International Student House of Washington, DC gives international students, scholars, interns, and young professionals more than a room. It gives them a place to live, meet people, and become part of a community.
Behind that experience is a housing operation with residents arriving from many countries, staying for different lengths of time, paying on different schedules, and needing support throughout their stay.
As the community grew, too much staff time was being spent keeping housing assignments, billing, payments, resident information, and communication in order.
The challenge: every resident stay was creating more admin work
ISH can house around 100 residents at a time, with people coming from more than 70 countries. Many residents stay for six months to a year.
That means the team is not simply checking guests in for a few nights. It is managing a longer resident journey.
- Housing applications and bookings
- Room assignments
- Different lengths of stay
- Waitlists
- Monthly billing
- Payment schedules
- Resident communication
- Housing reports
The older process made staff spend hours maintaining these pieces manually. Admissions needed to manage housing and demand. Accounting needed to keep invoices, balances, and payments straight. Resident advisors needed clear information when helping people during their stay.
The solution: keep the resident journey connected
Booking Ninjas gave ISH a way to start with housing bookings and keep the next parts of the resident journey connected around them.
The housing journey begins with the resident and the stay they need.
Bookings and availability help admissions manage who can be placed and when.
Useful resident information can stay connected throughout the stay.
Monthly charges, invoices, balances, and payment activity can follow the resident.
Portal access, communication, and reporting help staff support the resident after move-in.
This is where Booking Ninjas works well: the booking is only the beginning, and several teams still need to work from the same resident journey afterward.
How the ISH setup solved the daily problems
| ISH need | Booking Ninjas setup | What became easier |
|---|---|---|
| Different stay lengths | Reservation Management | Admissions can manage housing stays around the dates each resident actually needs. |
| Demand when housing fills | Waitlist Management | Waitlisted applicants can be kept in a clearer flow instead of being followed separately by hand. |
| Monthly resident billing | Invoice + Recurring Billing | Monthly charges, scheduled payments, and resident balances can stay connected to the same account. |
| Resident payment access | Student Portal | Residents have a place to view useful account and payment information without asking staff for every update. |
| Different staff roles | Salesforce users and access | Admissions, resident advisors, facilities, and accounting can work with the information that matters to their jobs. |
| Manual reporting | Reports + dashboards | Housing and payment records already in the system can be used for reporting instead of being collected again by hand. |
Billing needed to follow the resident, not live in a separate process
Longer stays make billing especially important.
ISH needed monthly pricing, scheduled payments, invoices, and the ability to carry an account balance forward into the resident's current statement.
Booking Ninjas helped accounting configure those rules around the way ISH already bills its residents.
That means the housing booking and the money connected to it do not need to become two separate stories.
The Knowledge Center explains the basic relationship in How Bookings Connect to Invoices .
Residents can handle more of the simple things themselves
A resident should not need to contact staff every time they want to understand something simple about their account.
The resident-facing portal gives ISH a place to share approved information and support payment activity while keeping the administrative side separate.
This helps reduce routine questions for staff without removing the personal support residents still need.
The Knowledge Center explains this idea in What Can Customers Do Through a Portal? .
For ISH, that matters because staff time is better spent welcoming residents, helping them settle in, supporting community life, and handling situations that actually need a person.
The setup follows the way ISH works
International Student House is not a normal hotel and it is not a standard apartment building.
Its residents stay for longer periods, arrive from around the world, follow different billing schedules, and interact with several staff teams during their time at the House.
That is why the setup was shaped around ISH's own housing rules rather than asking ISH to change the community to fit a generic property system.
Admissions could work with bookings and waitlists. Accounting could work with billing and payments. Resident advisors could use resident and communication tools.
Salesforce provides the technology underneath, but the actual rules, users, records, and workflows belong to ISH.
ISH moved into the new flow step by step
The switch did not happen by asking every department to change everything overnight.
Booking Ninjas worked alongside the existing process during a two-month onboarding period. Resident data was brought into new resident profiles, and staff were trained around the work they actually handled.
Admissions learned booking and waitlist management. Resident advisors worked with the portal and communication tools. Accounting set up billing rules, payments, and invoices.
Within the first month, ISH was already conducting bookings and payments through the new system.
That phased approach helped the new process become part of the team's normal rhythm instead of becoming another project staff had to manage on top of their daily work.
What became easier for International Student House
Bookings, residents, waitlists, and other housing records no longer need the same amount of separate upkeep.
Monthly charges, invoices, balances, and payments can follow the resident in one connected flow.
The portal gives residents a place to handle simple account and payment needs without always asking staff.
Resident information and communication tools can stay closer to the records staff already use.
The same housing and payment data used every day can also support reports without being rebuilt manually.
Staff can put more attention into residents, events, support, and intercultural exchange instead of routine admin work.
One housing system can keep growing around the resident journey
For ISH, Booking and Reservation Management provide the starting point.
From there, the same setup can connect waitlists, resident profiles, billing, payments, portals, communication, reporting, and other workflows when they are needed.
That is useful for student housing because the hard part is rarely one reservation. The harder part is everything that has to stay connected during the months after the resident moves in.
For the wider use case, see the Student Housing solution .
Learn more about the connected resident flow
See how a housing booking can stay connected to the invoices and payments that follow it.
How Bookings Connect to Invoices →See what residents or customers can handle through a portal and what still stays with staff.
What Can Customers Do Through a Portal? →See why keeping teams around the same trusted data makes everyday work easier.
What Does One Source of Truth Mean? →Spend less time holding housing operations together.
See how Booking Ninjas can connect reservations, residents, billing, payments, portals, and the daily work around a long-term housing community.
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