Deal management software for real estate

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[Music] hi there I'm Austin K owner of Stitch real estate transaction coordination company and welcome back to my channel if you've been watching and enjoying any of my other videos I hope you will hit the Subscribe button we are always looking to make more great content for you and I hope you enjoyed this video as well all right so the topic of today's video I feel like is long awaited I am constantly getting asked about software TC software from you you guys want to know you know what are you using what do you recommend Etc so I want to work on another video breaking down all kinds of different softwares but I wanted to do an official review of A-frame as a transaction management software I have been using it for a couple months now so I feel like I've got a good feeling for it and I want to give you guys my official review so I switched to A-frame from open to close um so many people were recommending it and speaking greatly about it and I was looking for a software that would work really well for my team before I got them all set up and onboarded and so that's what inspired me to make a switch um I also have heard great things they have a Facebook support group they're really working on updating the platform for transaction coordinators so these were all kind of things you may have heard too um and so they really inspired me to make the switch so what I'm going to do I have my notes Here I have a whole list of different features of A-frame and I'm going to talk about all of those how I use them for my business what's most important to me things like that this is not all inclusive they have all kinds of other features that you can use but this is what I've utilized so far and what I look for in any kind of platform like this and then at the end I'll kind of give you an overall rating of my experience with A-frame so far all right so let's dive in so to start I'm going to go over I have a core three items that I look at in any transaction coordination management software so those like if we don't have those three then I'm not even doing the free trial okay and most um systems do have all of these so you probably won't really come across that but just so you know the first three are going to be my absolute top three non-negotiable things I look for in any software that I use all right so number one is going to be fillable email templates merge fields to create email templates and so I'm going to be speaking specifically about A-frame so all of these features are available in A-frame and how I use them so fillable email templates airm has these with merge fields and what I mean by this if this is all new to you is that you can create an email template which you will often use you will create email templates for many things you could have hundreds of email templates as a transaction coordinator and what you can do instead of just saving these in like your Gmail or something like that is within A-frame you can copy any email templates you have existing into A-frame and then you can use the merge Fields they provide to autopop populate information so what I mean by this is when I get a new contract or a new listing or something like that I input in my system I'm putting in the party information the key dates the price other key terms and items of the transaction then when I go to create an email I can have the email template autop populate that information so an example of this is I can say hi buyer merge field you know please deposit your earnest money deposit of earnest money merge field I can create a template like that in the A-frame email template system and then when I'm inside a transaction I'll go to create the email and instead of saying hi buyer hi earnest money it'll say hi John please deposit your earnest deposit of $5,000 it will pull the email I've already put not the email it will pull the information I've already put in the transaction into the emails this is absolutely huge when I first started I Ed Gmail template so I'd have things that said like price buyer name Etc you know close date things like that but then I would type manually type in the buyer's name the closing date the property address all of those things like I had the base like checklist but I had to add the actual data from the transaction this literally would take me about an hour to start a new transaction and get the initial emails out as soon as I started using merge Fields I was able to cut that down to about 30 minutes and now just over time I've gotten it down to about 20 minutes if you're wanting to scale you can see how that makes a huge difference so it's amazing to me and an absolute requirement to have this so in A-frame they make it really simple you upload your email templates to the actual email template file there you can add all kinds of merge Fields I think there's probably over a hundred of them for you know title company name buyer name seller name earnest money amount closing date you know termination option date all kinds of different things you can pre-populate those so then when you go to create an email it's all already done I just double check one more time that the information I entered was correct based off the contract then my email is good to send out some other features of this you can pre-populate who you want it to send to so when I'm opening this email or making this email template I'm putting please CC lender please CC my agent please CC other agent BCC me however you want to set it up you can even do the subject line and you can add reminders in your templates to make sure you attach certain documents if you need to so it is a huge timesaver it not only saves time but also helps eliminate human error your just putting the information in once then the system's reading it whereas before I was putting it in once then I was copying it then I would have to check make sure my spelling was good that I did this it eliminates a whole human error aspect which is huge plus the time saving so fillable email templates with merge fields are an absolute must for me and they're really easy to use in a frame so that is a point for a frame so far all right my core feature number two that I'm always looking for is a centralized dashboard where I can see all my task and transactions so every TC Works a little differently um there are a lot of TC's who like to work in one file at a time if you've watched any of my other videos you know that's actually not how I prefer to work and recommend because you could get stuck in a file for too long and miss something potentially important on another file so I like to work off one centralized dashboard that shows all of my task I need to do for the day and another feature I like of this dashboard is that you can look at ahead for certain days that are upcoming you can see anything that's overdue and reschedule it there's all kinds of features I'm going to go more into the dashboard features in A-frame a little later in the video but just having a centralized page so the main dashboard page in a frame you can see your transactions and you can see your task you can see key dates there's a search place there's a goal tracking it's really nice and then from there I go into the daily Focus tab where I just see all my task for the day and also all my deadlines so there's all kinds of different ways you can set this up too um and they're continuously updating it so depending on when you watch this video things may have changed on the look of it but having One dashboard where I can see all of my task for the day is absolutely critical to me I like to work by time blocking type of task or agent um typically and so being able to see all of those versus having to click into each file and see what I need to do today is an absolute must for me for time blocking and stream Ling and everything like that so I love having the one centralized dashboard that has kind of an overview of everything going on in your business and then the daily Focus hash for which tells me exactly what I need to do that day AKA daily Focus love it all right and number three on absolutely non-negotiable things I require in a TC software is easy to use and customize task templates so I've talked about email templates first now I want to talk about task templates if this is is new to you what a task template is essentially is once you open a new transaction in the system you can apply a task template and it will automatically tell you what to do for the transaction and when so if you're looking for resources like on our website we have a free seller contract to close checklist you can download um those are the kind of things I would take that checklist and then I would create task for every item on those checklist in the A-frame task template Creator then when I open my transaction I can apply that task template and that's where all those tasks are going to then show up on my daily Focus Tab and my dashboard so if that's sounds a little confusing I'll give some examples so essentially when we open a new contract one of the things we need to do is send an introduction email to everyone so I can create a task template and the first task I can create on there says send introduction email to all parties then when I add that template to a transaction it will tell me to do that and it will tell me everything else to do from there until closing so what you need to do and take a little bit of time to set up when you first get started in A-frame or really any software is you need to take your existing checklist that you've written out and create it into a task template and other features of these task templates are really important this is not just going to pop up as a list things you can do in A-frame is you can make it intuitive so you are able to have it say okay I need to confirm receive the earnest money 3 days after the effective date so when you start the transaction you'll put the effective date of the transaction in and then 3 days later the system will tell you to follow up on the earnest money if you've set it up that way so it's really intuitive in terms of being able to do things after a certain date you can do this many days before the date this many days after the date you can add notes to yourself links reminders it really becomes an all-encompassing checklist of everything you need to do and it autop populates the days you need to do things so when I add a Tas template to a new Trans action it doesn't give me 50 things to do automatically it says okay today Alison you need to do these three things tomorrow you need to do these two things next day you need to do these five things Etc and you can break it down that way and see exactly what you need to do every day and these tasks then go on your main dashboard so that's how it all kind of ties together um but it's really important to me to have easy to use and create task templates easy to customize like I said a makes it really easy to customize in terms of adding notes adding colors Priority Flat you know adding when this is happening this many days before after a key date or just selecting a general date for it to happen there's all kinds of different stuff you can put in there and so it's really nice um to use for sure and I like that they're easy to duplicate and so what I mean by this is I have a base like buyer contract close checklist anytime I