Case Study

Vanderbilt Office Properties

How a Kardin champion transformed budgeting across 90 Class A office properties

~90

Buildings Managed

Class A

Office Portfolio

1,000+

Tenants Across Portfolio

Key outcomes

Budget quality

“This is the best the budgets have ever looked.” — Vanderbilt executive leadership

Reporting

Budget audit time cut from ~4 hours to ~1.5 hours with full tenant-level drill-down

Support

~10 hrs/week internal support burden eliminated; just 2–3 hours of Kardin support all year

Integration

Interface Reports saved an estimated 135 hours/season in data cleanup

Implementation

~90 buildings and 1,000+ tenants onboarded for the first full budget cycle

Training

6 tailored sessions plus on-demand videos and in-app help via Customer Center

Executive summary

“Our executive leadership said this is the best the budgets have ever looked.”

Emily Racciatti, RPA, Associate Vice President of Property Management

Vanderbilt Office Properties replaced its legacy budgeting platform with Kardin across ~90 Class A office buildings and 1,000+ tenants after struggling with unintuitive software, weak reporting, and a support burden so heavy that one team member worked as full-time “budgeting IT support” during budget season. Within one budget cycle, Kardin delivered executive-level recognition, full tenant-level audit transparency, and self-service support that eliminated internal bottlenecks. The transformation was driven by Associate Vice President Emily Racciatti, a longtime Kardin user who piloted the platform on her own buildings, then championed the portfolio-wide rollout.

The company

Founded in 2014 and headquartered in Chicago, Vanderbilt Office Properties (VOP) is a privately held, vertically integrated real estate investor and operator. The firm has invested over $5 billion and manages approximately 15.8 million square feet of Class A office space across high-growth U.S. markets, with a particular focus on the Southeast, along with holdings in Chicago and Denver.

VOP’s full-service platform spans investment and property management, giving its team full visibility into every aspect of each asset.

Emily Racciatti, RPA, serves as Associate Vice President of Property Management, overseeing property operations, budgeting, and risk compliance across the national portfolio. She also directly manages several Denver buildings, giving her perspective from both the strategic and hands-on sides of budgeting.

Emily Racciatti, RPA
Associate Vice President of Property Management
Vanderbilt Office Properties

Vanderbilt Office Properties Class A office building at dusk

The challenge: a system that couldn’t keep up

While Vanderbilt’s accounting platform served as the mission-critical general ledger, its budgeting module created persistent problems for the property management team.

Unintuitive software and poor reporting

Having used Kardin at Colliers and JLL, Emily felt the gap immediately. The legacy budgeting tools were unintuitive, and drilling down to tenant-level detail—base rent, recovery amounts, monthly billing—was extremely difficult.

Chronic technical issues

The platform’s custom reporting capabilities caused frequent glitches and required constant troubleshooting. The burden grew so heavy that one team member effectively became full-time “budgeting IT support” during budget season, consuming roughly 10 hours per week from August through November and fielding questions instead of doing productive work.

Limited self-service support

The previous platform offered no direct support for individual property managers. All questions funneled through a single internal contact, creating bottlenecks with no self-service knowledge base available.

“The software wasn’t very intuitive, and the reporting functionality wasn’t great. I couldn’t get the information I needed to audit my budget.”

Emily Racciatti, on the previous budgeting platform

The solution: a champion’s journey

The “guinea pig” pilot

Drawing on nearly a decade of Kardin experience across multiple firms, Emily proposed a low-risk pilot: test Kardin on just her own Denver buildings while personally handling the accounting system integration. The results spoke for themselves. Emily’s Kardin budgets were clean and consistent, while the buildings still on the legacy platform continued to suffer glitches, reporting failures, and the need for dedicated IT intervention.

Portfolio-wide rollout

After a formal evaluation of several platforms, Vanderbilt chose to deploy Kardin across all ~90 buildings, onboarding expense schedules for every building and over a thousand tenants. Kardin’s implementation team pulled reports from the accounting system and set up the initial data files (rents, tenants, and suites), laying the foundation quickly and accurately. Tailored training and configuration support followed to bring the full team up to speed.

