What technology helps you?

[Ken M.]

I'm interested in learning what technology tools you use to accelerate your business.

Post URLs, software and mobile apps.

Ken

[Ray Lai]

That's quite a vague question. There's different software for wholesalers, flippers/rehabbers, property managers, etc.

I took notes for my own purposes that will probably help you. Full disclosure: we develop rehab / project management software as well, so obviously I'd think ours is the best :)

REsimpli - rehab oriented software in free beta right now integrated with Home Depot to create contracts and other useful tools as well.

Asana – “Ive used asana in the past and it works out pretty well. Its fairly easy to use and can sync with your phone.” Justin S

“While Asana is a great tool for consulting it is not a great tool for rehab/flip/development. It does not have the functionality you would need and it's too hard to bring in additional resources. Asana has no gant charts. No critical path visualization and no way to track all of the hard costs associated with a build.” Jeffrey Stasz
Pros: Free for teams of up to 15 people, Collaboration Tool
Cons: Not designed for real estate

Basecamp - “It is a good communication tool for everyone that is involved in the project. I am able to assign task and deadlines to those task[s]. But if you are looking for something to track cost, this is not the software for you. It is simply a communication tool.” Alex Craig
Pros: Free for teachers & students, 50% for nonprofits, free 30 day trial, Collaboration Tool
Cons: Not designed for real estate

MS Project “You can not beat MS Project and how powerful it is for the price.

It is COTS and I have management a portfolio of $500 million construction projects with it at once.

Build your MS Project schedule with cost and export to Excel for status updates. Either email it or print it on paper for the contractors to update.

You can export the costs from project to Excel to Quickbooks if need be.

The most important thing with building a integrated schedule is defining a true critical path with tasks relationships to know the true finish date and how it is impacted...”

Justin Case

Pros: Powerful Gantt features, used by professional project managers in many industries, can export to Excel or Quickbooks

Con: not cloud based – access problems James Bowie, time investment to learn, $589 for Project Standard 2016, not designed for real estate

Podio – “We use Podio for both lead management and project management. Podio is very customizable so it serves as the "central hub" or "interface" and creates the relationships between items. We then use Google Spreadsheets to track the numbers and then attach the spreadsheets to the Podio project page via soft link. All of our books are kept in Quickbooks.” James Bowie

Pros: “Podio Lite is free up to 5 employee seats, up to 5 external teams”, used by over 400,000 for collaboration, mentioned several times on BP
Cons: Need to build projects from scratch, not designed for real estate

Cost:
Podio Teams ($9 per employee/month, 20% off annual subscription): unlimited number of employee seats; unlimited number of external teams; Podio apps and core features.

Podio Business (by quote): unlimited number of employee seats (discounts for larger teams); unlimited number of external teams; Podio apps and core features; access right and control; personalized training and support.

Evernote: Is a document repository.

“The best tool we use is Evernote to track progress. Every time work gets done the pictures get put into Evernote and it gets attached to Podio.” James Bowie

“The key to Evernote is to commit to it and jump in with both feet. It’s pretty rotten if you’re just using it for a few isolated tasks, because absolutely, it doesn’t do any one thing perfectly and it’s not as fast as other apps.

It really starts to show its brilliance once you start using it as your default bookmark/webclip app, notetaker, recipe box, repository of all your reference material, and so on. It’s great to have ALL the information you need indexed and searchable across every single platform you have.” Whitson Gordon (non BP Member)

Pros: Basic is free with 60 MB of new uploads per month and sync across 2 devices
Cons:Not designed for real estate
Cost: $34.99 for Plus with 1 GB of new uploads per month with synch across all devices
$69.99 for Premium with 10 GB of new uploads per month with synch across all devices and more features

