How to Choose a Yardi Consultant

A Yardi consultant is an independent specialist who helps property management organizations implement, configure, optimize, and maintain their Yardi platform. The right consultant brings real estate operations experience alongside deep technical Yardi knowledge. The wrong one costs far more than the engagement fee: stalled implementations, misconfigured systems, and teams that never learn to use the platform independently.

If you're evaluating Yardi consultants, whether for a new implementation, a platform migration, or ongoing support, this guide provides a structured framework for making that decision. It covers what Yardi consultants actually do, the different types of consulting relationships available, specific evaluation criteria, red flags, and questions to ask before signing a statement of work.

Why Property Management Firms Hire Yardi Consultants

There is a significant gap between purchasing a Yardi license and getting real operational value from the platform. Yardi Voyager is among the most capable property management systems on the market, but that capability comes with complexity. The chart of accounts, security configuration, module selection, reporting framework, and integration architecture all require deliberate design decisions that compound over years of operation.

Most firms reach for outside help at one of these inflection points:

• New implementation. Standing up Voyager or Breeze Premier from scratch, with data migration from a legacy system (MRI, RealPage, Yardi DOS, QuickBooks, spreadsheets). The implementation process involves dozens of configuration decisions that are difficult to reverse later.
• Platform migration. Moving from one Yardi product to another (Breeze to Voyager, Voyager 7 to 8) or from a competing platform like RealPage to Yardi.
• System optimization. The implementation is complete but the system isn't delivering its potential: reports are manual, workflows are clunky, modules sit unused.
• Staffing gaps. The internal Yardi administrator left, retired, or can't keep up with a growing portfolio. The firm needs depth it can't hire for full-time.
• Specific expertise. A particular project requires specialized knowledge like custom report development, CAM reconciliation setup, affordable housing compliance configuration, bank reconciliation automation that the internal team doesn't have.
• Ongoing support. The firm wants a standing relationship with Yardi experts who already know their environment, rather than calling Yardi's general support line for every question.

The common thread across all of these is that Yardi expertise is a specialized skill set. Property management firms are experts at managing properties. Yardi consultants are experts at making the software serve that expertise.

Three Types of Yardi Consulting Relationships

When firms begin evaluating Yardi consulting options, they typically encounter three categories of providers. Each operates differently, and understanding the distinctions is important for selecting the right fit.

1. Yardi's Direct Services

Yardi Systems itself provides implementation services, Technical Account Managers (TAMs), and support through its Client Central portal. For straightforward implementations or firms with strong internal Yardi knowledge, Yardi's direct services can work well. The tradeoffs: Yardi's consultants work across hundreds of clients simultaneously, turnaround times for custom requests can stretch weeks or months, and the relationship is with Yardi as an organization rather than with a specific consultant who knows your environment.

2. Independent Yardi Consultants

Independent consulting firms, members of the Yardi Independent Consultant Network, specialize exclusively in Yardi platforms. These firms typically employ consultants who previously worked at Yardi or in property management operations (often both). The advantage is depth: a dedicated team that learns your specific environment, responds in hours rather than weeks, and brings cross-client experience from similar portfolios. The tradeoff is that you're evaluating individual firms rather than a single vendor, which requires more upfront diligence.

3. Large System Integrators

Big-4 consulting firms and large technology integrators occasionally handle Yardi implementations, usually for enterprise clients with 50,000+ units or complex ERP integration requirements. These engagements carry premium pricing and are typically structured as large-scale projects with dedicated project management offices. For most mid-market property management firms, this is more infrastructure than the engagement requires.

The Evaluation Framework: 8 Things That Matter

Evaluating a Yardi consultant is fundamentally different from evaluating a software vendor. You're assessing people, not products. Here are the eight criteria that consistently predict whether an engagement will deliver value.

1. Real Estate Operations Experience

The best Yardi consultants have worked in property management operations (as controllers, regional managers, or operations directors) before becoming consultants. This means they understand why you configure something a certain way, not just how. A consultant who has managed month-end close across 20 properties knows instinctively which Voyager configurations prevent headaches at year-end. One who has only worked on the software side may technically know the system but miss the operational context.

2. Platform-Specific Depth

Yardi Voyager Commercial and Voyager Residential are substantially different products. Breeze and Breeze Premier operate differently from both. A consultant experienced in multifamily Voyager may not have the commercial lease administration, CAM reconciliation, or CommercialCafe experience a commercial operator needs. Verify that the consultant has direct project experience with your specific Yardi platform and the modules you use or plan to use.