Seamless accounting system integration

A key implementation win was Kardin Interface Reports—custom reports added to the accounting platform that extract data in the exact format needed for Kardin import. Previously, Emily spent roughly 30 minutes per building manually cleaning up exports before uploading. Across the full portfolio, that would have meant an estimated 135 hours of data manipulation per budget season. Now the team enters property codes, downloads one consolidated file, and imports directly.

“The interface reports made life a lot easier. We could type in a property code, download one large file with all the data, and upload it directly to Kardin. I didn’t have to spend time manipulating the data like I used to.”

Emily Racciatti, on streamlining data imports

The results: from day one to executive leadership recognition

After the first full budget cycle on Kardin, the impact was evident across multiple dimensions.

Executive-level recognition

Vanderbilt’s executive leadership reviewed the new budget packages and delivered the ultimate endorsement: “This is the best the budgets have ever looked.” Property managers echoed the positive feedback on quality and consistency.

Reporting and auditability

Asked what feature she’d miss most, Emily didn’t hesitate: “The reporting. 100% the reporting.” Her team can now drill down to base rent per tenant, recovery amounts, and Commercial Recoveries Calculation Reports showing base year, pro-rata share, and monthly billing—detail that was unavailable with the previous platform. Budget packages are now consistent and auditable across the entire portfolio. Emily estimates she can audit a budget in about 1.5 hours now, compared to 4 hours with the previous platform. As she puts it: “There’s always a way to trace where a certain number is coming from. It allows for more accurate budgets.”

Sample Kardin reports: Annual Budget Summary and Commercial Recoveries Estimate Calculation. See all Kardin reports for property managers →

“Night and day” support experience

With Kardin’s Customer Center, property managers can now search the knowledge base, access step-by-step guides, watch Budget Bites training videos, and contact support directly—no internal bottleneck required. Where the old platform consumed roughly 10 hours per week in internal support during budget season, Emily spent just 2–3 hours total with Kardin support over the entire year. Vanderbilt no longer needs an employee to serve as the internal support desk. When a team member recently asked how to roll forward to a reforecast, she simply pointed them to a Customer Center article. Page-sensitive help built into the Portal means answers are one click away.

Self-service knowledge base

Kardin’s Customer Center gives every property manager direct access to searchable documentation, step-by-step guides, Budget Bytes training videos, and live support channels. The result: Vanderbilt no longer needs a dedicated internal support person during budget season.

“It’s a night and day difference in terms of the amount of customer support. You can literally type in a keyword and find an article on the topic you need assistance with. It’s very helpful that all of that information is available to the users.”

Emily Racciatti, on Kardin’s self-service support

Flexible training and responsive implementation

Kardin delivered six tailored training sessions for Vanderbilt’s different teams, supplemented by ongoing free public sessions, Budget Bites videos, and in-app instruction links within the budget files.

Portfolio consolidation

Vanderbilt has added Portfolio licensing for up to 50 properties, enabling their corporate finance team to pull management fees, building improvements, and tenant improvements across the portfolio in a single consolidated report.

Looking ahead

Property managers will work in their reforecast files year-round, deepening familiarity and setting up an even smoother next budget season. Expanded Portfolio licensing will enable corporate-level consolidated reporting, and the team is looking forward to upcoming Kardin developments including enhanced Excel reporting and potential Argus integration. Emily has also joined Kardin’s Advisory Board to help shape the product’s future.

“I really enjoy using the software. I truly appreciate the improvements made over the years.”

Emily Racciatti, on the evolution of Kardin

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Kardin Systems, Inc. is the leading provider of commercial real estate budgeting and reforecasting software. Trusted by property and asset managers for 30 years, Kardin’s cloud-based platform delivers dynamic budgeting tools, automated workflows, CAM recovery management, and portfolio reporting—all independent of any specific accounting system. Learn more at kardin.com