have an agent who asks me for something a little different or maybe their Brokers just has some different requirements and I want to make sure instead of having remember that I put it on a task template just for them I'll duplicate my basic template I'll rename it the agent's name Byer contract to close or whatever it is and then I will make any edits specific to them or their brokerage or their team whatever on the task template now they have their own custom task template that I can use on their transactions took me 2 minutes to set up because I was just able to duplicate my base one and just make some edits and now I'm not going to forget that their brokage requires some XYZ document or something like that or that they like to send a specific utility coner email or something like that I'm able to now have custom task templates that are just for them I do this freemail templates too but easy to use create customize duplicate task templates is absolutely huge and that they're intuitive in terms of reading key dates and things like that that's my third absolute non-negotiable so A-frame does a great job of that too okay and then now going into just other features that I like of A-frame so as I mentioned I moved my team over to A-frame when we first got everyone trained and onboarded and I really like the easy team integration so if you haven't followed me for a while to give you some background I um worked primarily as a contractor I've always worked by myself um when I started my own company I was doing it myself until I decided to bring on a couple team members and so it's important to me now um to have a software that helps integrate a team structure but I want to advise you that you A-frame is still great for a solo TC and if you also maybe have hopes one day of having a team or other people on your team or even if you don't you know it's really really hard to switch softwares and save all your files and set everything up it's timec consuming so start with a system a software that has Room to Grow even if you don't think that's one of your desires I would say it doesn't hurt and as I mentioned with A-frame specifically it's also great just for a solo TC but as someone with a team if you have have a team or want a team one day I really like the team integration and a couple things I mean by this is that it's really easy when you're creating a new transaction you add yourself as the main coordinator I can also add one of my team members as coordinator number two this means they'll be able to see the transaction they'll access everything they can work within it in terms of handling task uploading documents leaving notes updating dates things like that and so it's really easy for for us you know if someone's out of town or sick or something and someone needs to step in we can add them to the transaction or maybe it's just a transaction where we're going to split the responsibilities we can add them there makes it super easy for everyone to still have their own account but be able to see the transactions that they need to and work on those and if someone's covering for someone out of town we can add that other TC during that week and then as soon as the other TC is back we could even remove them so it makes it really easy for multiple people working on a file especially for coverage reasons but also you can assign tasks to them so when I've been out of town I add a coordinator from my team to the file and then I'll go into the tasks that are going to come up while I'm gone and I can assign the tasks to them so that they're popping up on their main daily Focus dashboard of what they need to do so it just makes it super simple to add people to files to have a team set up if you're the main admin of the team it's really easy to add members and set up their profiles and things like that and then working in the dayto day if you have more than one TC working on a file if someone's covering for someone assigning task letting them work on a file adding them stuff like that you can see all their notes you can see what they uploaded what tasks they did when what they've written everything so if someone needs to jump back in or you're sharing and someone needs to jump in one day or the other it's super nice from the features I've used on team integration that is a huge plus so I really enjoy that feature as well all right and another feature feature I want to go to is goal tracking so I used to keep a separate spreadsheet of you know an income goal we want to hit and also finding ways to track our transactions just because it can be a little confusing because you know you may have other sources of income you know if you're doing listings or if you have compliance or a lease or something like that and so you're not able to just necessarily break down your income number and figure out how many transactions you close so I love that g a frame has a go tracking feature this is actually something I had never noticed in another platform that I used so not say maybe it wasn't available but I never noticed it and it's right there on your main dashboard so when you log in the morning you can see where you're at with your goals so there's a couple different ways you can set goals you can do GCI you know total sales volume those don't really apply as much as the TC um and I believe they're working on some more TC specific goals but the way I have it set up um and I like this for teams too I have a personal transaction count goal and a personal you know you could to a personal income goal as the TC but I also have a goal for our team so how much money do you want the team to make how many transactions you want the team to close and I can just toggle back and forth between my statistics and the team statistics right there on the dashboard so every morning I can get reminded of where we stand on our goals do we need to work harder are we doing great should we reward ourselves we're on Pace anything like that so I use Stu have to track that separately so having a goal tracking integration within the A-frame software is really awesome okay the next thing I want to go over that A-frame has that I have not seen in a lot of other softwares is prospecting features so A-frame is made for agents teams and transaction coordinators and teams so you may you the prospecting looks a little more like it's agent friendly but as TCS if you're not just working for a team if you're prospecting trying to get your own clients and things like that you are doing lead generation and that's something you should prioritize so having that within your one system is huge like I said I really just use A-frame and then I'll log into other systems as tools as I need to but I mean I've got my goal TR my goal tracking my prospecting all my transactions I can check on my teams all that kind of stuff so that is huge in terms of you know staying within one system which is awesome and so having prospecting is great um I haven't played around with it too much to be honest but I'm really looking forward into doing that in the relatively near future so I will follow up on my thoughts on that but just the idea of having somewhere to track you know how many contacts you're making what's your goals of people to reach out to things like that I think that is just absolutely huge and really awesome and a really great [Music] feature all right and I have three more to cover so next up is calendar integration you'll see this in a lot of softwares but one thing I like about A-frame is they have a calendar within the software that you can use and then you can also add it to your G your Google calendar or there's probably other things um I've seen Gmail and Google Calendar so that's what we're affiliated with um but I affiliate it with that I like to see just my key dates so in most softwares and I believe in A-frame you can have all your task show up on your Google calendar um but to me what I always tell people is maybe that sounds good and you have five transactions but if you have 100 then you literally can't even see on your calendar so you have so many tasks to do I'll have day easily where there's 100 tasks to do in one day and so if all of those are on my like Monday on my calendar like I'm not going to see anything else but I like I've said in other videos I check my deadlines first thing in the morning I triple check them and I'm going to do another video about that but A-frame is very helpful in this for me and first thing I do is I look at my Google Calendar One to see what's on my docket besides just transaction work do I have meetings do I have calls do I have anything scheduled and then I'll look at have all my key dates on there so they'll show me hey we've got an option period any at 5:00 today oh I should check on that oh today's closing date for this I should check on that and so looking at all of those things is is really helpful but I believe you can also use the task if that works for you it's just not my recommendation but I really like that they have a calendar I can look at in there if I didn't want to share it to my Google Calendar or maybe whatever calendar your system you're using doesn't integrate um but I also love be able to see all just the key dates on my calendar in the calendar integration following up on that I want to talk about Gmail integration so basically we send all of our emails through A-frame but they go through they send through our Gmail so what makes this nice is that when I'm working on a file or a couple files I'll just close out of my Gmail Tab and then I can create emails from my email templates I mentioned in the beginning of the video and send them straight from A-frame this is huge because I used to have to prepare the email in the software but then copy and paste it into Gmail and then send it because I wanted to use the merge Fields but I didn't like how the email system sent and that's just kind of a waste of time and potentially could have an error so being able to send things directly through your Gmail but through A-frame is awesome that way I can X out of my Gmail where there may be new things coming in or responses to things that may be distractions but when I'm just sending emails being able to send those through the system is really great for focusing time blocking and just ease of everything so that's a great thing too all right and then kind of a miscellaneous item that other people might not understand but I really like is the ability to create a miscellaneous task so in previous experience with other softwares every task had to be tied to a transaction and sometimes there's just a day where I have a random task to do right maybe I need to do an administrative task I need to send something to someone or do an accounting bookkeeping thing or just a little reminder for myself something for the business that's not tied to prospecting or tied to specific transaction and you're just a mislan this task as a business owner or even just a freelance contracted team team TC whatever it may be you're going to have a random task you want to do so I can create just from my daily Focus dashboard a just miscellaneous task it'll still pop up I can select the date I can prioritize it everything and but I don't have to tie it to a transaction you can if you need to but sometimes I have miscellaneous like work on this or follow up on this something even personal whatever it may be um and so having a place to make miscellaneous