GQ Residences

Building Finance Capacity to Match a Growing Build-to-Rent Portfolio

Overview

GQ Residences is a build-to-rent (BTR) asset manager, operating in the Australian real estate sector. GQ’s portfolio includes Beach House and Madison Grand in Melbourne. With hundreds of tenants across multiple assets, GQ operates in a fast-paced, service-driven environment where financial accuracy, responsiveness and clear communication are central to tenant trust and brand reputation.

The Opportunity

As GQ’s BTR assets came online, the volume and complexity of receipting, accounts payable, bank reconciliation and management reporting across a mix of assets grew. Finance workload was particularly concentrated during tenant receipting peaks at the start of each week and each month.

GQ’s leadership saw an opportunity to build structure and cadence that would keep pace with scale, freeing senior finance time for oversight rather than day-to-day troubleshooting. This led GQ to build a finance workflow spread across onshore and offshore team members, with Yardi — the integrated property management and finance platform used to manage each BTR asset — at its centre. As the portfolio scaled, broadening Yardi capability across the business became critical to that ambition.

The Objective

Build clear ownership across core finance processes as the team and portfolio grow
Introduce structure and cadence to finance workflows to match portfolio scale
Strengthen communication between property managers and finance
Build a finance operating model capable of scaling with future portfolio growth

The goal was to build a repeatable finance rhythm suited to a growing BTR portfolio, and to ensure critical finance and systems knowledge was spread across the team.

The Approach

Through its partnership with S&B, GQ had the support of a dedicated team member based in Sri Lanka, working as an extension of its Melbourne-based finance team. Together, the onshore and offshore teams developed a working cadence to tackle critical tenant receipting windows, address tenant queries and, ultimately, partner with property managers to improve tenant experiences.

The model grew to include hybrid coverage, combining S&B team members based in Australia and in Sri Lanka to align delivery with Australian business hours during peak periods.

Widening Yardi capability across the team

GQ ran a two-day Yardi training programme, delivered with Yardi, that brought its finance, property management and leasing teams up to speed on the system. This deepened capability beyond a small group, strengthened the integration of technology across finance and property management, and reduced reliance on any single person for day-to-day Yardi queries.

Supporting continuity and stability

When a local team member who had built up deep Yardi knowledge moved on, the partnership with S&B proved valuable: GQ’s offshore team member drew on her knowledge of the business and of Yardi to maintain consistent finance delivery while the onshore team was being resourced.

A seamless handover on the S&B side

A transition also occurred on the S&B side: the offshore team member working with GQ moved off the account, and a new S&B team member took over. The changeover was managed seamlessly through detailed SOPs and structured handover, including on-the-job training led by the outgoing team member. S&B took complete ownership of the end-to-end cycle — sourcing, onboarding, training and changeover of GQ’s dedicated resource — with no disruption to GQ’s finance deliverables or tenant experience.

Closing

The clearest signal of how the relationship is perceived comes from GQ’s senior finance manager, Keshini Miller who contrasted the partnership with S&B Private and his experience with other offshore contractors. His summary of the S&B relationship was unequivocal: