Most retirement communities run on a stack of point solutions: an activity tool, a visitor kiosk, a CMMS for maintenance, and a phone chain for families. URBI replaces that stack with one building operations platform covering maintenance, events, dining and amenity bookings, visitors, screens, communication, and payments.
One thing to say plainly up front. URBI runs the building and community side. It is not care software. Clinical systems, care plans, and health records stay in the systems built for them. Everything else in the community can live in one place, and this article walks through how.
Why do retirement communities end up with five different tools?
Because each department bought its own software, and nobody bought for the community as a whole. The life enrichment director picked an engagement tool for the calendar. The front desk got a visitor kiosk. Maintenance runs a CMMS, or a clipboard. Dining takes reservations on paper. And when a family member wants an update, someone works through a phone chain.
Each tool is fine on its own. The cost shows up in between them. Team members copy the same event into three places. A resident's maintenance request lives in a system the front desk cannot see. Executive Directors pay five invoices, train the team on five logins, and still cannot answer "what happened in the community this week" without asking four people.
URBI's answer is one platform that runs the whole community: the same system holds the work orders, the calendar, the bookings, the visitor log, the screens in the lobby, and every message sent to residents and family members. Honesty first: URBI's live communities today are residential buildings, thousands of doors, grown entirely organically. There is no list of senior living customers to show you yet. But a retirement community is, at its core, a residential building with more programming, more visitors, and more family communication, and the shipped platform maps onto that directly.
How does URBI handle maintenance in a senior living community?
Every request becomes a tracked service ticket with photos, a priority, and a clear status from received to complete. A resident reports a leaking faucet through the app, by phone, or through the front desk, and the maintenance team sees it immediately with the unit, the photos, and the history of that suite.
Vendors are the part most tools get wrong. URBI assigns vendors by category and gives each one a tokenized work order link, so the plumber sees the job, the photos, and the schedule without needing an account or a login. For the full picture, including recurring work and how tickets move through stages, see maintenance and work order software for senior living.
What does the activity calendar look like when it lives on the same platform?
Activities become real events with RSVP, ticketing, waitlists, and attendance you can actually count. The life enrichment director publishes the week's programming once. Residents see it in the app, family members see what their parent's community is offering, and the same calendar feeds the screens in the lobby. No retyping, no three versions of the truth.
After each event, URBI generates an AI survey report, so the life enrichment team learns what residents actually thought of the concert or the outing instead of guessing from the headcount. We cover the attendance side in depth in how to increase activity attendance in senior living, and if you are weighing URBI against a dedicated engagement tool, the honest comparison is in URBI vs LifeLoop.
How do dining and amenity reservations work?
Dining rooms, private dining, guest suites, salons, and fitness spaces all book through the same reservation system, with the rules each space needs. Capacity limits, opening hours, notice windows, and deposits where they make sense. The system detects conflicts automatically, so a room closed for repair does not quietly collect bookings nobody can honor.
Where a booking involves payment, a guest suite for a visiting family, for example, the payment completes in the same flow, with Apple Pay and Google Pay supported. Funds settle into the community's own Stripe connected account. The front desk stops handling sign up sheets and stops chasing deposits.
How do families reach the community without a phone chain?
Family members get channels that are answered and logged, instead of a voicemail box and a callback list. This is the piece Executive Directors feel most: adult children call, and every call interrupts someone. With URBI, community notices are delivery tracked, so the team can see exactly who has seen a water shutoff notice or a schedule change, resident by resident.
Arthur is URBI's resident and family facing AI, and it answers around the clock by phone, SMS, email, and chat, in ten languages. A daughter calls at 9pm to ask about visiting hours or whether the elevator repair is done, and Arthur answers from the community's own records. Arthur also acts. Once the caller is verified by PIN, Arthur opens service tickets, books amenities and dining room tables, pre schedules a visit, RSVPs a resident to an event, sends forms, and sends payment links. Reads come back instantly. Actions wait for a person to confirm.
Privacy is scoped to the household, which matters most when adult children call about a parent. Arthur answers about the caller's own household and nothing else, so one family member cannot pull up another resident's information, and every conversation is logged against the right resident's file. One caution worth stating: family communication obligations in senior living vary by jurisdiction and license type, so check your local requirements before changing any notification practice. The full playbook is in family communication for retirement communities.