3. Asset Class Alignment

A consultant who primarily serves multifamily portfolios will approach an affordable housing engagement differently than one who specializes in LIHTC compliance and HUD reporting. Similarly, senior living operators have module requirements (EHR integration, resident billing, care management) that generic Yardi expertise doesn't cover. Look for consultants who have worked with portfolios similar to yours in asset class, size, and geographic complexity.

4. Team Depth and Bench Strength

Solo practitioners and small firms can provide excellent service, but consider what happens when your primary consultant is unavailable. Firms with multiple consultants across different specializations (commercial, residential, reporting, integrations) can flex to meet changing needs without starting over with a new relationship. Ask how many active consultants the firm employs and what happens if your assigned consultant is unavailable.

5. Documented Results

Ask for specific examples of similar engagements: not testimonials on a website, but details about scope, timeline, challenges encountered, and measurable outcomes. A consultant who can walk you through a comparable project in detail demonstrates both the experience and the transparency you want in a partner.

6. Training and Knowledge Transfer Approach

The goal of a consulting engagement should be to make your team more capable, not more dependent. Ask how the consultant handles training and knowledge transfer. Do they build documentation as they work? Do they train your team to maintain configurations after the project ends? Or do they optimize for recurring revenue by keeping critical knowledge in their own heads?

7. Post-Project Support Model

Implementations don't end at go-live. The first 90 days after launch surface configuration issues, user questions, and edge cases that only appear with real data in production. Ask whether the consultant offers structured post-go-live support, and what it looks like. Some firms offer ongoing support retainers with guaranteed response times. Others handle post-project work on an hourly ad-hoc basis. Understand which model you're signing up for.

8. Communication Style and Cadence

Technical expertise is necessary but not sufficient. The consultant also needs to communicate clearly with non-technical stakeholders, provide regular status updates, and escalate issues proactively rather than letting them compound. Ask about their standard communication cadence: weekly status meetings? A shared project tracker? How do they handle scope changes or timeline risks?

Red Flags That Should End the Conversation

Some signals during the evaluation process reliably predict problems later. These aren't subtle: they indicate fundamental issues with how the consultant operates.

No Verifiable Project References

A consultant who can't provide references from clients with similar portfolios and similar project types is asking you to take their capability on faith. Established consultants have multiple reference clients willing to speak candidly about the engagement.

Vague Scoping

If the consultant can't articulate what's included in the engagement, what the deliverables are, and how they'll know the project is complete, expect scope creep and billing surprises. A professional consultant should be able to provide a detailed statement of work before the engagement begins.

No Experience With Your Specific Platform

A consultant pitching themselves as "Yardi experts" who have never actually implemented Voyager Commercial for a commercial portfolio, or never configured Breeze Premier for a mid-size firm, is learning on your dime. Platform experience should be verifiable and specific.

Resistance to Knowledge Transfer

If the consultant discourages your team from learning the system, avoids creating documentation, or structures the engagement to maximize ongoing dependency, the incentives are misaligned. Good consultants want your team to be self-sufficient because that's what creates satisfied, referenceable clients.

Overcommitting on Timeline

Yardi implementations have natural floor timelines driven by data migration, testing, and user training. A consultant promising a Voyager implementation in three weeks either has a very different definition of "implementation" than you do, or is setting expectations they can't meet. Ask what's realistic for your scope and be wary of promises that sound too fast.

No Post-Go-Live Plan

A consultant who considers the engagement complete at go-live hasn't thought about what happens when your team encounters its first month-end close, first year-end, or first audit on the new system. The transition period after launch is where many implementations fail, and the engagement should account for it.

15 Questions to Ask Before You Sign

Use these during your evaluation conversations. The answers reveal more about a consultant's approach and depth than any pitch deck.

Experience and Fit

1. How many implementations have you completed on our specific Yardi platform (Voyager Commercial, Voyager Residential, Breeze Premier)?
2. What's the largest portfolio you've supported, and what's the smallest? Where do we fall?
3. Have you worked with our asset class before? Can you share a specific example?
4. What does your team structure look like? Who would be assigned to our project, and what's their background?

Project Approach

5. Walk us through your typical implementation timeline for a portfolio our size. What are the major milestones?
6. How do you handle data migration from our current system? What are the common pitfalls?
7. What does your testing process look like before go-live?
8. How do you handle scope changes or unexpected issues during the project?

