Introduction

Welcome to Daylight! As a revenue leader, your role is to align property-level data with portfolio strategy. While our automated system calculates optimal rates, your oversight ensures that budget goals are met and regional market shifts are accounted for. 

This guide serves as your Standard Operating Procedure (SOP), outlining the collaborative workflows and strategic rhythms required for Revenue Managers, Regional Managers, and Asset Managers to maximize asset value.

By the end of this guide, you will be equipped to transform data-driven insights into actionable results, ensuring every property remains competitive while protecting the long-term value of your portfolio.

What We Will Cover

To help you master Daylight, this guide provides a deep dive into the following core areas:

• Roles and Permissions: Understanding the "Submitter" and "Reviewer" hierarchy to maintain data integrity.
• Establishing Property Settings: How to configure the "guardrails"—such as Target Occupancy, Price Change Limits, and Amenity Premiums—that dictate algorithmic behavior.
• New Lease Workflow: Navigating the three-step approval process from property-level recommendations to final PMS synchronization.
• Strategic Cadences: Best practices for Weekly/Bi-Weekly Pricing Calls, including analyzing occupancy pacing, leasing velocity, and the competitive landscape.
• Reporting: Establishing daily, weekly, and monthly rhythms to monitor trade-out performance and marketing effectiveness.

User Roles and Permissions

Once your property data is fully built out and has passed our quality assurance (Q/A) process, our team will add your users and assign the appropriate permissions. To maintain a clear chain of command and ensure data integrity, Daylight utilizes two primary user roles based on your organizational structure:

• Approver (Revenue Manager): You hold the authority to approve or override submitted pricing.
• Submitter (Property/Regional Manager): Typically onsite operations teams who provide essential local context and initial data for pricing considerations.
• ApartmentIQ Pricing Advisor (Optional/Dependent on Strategy): In some instances, a Daylight pricing advisor may act as a Reviewer to support your strategy.

Establishing Property Settings

The true power of Daylight lies in its bespoke alignment with your specific asset strategy. To ensure a seamless launch, our data science team will architect your initial algorithmic framework, which we will then refine together as a group to guarantee every mathematical "guardrail" is calibrated to your vision.

By establishing your strategy into the backend, the system ensures every pricing output is a direct reflection of your property’s unique objectives-whether the model is optimized for aggressive yield expansion or defensive occupancy preservation. Establishing this high-fidelity foundation from day one replaces manual intervention with automated precision, allowing our models to scale your strategy with clinical accuracy.
 

Establish and Review Settings in Daylight

To ensure your backend configurations are technically sound and strategically aligned, please reference our Revenue & Operations Glossary (Coming Soon). Use it to establish these core settings in the order of your property tabs:

• Property Setup: Review your PMS unit types to Revenue Groups (bed groups) and define strategic occupancy targets. 
• New Lease Pricing: Review your Target Occupancy Mode, set Price Change Limits, and enable features like Staleness Discounts (optional) to automatically move aging inventory.
• Comps: Review your competitive set and monitor the real-time rents and websites of your local peers.
• Amenities: Fine-tune unit-level premiums by adjusting Floorplan Premiums and specific features (e.g., floor level, ADA) to ensure your base rent reflects true unit value.
• Expirations: Review monthly Expiration Thresholds per bed group and configure Renewal Conversion Rates to help the system predict future exposure.
• Rent Control (If Applicable): Apply jurisdictional caps, such as Max Increase % or Lease Length Parity, which will override standard settings to ensure local compliance.

Our team is here to help you establish these settings to ensure your automated revenue strategy is built on a solid foundation.

New Lease Workflow: A Three-Step Process

Pricing is a collaborative process designed to ensure rates are accurate before they sync with your Property Management System (PMS).

Rate Reviews: Property Manager Responsibilities (Submitter)

Property Managers will select the system generated recommended rent, hold yesterday's rent, or override the rent price. The submitter can include notes about why they have selected the rent price. Please note the rent shown here is a fully amenitized rent including unit amenities, floor plan premiums, and discounts.

