Case study, client anonymised
From 5-day onboarding to same-day: 500 beds, 8 properties, 28 days to live
500+ beds across 8 properties in London and Manchester, run on spreadsheets and a residential PMS that could not do per-bed billing. Rebuilt and live in 28 days.
At a glance
5x
Faster onboarding (5 days to same-day)
90%
Invoicing automated
85%
Tenant app adoption in month 1
20+
Hours saved per week for ops team
The client
United Kingdom. Named details withheld at the client’s request.
A UK coliving operator managing 500+ beds across 8 properties in London and Manchester. They offer flexible stays on rolling monthly contracts, all-inclusive pricing, and strong community programming.
Their portfolio was growing rapidly. Their operations were not scaling with it, and the model itself is the reason. Per-bed inventory, rolling monthly contracts and a single all-inclusive charge are three things a standard residential system treats as exceptions. This operator treats all three as the default.
Five business days to move one person in
The whole operation ran on a combination of spreadsheets and a generic residential PMS. That PMS could not handle per-bed billing, flexible stays or community features, which are the three things this business is actually made of.
So the work fell to people.
this vignette is a reconstruction written for the draft, not an account supplied by the operator. The framing and timing detail are invented, though the underlying figures are theirs. It is the first of the month. The finance team opens the invoicing file. There are 500+ beds across 8 properties, every one of them on an all-inclusive charge, with deposit rules that change by property and by room type. Every invoice is produced by hand. They will not finish today, and they will not finish tomorrow. They will finish on day three, which is what it has cost every month this year.
Tenant onboarding: 5 business days
Onboarding a single new tenant took 5 business days. Paper applications. Contracts generated manually. Deposits tracked over email. Each step waited on the one before it, and processing a single application meant multiple days of back-and-forth email.
Invoicing: 100% manual, 3 finance days a month
Invoicing was 100% manual and took the finance team 3 full days every month. The billing model is the complication. Rent, utilities, wifi, cleaning and services are bundled into one all-inclusive charge per bed, and the deposit rules vary by property and by room type rather than sitting at portfolio level.
Resident communication with no central log
Tenant communication was scattered across WhatsApp, email and phone calls, with no centralised log. a resident could ask the same question through three channels and get three different answers, and nobody would know it had happened.
No branded app, and community run on Instagram DMs
There was no branded app at all. Community events, which are part of what residents are paying for under an all-inclusive model, were organised through Instagram DMs.
A PMS built for a different business
The team evaluated 15 PMS platforms before choosing JumboTiger. None of them could handle per-bed billing, flexible stays and community features the way this operator needed to run them.
What JumboTiger built
JumboTiger deployed a custom PMS configuration in 28 days, covering Booking & Onboarding, Payments & Rent, Tenant Portal and Communications.
Configuration, not compromise. The platform was set up around their specific deposit rules, their all-inclusive billing structure and their rolling monthly contract templates, so the workflows follow how this operator already works rather than the other way around.
Configured to their rules before anything shipped
Custom software usually takes 6 to 12 months. This took 28 days, because the foundations were already built and the work was configuration rather than invention.
Deposit rules configured per property and per room type, rather than one rule applied across the portfolio
All-inclusive billing set up as the default charge model, not as a workaround on top of a rent field
Rolling monthly contract templates matching how they actually let rooms
Four modules live at launch: Booking & Onboarding, Payments & Rent, Tenant Portal, Communications
28 days from start to a working platform
Automated application pipeline that never sleeps
Before JumboTiger, processing a single application took multiple days of back-and-forth emails. Now it happens in hours.
Online application forms embedded on their website capture leads 24/7
Automated vetting scores applicants from 1-10 based on configurable criteria
Digital contracts generate automatically from approved templates
E-signatures collected on any device, with no printing or scanning
Security deposit invoices auto-created and tracked per booking
Move-in checklist ensures key handover, condition report, and welcome comms
All-inclusive billing that actually works
Their billing model bundles rent, utilities, wifi, cleaning, and services into one charge per bed, which is something their old PMS could not handle.
Per-bed pricing with all-inclusive charge configuration
Automated monthly invoicing across all 8 properties simultaneously
Stripe integration for one-tap resident payments
Automated late payment reminders reduce chasing by 80%
Deposit lifecycle management from collection to move-out deductions
Financial dashboards show revenue and outstanding payments in real time
A community app that 85% of residents adopted in month one
The branded mobile app transformed how residents interact with their properties.
Rent payments went from bank transfers to one-tap app payments
Maintenance tickets with photos replaced WhatsApp messages to staff
Facility bookings for coworking, laundry, and rooftop eliminated sign-up sheets
Community events with RSVP drove 3x more attendance
Push notifications ensured residents never miss important updates
Digital document access replaced email PDFs for leases and notices
The results
| Metric | Before | After |
|---|---|---|
Tenant onboarding | 5 business days | Same day |
Application processing | Multiple days of back-and-forth email | Hours |
Contract generation | Manual | Auto-generated from approved templates, e-signed on any device |
Deposit tracking | Invoices auto-created and tracked per booking | |
Invoicing | 100% manual, 3 finance days per month | 90% automated |
Late payment chasing | Manual | Automated reminders, chasing down 80% |
Financial visibility | compiled by hand from spreadsheets when someone asked for it | Real-time dashboards for revenue and outstanding payments |
Resident communication | WhatsApp, email and phone, no central log | Centralised in the Communications module |
Resident app | None | 85% adoption in month 1 |
Maintenance requests | WhatsApp messages to staff | Tickets with photos in the app |
Facility bookings (coworking, laundry, rooftop) | Paper sign-up sheets | Booked in the app |
Community events | Organised over Instagram DMs | In-app RSVP, 3x attendance |
Ops team hours saved per week | None | 20+ hours |
Time to a working platform | 6-12 months (typical custom build) | 28 days |
Onboarding went from 5 business days to same day, a 5x improvement. 90% of invoicing is automated. 85% of residents were using the app inside the first month. The ops team got 20+ hours a week back. the finance days that used to go on producing invoices now go on forecasting and portfolio reporting instead.
The takeaway
The blocker was never scale. 500 beds is not a hard number to run. The blocker was that per-bed billing, rolling monthly contracts and community programming are exceptions in a residential PMS and defaults in a coliving one, and 15 platform evaluations is how long it took to establish that there is no way to configure around that gap. the deposit rules were the specific detail that ruled most of those platforms out, because they vary by property and by room type rather than sitting at portfolio level.
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