Knowledge Transfer

9. What documentation do you produce during the engagement?
10. How do you train our team to maintain the system after the project ends?
11. Will our team have the knowledge to handle day-to-day operations independently after go-live?

Support and Pricing

12. What does post-go-live support look like? Is it included or a separate engagement?
13. How do you structure pricing: hourly, project-based, retainer? What's included in each?
14. What happens if the project takes longer than estimated? How are overages handled?
15. Can you provide two or three references from clients with similar portfolios and project types?

How to Structure the Engagement

The engagement structure should match the nature of the work. There's no one-size-fits-all model, but understanding the common structures helps you negotiate effectively.

Project-Based (Fixed Scope)

Best for well-defined engagements with clear deliverables: an implementation, a data migration, a specific set of custom reports. The consultant provides a statement of work with defined scope, timeline, milestones, and total cost. Change orders handle scope additions. This model provides cost predictability but requires upfront scoping discipline from both sides.

Hourly

Best for exploratory or variable-scope work: system audits, ad-hoc troubleshooting, consulting on specific configuration questions. You pay for time actually spent. The risk is cost unpredictability, so set a monthly cap or approval threshold to maintain control.

Monthly Retainer

Best for ongoing relationships where you want a dedicated team available for a range of needs: support tickets, minor configuration changes, training, report development, and system administration. Some firms, including those offering concierge-style support models, bundle a set number of hours per month at a fixed rate with guaranteed response times. This provides the predictability of project-based pricing with the flexibility of hourly.

What a Good SOW Includes

• Scope definition: specific deliverables, modules, and properties in scope
• Timeline: milestones with target dates and dependencies
• Team assignments: who is assigned and their role
• Client responsibilities: what your team needs to provide and by when
• Testing and acceptance criteria: how you'll know a deliverable is complete
• Change order process: how scope additions are handled and priced
• Post-go-live support: what's included after the project formally ends
• Knowledge transfer plan: training sessions, documentation deliverables

What Good Consulting Looks Like in Practice

Abstract evaluation criteria are useful, but real client experiences show what these principles look like in the field. Here are three examples from different types of engagements.

The Rescue: When the First Engagement Stalls

Carolina Holdings, a Greenville-based commercial real estate firm with 17+ retail and office properties, initially engaged a different team for their Yardi Voyager Commercial implementation. When progress stalled, BC Solutions stepped in to complete the data migration (including lease data, CAM recovery setup, charge schedules, and historical trial balances) and bring the implementation to a successful go-live.

The Knowledge Transfer: Teaching the Team, Not Creating Dependency

C.F. Smith Property Group, a retail developer operating 100 properties across 23 states, needed CAM recovery setup and configuration for new property onboards. The engagement focused on completing the work while training the internal team to handle the process independently going forward.

The Long-Term ROI: Systems That Drive Profitability

Lordae Properties, a 65-year-old family-owned commercial property management firm, replaced a legacy system with Yardi Voyager and then invested in custom development with BC Solutions over a multi-year engagement spanning 5,475+ hours across 7 projects. The result: a 2-hour monthly close process, measurable increases in collections, and 60% time savings on routine operations.

Each of these engagements followed a different structure (implementation rescue, targeted project with knowledge transfer, and long-term optimization partnership), but the pattern is consistent: specific expertise applied to a defined problem, measurable outcomes, and a client team that's stronger afterward. You can explore more documented engagements across asset classes in our case study library.

Getting Started

If you're actively evaluating Yardi consultants, here's a practical sequence:

1. Define the problem. Are you implementing, migrating, optimizing, or filling a staffing gap? The answer shapes which type of engagement and which type of consultant is the right fit.
2. List your requirements. Which Yardi platform? Which modules? How many properties? What's the timeline? Having specifics makes scoping conversations productive rather than abstract.
3. Evaluate against the framework. Use the eight criteria in Chapter 3 and the 15 questions in Chapter 5 to compare candidates consistently.
4. Check references. Talk to clients with similar portfolios and similar project types. Ask what went well and what didn't.
5. Start with a scoped engagement. If you're uncertain, begin with a smaller project (a system audit, a set of custom reports, a specific module configuration) before committing to a full implementation. A smaller engagement lets you evaluate the working relationship with limited risk.

The right Yardi consultant should feel like an extension of your team: someone who understands both the software and the business problems it's supposed to solve. The evaluation process takes time, but it's significantly less expensive than a failed implementation.