Trello - A Trello board is basically a web page containing lists laid out horizontally on the page so you can get a bird's eye view of your project. Items within the lists, called cards, can be dragged and dropped onto other lists or reordered within lists.
“is a great free tool, although its hard to see/plan for dependencies.” Melissa Kilbourne
Pros: Easy to learn
Cons:Not designed for real estate
Cost: Trello offers three paid options: Trello Gold $5 per month, or $45 per year, Trello Business Class $12.50 per team member per month, or $119.99 per team member per year, and Trello Enterprise. They’re ways to build on to the free Trello experience—Trello Gold offers a way for individual users to take their Trello use to the next level, Trello Business Class (contact for quote) is intended for multi-user teams to have more fine-grained control over who can access their boards, and Trello Enterprise allows for concierge support as well as additional security features important for large-scale enterprise teams.

gantter.com “ easy to use Gantt chart (free). Cloud based and Google drive integration, so sharing and collaboration rock. Great for scheduling projections with dependencies. I agree with @JustinCase 'The most important thing with building a integrated schedule is defining a true critical path with tasks relationships to know the true finish date and how it is impacted.’ ” ~Alisha Zwirtz

Pros: There’s a free version
Cons:Not designed for real estate
Cost: Personal is 4.95 a month, 9.95 per user / month for team

rehabvaluator.com “A great one that a friend of mine showed to me is the rehab valuator calculator by Daniil Kleyman. He has a rehab valuator Lite that you can download as a free demo. Not to mention that he has numerous tutorials on his website. Don't take my word for it- check out his website at rehabvaluator.com.” John E.

Pros: free lite version
Cons:not software, but spreadsheets
Cost: $29/month or $197 / year

Xactimate - Replacement cost estimating software for property claims. Tools needed to create professional and accurate estimates, as well as to view and manage all estimating and communication-related activities. “We use one program that can be expensive and we use it on insurance rehabs. I dont know any insurance adjuster not using it in our area. Even though its geared towards the insurance industry its still dealing with rehab/replacement costs. I would not say that it should be used as a be all end all. Nothing can substitute a hard estimate based upon historical numbers. Xactimate (I have no affiliation and I wish there was a cheaper competitior).” Steve H.

Pros: Used by insurance adjusters
Cons:Expensive and tailored for insurance industry
Cost: Webpage for cost is down.

Freedomsoft – CRM software used for lead generation

“My subscription still works, not sure if they (Preston & Co) have made any major updates in the past 2 years. They do have some cool features like using IFTTT that will pull in leads from CL right into the program. Also lets you setup buyer and seller capture pages....some cool stuff.” Derrick Watkins

Pros: 14 day free trial, geared towards real estate, MLS integration
Cons: Expensive and not much information about itCost: Needs confirmation, their company hides the cost from their website: “$97, $197, or $297/mo” from online review

Buildertrend – Cloud system designed for builders, remodelers, and contractors for real estate

“If you mean critical path method, then yes. Schedule items can be linked to each other (start to finish, start to start) creating a visible critical path, including a generated Gantt chart.”

Pros: 30-day money back guarantee for first month, real estate centric
Cons: Expensive and additional costs for more projectsCost: Starting at $99/month for one project but additional fees for more project

JIRA – offers flexible issue and project tracking with best-in-class agile tooling for software teams
“JIRA has a huge marketplace which allows you to really scope what type of project management system you want to build” Jared Beauchamp

Pros: Proven in software development
Cons:Not designed for real estateCost: Starting $10 for 1-10 users, $75 for 11-15 users, $150 for 16-25 users, $300 for 26-50 users

Primavera – Used by commercial builders for project management.

“I am a PM at a commercial construction firm and use software such as Primavera and Prolog. However, I honestly find myself constantly going back to Excel and Word. There isn't much you can't do with these two, besides complex scheduling and costing, and they are easy to format to your needs and preferences.” Tony Williams

Prolog – Construction software mentioned several times.