Who decides what Arthur tells a family member?
The community's own team does. When Arthur does not know something, it escalates to the Executive Director or the team member who owns that question, with a summary, instead of guessing.
The answer then gets reused. Arthur puts the approved guidance into its own voice, relays it to the family member, and saves it to the community scoped knowledge base, matched semantically so a differently worded question still finds it. The team views, edits, and deletes those entries, so answers are curated rather than improvised, and every family member who asks afterward gets the same answer without interrupting the front desk. More on that in who controls what the AI tells residents.
What about residents who will never install an app?
They are fully covered, because Arthur answers the telephone. Plenty of independent living residents use smartphones happily. Plenty never will. A platform that only works if every resident installs an app is betting the community's communication on adoption it will not get.
URBI does not make that bet. A resident who prefers the phone calls the community's number and Arthur picks up, in the resident's own language if that language is one of the ten Arthur speaks. The resident reports a maintenance issue or asks what time the shuttle leaves, and Arthur opens the ticket once the resident confirms, so the request lands in the same system as everything else. Residents who like the app get the app. Residents who do not are not second class. We wrote more about this in resident app adoption for older adults.
How do visitors, screens, and urgent notices work?
Visitors check in with QR passes, and every arrival is logged. Family members, contractors, deliveries, and service visits each get their own visitor type, recurring visitors can be registered in advance, and check ins can carry waivers where the community requires them. The front desk scans a pass instead of maintaining a paper binder. Visitor rules in senior living vary by jurisdiction and license type, so treat the workflow as a tool for your policy, not a substitute for it. Details in visitor management for senior living.
URBI Display puts the same live information on screens in lobbies, dining rooms, and elevators: today's activities, dining hours, announcements, and weather. When something urgent happens, a fire alarm, a water shutoff, a boil water advisory, an emergency takeover overrides every screen in the community in seconds. For residents who will not check an app, the screen by the elevator is the most reliable channel. See digital signage for senior living for how communities use it.
What does the Executive Director get out of all this?
One system of record, and an AI that can answer questions about it. HERO is URBI's operator facing AI, the team side counterpart to Arthur. An Executive Director types "show me open maintenance tickets by priority" or "how many residents RSVPed to events this month" and HERO builds the answer from live records. Every action in the platform, every ticket, booking, check in, and payment, sits on a permanent audit trail.
For operators running more than one community, URBI supports multi property portfolios under a single login, with per property branding and permissions, so a regional director sees the roll up and each community keeps its own identity. And the commitment matches the product's confidence: URBI is month to month, cancel anytime, with no long term service agreement. If it does not earn its place, it leaves without a fight.
Frequently asked questions
Is URBI a care or EHR system for senior living?
No. URBI runs the building and community side: maintenance, activity events, dining and amenity reservations, visitor management, screens, resident and family communication, and payments. It does not handle care plans, medication, health records, or clinical documentation. Those stay in your clinical systems. URBI's job is everything in the community that is not care.
Do residents need a smartphone to use URBI?
No. The app is there for residents who want it, but Arthur answers the community's phone line, SMS, and email around the clock in ten languages. A resident can report a maintenance issue or ask about the day's schedule by calling, and the request enters the same system as an app submission. URBI Display screens carry the calendar and notices for everyone.
Does URBI have live retirement community customers today?
URBI's live communities today are residential buildings, thousands of doors, grown entirely organically. Retirement and independent living communities are a natural fit for the same shipped capabilities, and that is exactly how we present it: the platform is proven in residential operations, and senior living is the same operations with more programming, more visitors, and more family communication.
How is URBI priced and contracted?
URBI is month to month with no long term service agreement, and the community can cancel anytime. Onboarding and team training are included on paid plans. Payments collected through the platform, such as guest suite bookings or event tickets, settle into the community's own Stripe connected account. For current plan details, write to hello@myurbi.co.
If you run a retirement or independent living community and you are tired of paying for five tools that do not talk to each other, we would love to show you one platform that does. Write to hello@myurbi.co and we will walk your team through URBI on a live call.