Property Managers will:

• Log in and review available units against recent leasing and demand.
• Select the system-generated rent, hold yesterday’s rent, or override the price. They will conduct their rate review following the steps outlined in the Conducting a Rate Review in Daylight article.
• Leave notes regarding unit condition, prospect interest, or competitor move-in specials.

Rate Reviews: Regional Manager Review (Optional)

This step varies by company and may be skipped.

Regional Managers will:

• Provide suggested pricing adjustments if they want to modify the Property Managers recommendations.
• Offer regional context (sister property performance, comps, concessions).
• Flag unusual patterns for the Revenue Manager.

Important: Regional managers are not required to approve rates unless your organization requires it. They can serve as secondary pricing submitters, suggesting new rates to the revenue manager, or stand in for a Property Manager when needed. 

Rate Reviews: Revenue Manager Responsibilities (Approver)

Once submitted, you as the reviewer will review pricing for your portfolio. 

Revenue Managers will:

• Review Submitter's Recommendations found in the Pending Approval Tab.
• Analyze:
  • Occupancy pacing
  • Unit-level performance
  • Market movements and competitive shifts
• Make necessary adjustments in line with the portfolio strategy.
• Approve final daily pricing within the revenue management system.

From here, you can approve or update submitted rates and move into the Approved stage of the process. This phase will sync your pricing with your Property Management System (PMS) for the leasing team and marketing channels.

Strategic Cadences: The Pricing Sync

Weekly/Bi-Weekly Pricing Call Cadences 

Formal pricing calls synchronize the team's strategy, ensuring that data insights are translated into actionable results while addressing potential risks in real-time.

Here is our recommended structure for your pricing cadences:

Recommended Participants

• Revenue Manager: Facilitates the meeting and validates the pricing strategy.
• Property/Community Manager: Provides vital context on traffic, operations, and unit-specific details.
• Asst. Community Mgr/Sr. Leasing: Reports on leasing activity and common customer objections.
• Regional/Asset Manager (Optional): Provides portfolio and budget alignment.

What to Review

1. Occupancy & Pacing vs. Target: Review current occupancy, 84-day (12-week) forward projections, and bed group demand trends.
2. Leasing Velocity & Traffic: Analyze applications, leases, and long-standing vacancies. 
3. Competitive Landscape: Monitor comp set rents, concessions, and any new supply impacting your demand.
4. Pricing Recommendations: Review model recommendations for each bed group and edit unit level overrides.

We recommend that each call concludes with approved bed group pricing, updated concessions, and adjusted tool settings to match the current strategy.
 

Reporting

Establishing a consistent reporting rhythm is essential to maximize the impact of your revenue strategy.

The following cadences are designed to help you stay ahead of the curve:

Reporting Use Cases

Daily / Per Price Action: Monitor real-time velocity and adjust for immediate market shifts.

• Available Units & Exposure: Track your current, upcoming, and historical inventory.
• Recent Leasing: Review the latest activity to gauge demand.
• Price Change History: Analyze how previous adjustments impacted your volume.
• Competitive Market Position Monitoring: Keep an eye on how your NER compares to your local comps.

Weekly / Monthly: Evaluate tactical performance and progress toward budget goals.

• Trade Out Performance: Review the spread on both new leases and renewals.
• Occupancy Pacing vs. Goals: Ensure your current trajectory meets ownership expectations.
• Traffic and Marketing Effectiveness: Assess if lead volume justifies current pricing in conjunction with your PMS data. 
• Expiration Summary Review: Audit your lease expiration funnel to prevent future vacancy clusters.

Monthly / Quarterly: Analyze high-level trends and refine property configurations.

• Executed Lease Analysis: Review finalized deals to identify seasonal trends or shift in demographics.
• Amenity Analysis: Audit the value of specific unit features to fine-tune your pricing premiums.

Conclusion

Successful revenue management is a partnership between data-driven automation and leadership expertise. By maintaining a disciplined daily approval workflow and a strategic weekly cadence, you ensure that every property remains competitive while protecting the long-term value of the asset. Stay proactive in reviewing submitter notes and expiration curves to keep your portfolio ahead of market shifts.