lease.
While STRATAFOLIO is focused on commercial and mix-use properties, Random Investments uses it for all of their properties, which currently include 26 total properties, 11 of which are commercial, for a total of about 50 leases.
Because Random Investments has non-real estate investments to track, the fact that STRATAFOLIO integrates with QuickBooks was key. “QuickBooks is what I know from the accounting side of things,” Gray said. “I didn’t want a separate accounting system, so I like the integration.”
The company can keep its full investment portfolio in QuickBooks, with just the real estate investments in STRATAFOLIO—because QuickBooks wasn’t built just for real estate investors.
Gray recalled, “We had been using QuickBooks already, but we were missing lease escalations, rent rolls took forever, and some of our tenants just paid without official invoices being created, which isn’t great record keeping.”
“Now, with STRATAFOLIO, we get notified about lease escalations, invoices are all generated with one quick request, rent rolls are quick and easy, and I know we’re saving money and collecting everything we’re owed.”
STRATAFOLIO puts new users through a complete onboarding process to make sure they’re set up for success with the system.
“The onboarding process was key. The STRATAFOLIO team was so helpful getting everything set up. There were no glitches; they’ve answered every one of my questions and have solved every problem I ran into—even my user errors,” laughed Gray.
He likes how knowledgeable the STRATAFOLIO team is about both the platform and the industry. “Working with them feels like a personal touch,” he said. “I’m working with the same people who know my history, can help me understand the data in the system, and are quick to respond to questions.”
STRATAFOLIO makes everything about property management quicker, easier, and more thorough for Gray and Random Investments.
“I used to spend two to three hours each day at my desk looking through Excel, updating property information, running reports, and more,” said Gray. “Now, I spend maybe a few minutes every other day looking at reports and where we stand.”
“I can generate rent rolls, batch to QuickBooks, send invoices, record payments, update property values, share data with my partner, and do everything else I need to do in just a few hours per month—instead of per day.”
Gray can set automatic notifications (like lease escalations and late payments) to go to each property manager. His partner can check the STRATAFOLIO dashboard to see information about each property. And he can quickly create reports for his banker when needed.
“Others have access to the same data I do,” said Gray. “That wasn’t the case when I managed everything in Excel.”
Gray and his partner plan to continue acquiring properties—and other random investments—while continuing to look for ways to make property management more efficient.
D A L L A S G R A Y
Owner, Random Investments
Learn how you can keep using QuickBooks and save over 80% of manual effort when using STRATAFOLIO to manage your operations, global finances, assets, and investors. Utilize our two-way connection with QuickBooks to gain one fully integrated system.
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