URBI is one platform for running commercial properties. Service tickets, vendor coordination, conference room booking, visitor management, tenant communication, events, and payments live in a single system, with AI for the operator and for the tenant built in from the start. This guide explains how it works for commercial teams.
Why are commercial building operations so fragmented?
Most office properties run on a patchwork. One tool for work orders. One for lease documents. One for CAM. A separate visitor management system at the desk. Then email and spreadsheets holding it all together. Every tool has its own login and its own blind spots, so when the asset owner asks a simple question, the answer lives in five places.
URBI takes the opposite approach. It is one platform for the building manager, the asset owner, the on site team, the tenant primary contacts, and the employees inside each suite. The building runs on URBI rather than reporting to it, so the platform holds the operating truth instead of stitching together exports.
For the full platform story across every vertical, start with what URBI is. This article is the commercial version of that story, told in the words commercial teams use: properties, suites, employees, and tenants.
How does URBI handle service tickets and vendor coordination?
Service tickets move through a seven stage workflow from triage to archived, with four priority levels. An employee submits a ticket from the app with photos. The operator triages, assigns, and tracks it. Tickets support subtasks, labels, comments, mentions, and a full activity log, and related tickets roll up into projects, so an elevator overhaul reads as one body of work instead of a pile of loose tickets.
Recurring maintenance is built in. Schedules fire daily, weekly, monthly, yearly, or on a custom cadence, and a completion based trigger means quarterly chiller service does not pile up if the last visit ran late. The annual fire alarm test never falls off.
Vendor coordination is where URBI feels different. Vendors never get a login. They receive a tokenized work order link by email, schedule the visit, toggle subtasks, upload completion photos, and submit. No account, no license fee for the HVAC tech. Each property keeps a vendor master file with contacts and documents, and the dashboard surfaces certificates of insurance nearing expiry. For larger capital spends, the operator publishes an RFP and owner committee members vote per vendor response, with the outcome recorded permanently.
When a vendor needs access to a suite, an access request goes to the tenant primary contact, who can accept, reject, or propose a new time. The ticket waits for the answer.
How does booking work for conference rooms and shared spaces?
Amenities in URBI are bookable shared spaces: conference rooms, board rooms, training rooms, tenant lounges, the rooftop terrace, the fitness center, hot desks. Each amenity carries its own opening hours, capacity, booking notice period, and feature tags such as projector, video conferencing, or whiteboard. Employees browse availability in the app and book in a few taps, with payment handled in the same flow when a space carries a fee.
Restrictions work per occupant type, so a conference room can be free for tenant primary contacts while carrying a surcharge for other bookers, automatically. Closing a space for maintenance auto detects conflicting bookings, and the building manager resolves or refunds them in one flow. For how paid bookings shape the tenant experience, see our guide to amenity booking and deposits.
How does visitor management work for guests, contractors, and deliveries?
An employee creates a guest pass in the app and the guest gets a QR code. Reception scans the code at the desk, and the employee gets an arrival push instantly. Passes track status from expected through checked in, no show, or cancelled.
Visitor types cover the real traffic of an office building: guests, contractors, deliveries, and service visits. A visitor record can link to a service ticket, so when the HVAC contractor arrives to fix the rooftop unit, the visit ties to the work. It can also link to an amenity, like the caterer setting up a board meeting in the conference room. Scheduled guests let an employee pre register a recurring visitor days or weeks in advance, with an optional guest parking pass attached.
Every entry attempt resolves to a clear status, granted or denied with the reason, and lands in a permanent check in log. When the asset owner asks why a contractor was denied entry on a Tuesday evening, the log answers it.
Can URBI run tenant engagement events?
Yes, and this matters more than most operators expect. Tenants do not renew because of the building. They renew because of the experience. URBI ships a full event stack: tenant appreciation events, lunch and learns, wellness pop ups, holiday parties, and town halls, each with ticketing, RSVPs, automatic waitlists, vendor slot requests, staff assignments, and post event surveys with AI generated summary reports.
Capacity capped sessions handle themselves. When a spot opens, the waitlist promotes the next attendee automatically. We cover the playbook in tenant experience events for commercial buildings and the tooling in our guide to building events software.
What is URBI Display?
URBI Display is a branded kiosk fleet for the property. Lobby and elevator screens show news, upcoming events, local headlines, weather, and building updates, all curated from the platform the operator already works in. Emergency takeover overrides every screen in the property in seconds for a fire alarm, an evacuation, or a water shut off. It replaces the printed notice taped by the elevator, and it updates itself. Read more in our piece on real time building communication with URBI Display.
What do HERO and Arthur actually do?
URBI has two AI agents with separate jobs.
