MITS Unveils New Multifamily Data Transfer Standard
Washington, D.C.--The Multifamily Information and Transactions Standards (MITS) initiative has taken another step in its stated goal of creating shared data standards.
Dees Stribling, Contributing Editor
Washington, D.C.–The Multifamily Information and Transactions Standards (MITS) initiative has taken another step in its stated goal of creating shared data standards—so that the apartment industry’s various software programs can “talk to each other”—by completing a new data standard, Accounts Payable 4.0. As the name implies, the new standard is a data standard that deals with accounts payable in a multifamily management context.
The standardization includes incoming requests; processing; invoice reconciliation; payment requests; and property management software data transfer. Developing the standard involved the efforts of a good many MITS member firms, including Fair Collections & Outsourcing, Move, MyNewPlace, Nexus Systems Inc., NWP Services Corp., On-Site.com, RealPage Inc., Tenant Technologies and Yardi Systems Inc.
“[The new standard] increases property management software system communication, allowing data to be exchanged either within a firm or between different firms,” said David B. Cardwell, vice president of capital markets and technology of the National Multi Housing Council (NMHC), in a statement. “In short, this new standard greatly improves data exchange for payables processing.”
MITS is a collective effort started in 2002 by the NMHC to develop common data standards so various apartment-related software packages can communicate with each other. About 75 of the largest apartment firms and software providers have come together with the support of NMHC to work on the MITS initiative.
MITS is a collaborative, volunteer process. The standards are a way to cope with the briar patch of data generated by various players in the multifamily industry, such as owners, managers, investors, vendors and others. The thinking behind MITS is that a single data standard is important to improve operations and reduce costs by making systems integration and data-exchange technologies more effective and efficient.
The Accounts Payable standard, like the other nine MITS data transfer standards, is open and available without charge to all users from the MITS organization. The next draft standard, which is currently under review, is a renters’ insurance data transfer standard.
