How to Automate StarRez

Every bed in the hall is a contract with a person attached

StarRez is residential community management software, and the buildings it runs are university halls, purpose built student accommodation, boarding schools, co-living blocks and build-to-rent communities.

The subject is a bed. Not a room, a bed, because a room with four of them is four contracts, four sets of dates and four people who have to get along. StarRez holds who is in each one, what they signed, what they owe, when they arrive and when they leave, what they asked for by way of accommodations, and who complained about them at two in the morning.

That makes it two systems at once. It is a property business, with occupancy, revenue and a rent roll that has to be right. It is also a pastoral operation, because the residents are eighteen, a long way from home, and the front desk is the first place anything goes wrong. A housing office that loses track of either half is in trouble by week three.

August is one long list of students who have not replied

Housing has a calendar with two spikes and no quiet season in between.

The weeks before move-in are spent chasing. Contracts sent and never signed. Deposits that have not landed. Immunisation or tenancy paperwork the institution wants before a key is handed over. Students who applied for a room type that no longer exists and have not answered the email offering an alternative. Every one of those is a name on a list somebody rebuilds each morning.

Then term starts and the chasing changes shape. A resident reports a broken radiator and it goes into whatever estates uses, which is not StarRez, so knowing whether it was fixed means opening a second system. Balances go overdue in the bursar's ledger, not this one. A conduct case is opened and the follow-up meeting is nobody's diary entry. Parcels arrive by the trolley load. The duty roster covers Friday but not the Friday after that.

The information all exists. It is spread across the systems of four other departments.

StarRez

The occupancy picture before the meeting Beds unallocated, offers outstanding and cancellations since Monday counted overnight and set against the same week last year.

Maintenance followed into estates Resident requests tracked in the system that actually does the work, reported back by building instead of chased down by phone.

Residents who are no longer students Enrolment checked for everyone holding a contract, so a withdrawal becomes a re-let and a welfare call rather than a surprise in March.

Automatic billing posts a charge the moment a room changes

StarRez automates a great deal of this already, and a housing office doing any of it by hand should stop.

Automatic billing is the strongest case. Charges post on flexible due dates, and an adjustment is raised on its own when a student changes room, arrives late, leaves early or cancels, with prorate tools handling the part-term arithmetic. Residents pick a payment plan and settle a balance inside StarRez PortalX, the same portal they use to apply, sign, select a room and book an appointment, which takes a queue away from the front desk. Inventory and inspections cover the condition of a room and what is in it, which is what makes a damage charge defensible at move-out.

Every one of those acts on something StarRez was told. A student signed. A room changed. An inspection was recorded.

The rest of a housing operation reports to other departments. Estates hold the maintenance job. The bursar holds the balance. The student record system holds enrolment, and a resident who withdrew from their course is still a tenant until somebody notices. Those systems have their own logins, their own screens and their own answer to a question housing asks every single day.

An occupancy figure that assembles itself before the meeting

Nobody has to assemble the morning briefing by hand, department by department, before the meeting starts.

Occupancy set against the same week last year, with beds unallocated, offers outstanding and cancellations since Monday counted, ready before the meeting rather than during it. Maintenance requests raised by residents followed into the estates system and reported back by building, so the hall with nine open jobs and the one with none are visible without a phone call.

Enrolment checked for every resident holding a contract, because a withdrawn student in a bed is both a lost let and a welfare question. Overdue balances read where the finance system holds them and matched back to the resident, so a reminder concerns the right person and the right amount. Waitlist offers tracked against the deadline each student was given, so a bed that has gone unanswered for three days is re-offered instead of left.

Conduct cases surfaced when a follow-up date passes with nothing recorded against it. Duty rosters checked against next weekend rather than this one.

Housing staff belong with residents, not with logins

The person who assembles that briefing is usually the one who should have been in the building talking to residents instead.

WebRun is an AI agent that works a real Chrome browser, signed in as you. It opens StarRez, the estates system, the finance ledger or the student record, reads what is on each screen, and returns one list with the exceptions named: unsigned contracts, unpaid balances, open maintenance, beds still empty.

It runs on your schedule in your own private environment, and you can watch a run and stop it mid-way. Nothing it writes reaches a student without a person approving it first.

The workflows below are already built, and each one names what it opens.