How we run our shop - a Technologist's infrastructure

Question

Hi everyone,

A few weeks ago I was thinking about all of the technologies and services that we use to run our investment/property management operation and decided a visual was in order to map it all out. I'm an IT guy by day (architect - 20 years in IT), so leveraging technology has been the main ingredient in enabling us to scale our RE business, while still maintaining our day jobs. Our focus is to leverage as many free and integrated services as possible, but there are obviously a bunch of things that cost money to use - which are not noted. It's not 100% inclusive, but close enough to cover 90% of things.

Anyway, I don't get to contribute to the BP forums as often as I'd like, so here's a post that I hope is helpful for some of you. I'm always interested in hearing about what others are doing and what we can do better, so fire away questions and share what you use. I used Lucidchart to create it. Hopefully is more legible that it shows creating the post.

Enjoy!

Sergio Altomare · Answer

@Michael Dowd Ahh, good'ol SugarSync! I used to be a heavy user (might still have an account actually), but migrated to Google Docs because of the more extensive integration across Google Apps. It has all of the sync features of SugarSync, but much tighter integration between desktop and Android.

One thing I forgot to mention in my rationale for much of my structure is to provide seamless access to everything between me and my partner. I.e. when you call our "office" number Google Voice rings both of our phones. We have a shared Gmail account for the business and can send email from any of our aliases, manage one contact list, etc. It gives the appearance that we are a large organization, meanwhile enabling us to be completely transparent in working together.

Sergio Altomare · Answer

@Trevor Ewen we actually own/manage a total of 5 properties and 12 units, so we're not big at all. Everything we do though, is with a bigger goal in mind. And like I said, we both have day jobs, so we need to manage as efficiently as possilble. Thanks for the tip on PipeDrive, I'll check it out. I don't have a lot of confidence in it being able to eliminate some of the manual work we need to do with contact management, but we'll see.  I have looked at Xero too, but my biggest challenge is that I am tied to my management system, which unfortunately doesn't do well with integrating to other systems. Hopefully we'll get there someday.

@Ryan Swan Thanks for the feedback. Yes, Docusign is now integrated into PW. You can use mail merge templates for leases, inspections, etc to get things signed. It was just released recently, but is definitely promising. We also like to discuss the leases directly with new tenants, but getting them signed electronically saved all the printing and scanning. I can say that prior to PW integrating with DocuSign I was using trial periods to test SignNow, DS and a few others. DocuSign has a feature where you can pay per "envelope," which is $1 per, so check that out. I remember it being some obscure way of using it that way and didn't see them advertising it on their site. I remember first discovering it while traveling and needing to get something signed on my phone and downloaded the mobile app.

Sergio Altomare · Answer

I noticed an important service we use missing.

Account Closed · Answer

Thanks.  They just quoted me $80/month for the bare minimum and a $399 set up fee.  We own 5 buildings with 14 units and I didn't feel it justified the cost.  They tried to upsell me on many pieces of it as well.  We will keep using QB Online for our accounting and marker boards in the office for the rest.

Account Closed · Answer

Thanks all for sharing details of your business with us all.  We currently own 5 buildings with 14 units.  We use QuickBooks Online for our accounting needs, but otherwise use marker boards in the office for our day to day details.  I am going to check out some of the suggestions you guys have used to see if it might make out lives a little easier.

Our tip to share: We do use multiple computers in our business.  Some on site and some off site.  We use SugarSync to back up our files online and sync them between each user's computer.  Very helpful and easy to use!

Sergio Altomare · Answer

@Ryan Swanu yep, Google drive has a desktop client that integrates with windows explorer the same way - it's actually the primary way I use it. The biggest difference between Google and other file sync services is the tight integration across Google apps, especially on mobile. Storage costs are also shared across email, G+, Drive, etc too.

Ryan Swan · Answer

@Sergio A.

I also use SugarSync and have researched other free alternatives like GoogleDrive/Apps. Are you sure GoogleApps has real time sync of your desktop files? To me, the biggest selling feature of SugarSync was being able to designate individual folders/files in explorer and having those files backed up automatically when modified or created.

Sergio Altomare · Answer

yeah, I hear you. It's why we started out with buildium. I quickly found out that it was taking more time than I wanted to spend on backend admin, so we bit the bullet and went all in. It's a tax write off, but having the tenant management, rent payment and vendor payments really makes it worth it. I wanted to not have to wait till I got too big to implement something like that, so doing it when we were small helped work out the kinks. There certainly is a learning curve, so don't wait too long if you're go add a service like that to your operation.

Sergio Altomare · Answer

@Michael Dowd We have just about hit $200 a month with PW. The issue with their pricing model is the a la carte approach to modules. We have the base module, inspections, web site, esignature and epayments. All in all, they have slowly been getting more out of us, but it's been worth the efficiency.

How we run our shop - a Technologist's infrastructure

Most Popular Reply