Vendor Brief · StackSmart · Multifamily Consortium
You have been selected for AP Automation & Invoice Workflow. This brief carries what we already know about Merrowfield so your first call starts from their operating reality rather than from discovery.
Portfolio profile, segment, operating model - and who decides what
Merrowfield is both an owner-operator and a fee manager. Roughly two thirds of the portfolio is owned; the balance is managed for third-party owners. On fee-managed assets, a portfolio-wide vendor requires owner approval in addition to Merrowfield's own. Expect that in your commercial timeline.
Accounts payable is centralised at corporate. Invoice coding is performed by an offshore support function, not by site teams.
Corporate and regional headcount sits in the 90 to 120 band. On-site headcount sits in the 400 to 500 band. Site-team turnover is a live consideration for Merrowfield, so training burden and time-to-competence on any new interface will be weighed.
Stable, with selective acquisition. Two properties acquired in the last two quarters are still being brought onto standard corporate processes, and that transition intersects this change directly - see 3.1 and 4.4.
Technology decisions are owned by a dedicated function, with department heads holding an effective veto over tools touching their own workflow. Corporate approves; the field evaluates.
Four decision seats are involved. To proceed you will need the technology function and the finance approver aligned in the same pass.
Every system already in place, and where this product sits inside it
Merrowfield runs Corevantage as its property management system, with the accounting, leasing, resident portal and maintenance modules in use.
One legacy instance remains in service for the affordable segment, and a migration off it is pending. This is the single most consequential fact in this section for your implementation: one of the downstream consumers of this capability will change during the change window. Build against the target state, not the current one.
What Merrowfield runs today, and what it does not. The absences are as briefing-relevant as the presences - they tell you which adjacent conversations are open and which are closed.
The capability is served today by Cadenwell AP. How it runs now:
Two integrations are contractually required in this area: the property management system and the payments processor. Both must be live for the capability to function.
Merrowfield builds and maintains custom work against its core platform, and has the internal capability to do so. Plan for a client who will ask precise questions about your API surface and will likely want to extend it.
What Merrowfield requires
Ten requirements, derived from the engagement and stated forward
These are the requirements Merrowfield now holds for this capability. They are written as specifications for what comes next, not as an account of what came before. Every one of them is something you can build, staff, evidence or price.
Invoice approval routing must be configurable at property and regional grain by Merrowfield administrators, without a vendor professional-services engagement.
Role-based access control must distinguish site-level invoice entry from regional approval authority.
Per-property and per-portfolio spend reporting must be exportable on demand in a structured format, without a report-build request.
Bi-directional integration with the property management system must be documented and tested, evidenced before contracting rather than committed to during implementation.
Maintenance invoices must match to work orders without manual re-entry.
Integration and implementation cost must be quantified line by line in the proposal, not scoped after signature.
Pricing must be presented on a per-unit basis, which is how Merrowfield budgets this capability.
A named account contact and a defined escalation path are required, and the escalation path must be documented in the proposal.
Invoice-to-payment cycle time must be measurable from go-live, with the baseline established during implementation.
The change must not disturb the bundled services named in section 03.
What the change touches, upstream and downstream
Three findings about Merrowfield's stack that bear directly on your implementation plan:
This brief covers one capability. Adjacent systems appear only where this change touches them directly.
Merrowfield's wider technology roadmap, its plans in other capability areas, and its sequencing decisions outside this change are not included here. If your conversation moves in that direction, it moves with Merrowfield and not with us.
Phase one covers 58 of the 71 properties. The affordable segment, 13 properties, is not yet confirmed as in or out of phase one - see 4.6.
Sequence, timing windows, and what has already been decided
Merrowfield has selected you for this capability, replacing an existing system. That decision is made. This is not an evaluation and you are not in a competitive set.
StackSmart did not make this choice. Merrowfield did.
The change window falls in the first half of 2027. Implementation work cannot begin before the second quarter of Merrowfield's fiscal year, and cutover must sit outside a period-close window.
This window is set by Merrowfield's operating calendar and its dependency order. It is not a contract date.
This change is sequenced early among Merrowfield's planned work for the period. Expect momentum rather than a long internal queue.
Appetite for this change is active. Merrowfield describes itself as strong on process readiness and constrained on internal technical capacity during the window - so implementation effort you can absorb rather than delegate to them will land well.
Firm with open items
The requirements are confirmed. Three specific items remain to close. Come prepared to answer them.
To move this change forward you will need two things in the same pass: the technology function's integration and security review, and the finance approver's sign-off. Neither is a formality, and on fee-managed assets owner approval sits behind the finance approver.
Two of the open items above are ones you can help close on the first call - the utility-invoice routing question, and whether the affordable segment sits in phase one. Coming with a recommendation on each will shorten the sequence.