Pros: Mentioned on BP
Cons: Expensive, no one on BP users
Cost: Website hides costs. Online review “Prolog is relatively easy to deploy, and the cost for a small company to implement the system would be in the range of $10,000 for three concurrent licenses and another $10,000-15,000 for implementation and basic configuration”

Property Management / Accounting

Quickbooks pro “I'd love to use quickbooks pro but they won't allow me to import expense data, nor allow subdivision of income/expenses as I would like.” ~Brandon Schlichter

“We have been using quickbooks for 12 years. I can tell you what profit I made on each rental, new home construction, rehab, flip. What the money was spent on. A detail P & L per property. It is all you need.” Arlan Potter

Pros: commonly used accounting software
Cons:2.5 star rating on AmazonCost: QuickBooks Pro 2017 web download 189.99

Buildium – Property management software

“The current software I use is Buildium.com, the software is one of the more inexpensive softwares to get for your management systems at $40.00 a month up to 200 units and then the price bumps to $200.00 a month. This software has some hidden fees in ACH transfers, which are charged to the property manager for every ACH transfer a total of $.50 and could be more depending on the days it takes to transfer. If you have a lot of properties this can add up quickly!” Peter Mckernan

“I have been using buildium for 2 months now managing 14 units. It's great for costs, budgets and the money management. It allows all units or properties to stay separate or combine by owner. The online rent collection has saved me a ton of time and effort.” Blake Garcia

Pros: mentioned often on BP so commonly used
Cons: Hidden fees that add up
Cost: Starting at $45 / month, additional fees for features like ePay, tenant screening, 1099 eFiling

Appfolio - Software used for property management

“The next software that is pretty expensive is out of the gate is Appfolio.com, which charges $200.00 fee. This service does not take any money for ACH transfers and the software does charge an extra amount for building a website for your company (this is optional).” Peter Mckernan

“I have to say, they have a lot of cool things, but their accounting system is awful. That alone was a deal breaker. They told me that I would have to manually enter every single charge I do on the credit card for the business manually. If you use quickbooks and download the transactions from your bank, you know how much time that saves you every month. They also force you into working in their molds and expect you to adapt to their software. Most of the time are small compromises, but still annoyances.” Rafael Floresta

Pros: mentioned often on BP
Cons: accounting module is very weak, expensive for small operations
Cost: $1 per unit, per month plus an onboarding fee (equal to two months of service). Note that there is a $200 minimum monthly fee. App Folio offers a 15 day free trial.

TenantCloud “I do all of that with TenantCloud and have closed my paid account with AF. I only have 22 properties (all homes), but it works great. I do applications, listings to zillow and others, website, payments, accounting, maintenance, reports and its all free. I am still waiting for the got ya as they are free, but they claim they will always be free for up to 75 units. At SXSW I saw one of their people and they said they will have the ability to get bids on jobs like cleaning, painting and such soon - I assume this is how they make money. “ Ben Travis

Pros: they are new and offer free operations for landlords and tenants
Cons: new company, not mentioned on BP much
Cost: “We get paid by service providers - like insurance companies, plumbing companies, screening companies, A/C and heating, moving companies..... oh you get the idea. TenantCloud is free, but if you decided to use any of the service providers products then you can buy in TenantCloud, which only makes life even more convenient.”

Not software but spreadsheets people use:

J Scott’s Rehab Analysis Spreadsheet – Basic https://www.biggerpockets.com/files/user/jasonscott/file/13-rehab-analysis-spreadsheet---basic

Will Barnard’s Repair Cost Form:https://www.biggerpockets.com/files/user/barnardinc/file/70-repair-cost-form

www.houseflippingspreadsheet.com created by David Robertson, a BP contributor

“Overall I really like this software. A-Z program, however it is based in Excel. I am a Chromebook/smart phone user, sitting at my desk top is inconvenient, no anywhere access and no collaboration options I have found for my primary users.” Alisha Zwirtz

Pros: Endorsed by J Scott, free trial available
Cons: Not widely used - 10 mentions in BP forum
Cost: $97 basic, $167 Pro, $267 Enterprise Bundle

Smartsheet – Excel but in the cloud for collaboration

“Smartsheet is a more classic tool (think MS Excel but with some powerful overlays and template tools that allow you to build project plans) that would be great for sharing project plans with contractors, etc.” Travis Hamilton

Pros: A more powerful version of Excel
Cons: Not widely used - 15 mentions in BP forum
Cost: Basic - $10 / user / month, Team $15 / user / month, Business $25 / user / month