User Testing participants will receive an email inviting them to sign up for an account as part of the onboarding process. Once you receive your email, click the link to sign up, enter your information, sign in, and get started.

You can find more information on creating a new project here.

When you sign in to Parafin, you’ll land on your My Projects dashboard, which will show all of your projects and allow you to create a new project.

You can click on the triple dot menu on each project to move the project to your archive. Archived projects can be accessed through the “View Archived Projects” link in the top left.

You can use the triple dot menu in the top right to change your account information. The information available to change is your first and last names, your email address, and your company name.

You can use the triple dot menu in the top right to change your password.

New passwords must:
– Be 8 characters or longer
– Have at least one uppercase letter
– Have at least one lowercase letter
– Have at least one number or symbol

Once the first run is complete, the generated designs and outputs will be available immediately, whether you load the project from the Dashboard or make further adjustments to the assumptions.

Revenue assumptions include stabilized year guestroom, meeting room, and food and beverage revenues. Each design has room types based on the available dimensions, allowing you to input relevant ADR and occupancy metrics for each room type.

Budget costs include the land acquisition, hard costs, soft costs, FF&E, developer overhead, and project contingency. Please note that these are currently the five budget areas, so if you would like to include any additional expenses, input them in the soft costs. Developer overhead and contingency percentages are based on the total budget.

The investment assumptions include the NOI margin, disposition, and financing. To simplify and expedite inputs needed to analyze results, only NOI margin is input rather than a full expense buildup. The sale date is assumed to be a hypothetical first stabilized year. The construction loan interest will be included as part of the project budget for the term.

You will have the opportunity to set relevant boundaries through filters based on building parameters and sort the outputs based on key financial metrics. Filters include FAR, height, keys, room mix, and program elements.

You can sort by clicking on the relevant metric at the top of the sorting panel. The metrics on which you can sort are number of keys, budget per key, equity multiple, and yield.

Clicking the star on a given design will show that design at the top of the list regardless of the sort. It is also possible to hide a design from the list using the X button on each design.

The Program section includes the guestroom mix, building program, and areas, which set the foundation for comparing the different designs.

The budget section includes the development budget based on the user inputs and the selected design as well as the guestroom revenues by room type.

Finally, the investment section shows the first stabilized year revenues, NOI, and return metrics, including yield, profit, and equity multiple.

The building viewer allows you to rotate, mirror and move your selected design anywhere on the site. If you go outside the defined property constraints, the parcel will turn red as a warning.

The site plan viewer allows you to examine your selected building design from a top down view. Active dimensioning will assist as you move and rotate the building around the site.

You can view the floor plans for the selected design by clicking the corresponding floor number in the viewer. Clicking the “expand” icon will expand the plans within the window so that you can see more of the details.

The phone number, email, and LinkedIn for the brand development representative for your selected brand can be found on the lower right side of the screen.