HERO is the operator's AI, working inside URBI Kore. The building manager asks a question in plain language, like which suites are behind on CAM this quarter, and HERO answers from live records. It files service tickets, drafts news posts, schedules reminders, summarizes long lease abstracts, and drafts owner reports. Every tool call is logged with a full audit trail, and token usage is visible so the operator sees what the AI costs.
Arthur is the tenant facing AI. Each property gets its own phone number, and Arthur answers employees and tenant contacts over voice, SMS, email, and in app chat in ten languages. The difference that matters is that Arthur holds real tools, so it acts rather than deflects. It creates service tickets, books conference rooms and other amenities, registers parking, pre schedules visitors, RSVPs employees to tenant events, sends forms, pulls receipts, sends payment links, and requests refunds with property manager approval. Anything sensitive requires PIN verification first. Reads run instantly and actions wait for human confirmation, so an employee who calls at seven in the morning about a cold suite gets a ticket logged at the right priority and the building manager notified. Every call is transcribed, summarized, and sentiment scored.
What Arthur does when it does not know the answer is the part worth testing. It escalates to the property manager or building operations with a summary of the question instead of guessing. Arthur then adapts the answer it gets back into its own voice, relays it to the employee who asked, and saves it to the property scoped knowledge base with semantic matching, so the next person who asks the same thing is answered without anyone being interrupted. Management views, edits, and deletes those entries, so tenants in every suite get consistent answers that the property controls. We go deeper in who controls what the AI tells residents.
One agent serves the operator, the other serves the tenant, and both run on the same live building data. That is what most legacy stacks cannot bolt on afterward.
How do payments and accounting work?
Each property is its own Stripe connected account. Base rent, CAM, amenity bookings, event tickets, and marketplace orders all land in the property's own Stripe balance. URBI never holds the money. Employees pay in the app with Apple Pay or Google Pay, autopay is supported, and payment reminders are built in. A public portal lets a one time payer, such as a short term sublet, pay from a single emailed link with no app download and no account.
Accounting is in beta. It adds a full general ledger, accounts receivable, accounts payable, AI reconciliation, AI receipt management with approvals, budgets, and direct Plaid bank linking. Base rent and CAM collected through the app flow into AR, and vendor invoices paid through service tickets flow into AP. Because it is in beta, treat it as an emerging module and ask us where it stands when you talk to us.
Does URBI support multi property portfolios?
Yes. One building manager can run many properties from a single login. Each property keeps its own branding, time zone, and permission map, while the owner sees a portfolio roll up across all of them. A single tower and a whole fund both fit. Permissions follow roles by default, with per person overrides for edge cases, like temporarily granting a leasing agent suite availability access without making them an admin. Our commercial operators guide to building software walks through how portfolio teams evaluate this.
Is URBI proven in commercial buildings today?
Here is the honest answer. URBI runs thousands of doors today, with growth entirely organic, and all of those live doors are residential. Commercial is a first class vertical in active sales, not a live customer base we can point to yet. In practice, the platform you would deploy is the same one operating real buildings every day, rendered in commercial language by a built in terminology engine. Properties instead of buildings, suites instead of units, employees and tenants instead of residents. The vocabulary changes, the product does not.
Early commercial adopters get direct access to the founding team and real influence over how the vertical develops. That is a feature, not a caveat.
Frequently asked questions
Do vendors and contractors need a URBI account?
No. Vendors receive a tokenized work order link by email. From that link they schedule the visit, check off subtasks, upload completion photos, and submit the finished job. There is no login to create and no software seat to pay for, which removes the biggest adoption barrier for the trades your property depends on.
Does URBI have live commercial customers right now?
Not yet. All live doors today are residential, and commercial is a first class vertical in active sales. The commercial product is the same shipped platform rendered in commercial terminology, so nothing you would rely on is unproven code. We would rather tell you that plainly than invent a case study.
Can URBI import our existing suite and tenant data?
Yes, by CSV import, with AI assisted cleanup that fixes messy export files during onboarding. URBI does not offer live two way sync with legacy property management systems today, so plan the transition as an import rather than a parallel integration. Documents you upload are parsed and indexed so search works across content, not just titles.
What is the difference between HERO and Arthur?
HERO is the manager facing AI inside URBI Kore. It answers operational questions from live data, files tickets, and drafts owner reports. Arthur is the tenant facing AI. It answers employees over voice, SMS, email, and in app chat in ten languages, and it acts: tickets, conference room bookings, parking, visitor pre scheduling, and payment links, all PIN verified. When Arthur does not know, it escalates to the property manager instead of guessing.
If you operate commercial properties and want to see the platform rendered in your language, with your suites, vendors, and tenants, write to hello@myurbi.co and we will walk you through it live.