task is really key for one reason I am a huge you know promoter of using one system or as few systems as possible so I used to have to you know maybe make a sticky note on my desk if there was a random business task I needed to do or oh you know go update that template later or whatever this don't have time to do it now but want to remember to do it later it's not tied to a transaction something like that since I don't have that I don't have to do that because in A-frame they give me the ability to create a mislan task so I could create that as a task and it's showing up on my task of things to do that day so it's just really nice to not have you know a to-do list over here to-do list over here to-do list over there you can have all your transaction management task your lead followup task and Misan task all within one system is really clutch all right and the last feature I want to highlight I hope you are still watching the video please watch this point because it's really important in how I work and prioritize and do my day-to-day business which is on that main dashboard I talked about the daily Focus tab having the ability to filter and prioritize my task so what I mean by this is on some dashboards it kind of can just look like a long list um maybe you could color Cod it or something but it just doesn't work the same way A-frame has really nailed this in my opinion um I can first of all there are three flag options there's a red flag a yellow flag and a blue flag I prioritize all my most urgent high priority items as red flags and then second tier priority items is yellow flags everything else after that I don't assign the color to and that's exactly how I work through my day so first thing I check on my deadlines then I go to my dashboard I click the red flag filter and then it only shows me my red task so I check on all my red task you know urgent urgent fire SOS items first thing in the morning once I've addressed those I delete that filter and I add a yellow flag filter then I check on all my yellow flag items and then after that I'll delete that filter and'll just show my whole dashboard and everything that's left so there's all kinds of different ways you can work with that but that's an example other features I like I like that you can filter by agent you're working with so I can go up and I can just search there's a little search bar at the top of the daily Focus tab that shows all your task and you can search for anything so I can search the agent's name I could search the client's name buyer seller I can also search a key word so if you watch my other videos if you haven't watched my time blocking video I'll see if I can link it below but if not head to my channnel and watch that because this will kind of give you a lot of clarity on that too so for example I could search the word appraisal then it's going to pop up any task for today or whatever time period I've selected that say appraisal so I could shoot out a couple really quick email Cinders say hey what's St the appraisal hey with status the appraisal hey with stat the appraisal and then move those to the next day to follow up on really easily they have so many great features I don't think I have time for in this video maybe I can do a really detailed video about the dashboard and how I use it but you can snooze things you can really easily move the dates around all kinds of stuff so if you think that video would be helpful for you drop me a comment below but main thing I wanted to focus on today was the filtering and the prioritizing so I can filter by agent I can filter by name in the task client name keyword priority flag that I flagged it um date that it is on and so it's just really huge for time blocking being efficient particularly if you like to work by you know agent name or client name or task type but if you like to work by ad address too and you don't want to click into the whole transaction you can search for the address too so it's just really great it has all of the filtering features if I had to pick a four non-negotiable item to look for in a software this would be it being able to easily filter my task throughout the day this helps me prioritize make sure I'm getting the most important things done it also helps me work quickly and efficiently because I can keep my mind on the same agent stay logged into their system or on the same type of task just keep my brain thinking the same way so so that's pretty huge for me so that's kind of what I wanted to end on but those are some of my top features I've been utilizing in A-frame and really really enjoying my absolute A-frame review I didn't even think about this beforehand or maybe you'll do a number out of 10 I'm going to give it a solid 8 8.5 maybe and I don't even know off the top of my head what I would change but it's only been a couple months they're continuing to make updates and I'm really really enjoying it I don't have any plans of moving myself or or my team off the software anytime soon so if you're looking for a TC software I would absolutely super super highly recommend A-frame and like I said if you want me to go into more detail about any of the features I talked about in this video or how I utilize them drop me a comment below and I will go over that for you guys so let me know if you have any questions thank you so much for watching as I mentioned really couldn't recommend A-frame enough would love to hear your feedback as well if there's a different software maybe I've used you want me to highlight um drop me a comment below on that too so if you enjoyed this video please like And subscribe to our channel so I can keep making great content for you thanks so much for watching and have a great day