2. The Real Challenge Isn’t Effort
It’s Orchestration
It’s Orchestration
Community Managers, Regional Managers, and Executives each spend just 10 to 25 hours on budgeting over the course of the season. For a task that touches nearly every part of operations and finance, that’s a relatively light lift.
Property Managers spend 13.4 hours on average budgeting in Vizibly
Where the opportunity lies is not in the amount of time—it’s in how that time is distributed.
The real challenge isn’t effort—it’s orchestration.
Because budgeting tends to stretch across weeks or months, there’s an opportunity to bring more concentrated effort and visibility to each phase:
- Site teams often begin with a burst of focused work during “budget bootcamp”
- Regional and support teams contribute over time through reviews and strategic refinements
- Executives weigh in throughout the later stages, aligning the numbers with the broader investment story
And that’s where support becomes crucial. Budgeting success isn’t just about knowing how to use the software—it’s about:
- Understanding how your assumptions drive key outcomes
- Knowing how rent assumptions impact top-line revenue
- Seeing how expense lines affect NOI and strategic benchmarks
In other words, budgeting tools must teach budgeting logic—not just navigation.
This is where operators often see the biggest gains from Vizibly: through live coaching, in-app context, and embedded support that meets every role where they are.
When users understand not just what to enter but why it matters, the numbers start telling the right story.
3. The Regional & Executive Perspective
Most budgeting conversations assume a simple handoff model:
Community Manager → Regional Manager → Executive
But in practice, both RMs and Executives are heavily involved throughout the entire process—not just at the end. Their roles are central not only in reviewing the numbers but in shaping the very assumptions that drive the strategy.
Regional Managers
- Spend 24.3 hours on average per season
- Manage large portfolios, so time per property is only 3.4 hours
- Lead internal reviews, resolve discrepancies, and align strategy across markets
Regional Managers play a critical role in balancing the need for standardized assumptions with the importance of local nuance.
⚠️ If you lean too far toward standardization, you gain efficiency but lose accuracy.
⚠️ If you lean too far toward granularity, timelines slip.
RMs need tools that let them do both: bulk update budgets across the portfolio when appropriate, while also collaborating deeply on specific properties through notes and multi-user support.
With the right tools, they get the best of both worlds—speed without sacrificing strategy.
Thanks to tools like Vizibly’s portfolio-level editing, RMs can update dozens of budgets at once—reducing manual work and allowing them to focus on strategic decision-making.
Executives
Executives aren't just reviewers—they're stewards of strategy.
- Log nearly 21 hours per cycle
- Focus on validating assumptions, confirming alignment with pro forma targets, and preparing deliverables for boards and ownership
- Often re-enter the process multiple times as budgets evolve
They need to see how the portfolio is rolling up at a high level: which properties are budgeted above or below benchmarks on a per-square-foot or per-unit basis, and how assumptions hold across the portfolio.
They use this visibility to develop heuristics and targets they can explain to asset managers, investors, and capital partners.
This crucial step—selling the budget both internally and externally—falls to executives, who are ultimately accountable for aligning financial plans with investment criteria. They ask hard questions, validate key drivers, and ensure every line item supports a broader vision.
They also play a key role in how the budget is presented—not just internally, but externally to capital partners, boards, and stakeholders. A clean, coherent budget is more than a spreadsheet—it’s a story that executives must be ready to tell.
Budgeting is no longer an operational task—it’s a leadership function.
4. The Achilles Heel in Your Budget Process
Is the Budget Deliverable
Is the Budget Deliverable
If there’s one part of the budget process that breaks more deals than it closes, it’s the review—and more specifically, the way the budget is delivered.
A clean, thoughtful, and easy-to-follow budget output can build trust and credibility. A confusing, over-engineered, or inconsistent file can do the opposite.
The review phase is where expectations diverge:
- Community Managers are defending their assumptions
- Regional Managers are balancing strategy and reality
- Executives are driving consistency
- Asset Managers are seeking clarity and precision
In third-party management, this phase is especially delicate. The budget document is more than a spreadsheet—it’s a message about how you operate.
A disorganized budget can cast doubt.
Not just on the numbers, but on the operator behind them.
Not just on the numbers, but on the operator behind them.
Common risks we’ve seen:
- Feedback and approvals get lost in email, creating unnecessary and stressful cycles when questions arise
- Revisions aren’t clearly tracked, leading to confusion around asset strategy
- Asset managers don’t know what changed or why, eroding confidence in the process
- Different versions create confusion and rework, leading to missed timelines
- Property managers overcommit without capturing dissent, leading to revenue risk and human capital strain
- Misalignment on goals triggers cascading issues: missed targets, increased scrutiny, pressure on RMs and site teams, and potential client churn
The result? Mistrust. Extra meetings. Reopened decisions. And often, redoing work that should have been resolved early on—all of which compounds under time pressure.
But the biggest challenge is this: finding the right balance between transparency and control.
If you lock down the budget too tightly, asset managers can’t validate assumptions.
If you open it up completely, everyone ends up debating formatting instead of strategy.
📌 It’s not just about telling the story—it’s about showing you're in control of the story.
Budgeting should be an opportunity for strategic alignment—a moment where operators and asset managers align on vision, trade-offs, and execution.
When handled well, it's a powerful opportunity to build trust. But when mismanaged, it's like fumbling at the 1-yard line.
A poorly run review process not only risks the numbers, it risks your reputation. And in a relationship-driven business, that’s a risk too great to ignore.
This is where Vizibly steps in:
- Clear, polished executive summaries that present the story
- Full drill-down capability for teams that want to explore the numbers
- Commenting and approval tracking all in one place—making it easy to document not only decisions but dissent. Capturing where teams align and where they don’t is essential for transparency, accountability, and long-term trust