What do you use to assemble documents?

What do you use to assemble documents?

Seattle, WA · Member since 2013 · 2 posts · 1 vote

I know this is a shot in the dark and my Stepdad thinks I am wasting my time but I am hoping there is at least someone else out there in the place we are in and have an idea or two to explore.

I work for my Stepdad. He and his partner have over 2300 rental units mostly in the western part of the country. We have used a custom solution to assemble our documents for many years. The problem is the technology this is built on has reached its limits. We have to either try to get and keep old technology running or migrate to something else.

There is a replacement for the technology we are using but it is not from the original vendor, they went out of business. A new company started by some of the people in the original company has relaunched and we are considering this path.

But, before we go too far down this road I wanted to see if there were any other options out there that could do the basics we need.

Here are the basic use cases I need to meet going forward. They are all met by our current but very dated software.

1) Central control of content. We have to know the documents our lawyers approve are the documents generated in the field by our property managers and buyers.

2) Automatic updates between lease renewals. For example, if we decide there will be a 3% rent increase this year we need to apply that consistently across all renewals based on the information in the last lease generated.

3) Data securely protected. If the content or the data needed to complete a document is stored anywhere but on our servers we have to know the proper security protections are in place.

4) Draft review and approval and remote printing when approved. For example, the property manager enters the data but the review happens in our head office. Once approved, the manager can pull and print the completed document. The same is true for buying.

5) Documents must be accepted by the government. For example, when we sell we sometimes also finance. We have to generate HUD and other government forms in acceptable formats.

6) Has a well documented and supported API for integration.

There are other nice to haves but nothing we couldn't work around if these were met.

As I said, I know this is a bit out there because most of the investors here are not institutional types like we are. But, I figured I'd give it a shot.

Thank you for the time you spent reading this.

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  • Investor · Sherman Oaks, CA · Member since 2008 · 6k+ posts · 3k+ votes
    13y

    I can only tell you what I use.

    1. Box.net for doc storage

    2. Docusign for Internet signatures.

    3. Fill in the blank Adobe Acrobat forms.

    Brian

  • Hayward, CA · Member since 2013 · 4 posts · 3 votes
    13y

    I use my own software that I wrote over the past 5 years. It's written as a secure website. The backend is in Perl, it uses the mysql database, and unix tools such as netPBM and LaTex to assemble PDF documents.

    It also does tenant ledgers, generates 3-day notices,
    organizes the process of checking prospective tenants and moving them in, and tracks maintenance. It generates 16-page rental agreements. It has a system of multiple users and permissions, and I have been able to give my local managers access to book incoming rents. Best thing I ever did - they're doing a much better job at it than I was doing. And they enjoy it. It gives them a feeling of control and power when they can tell tenants exactly what they owe and why - rather than telling them to call me.

    It all started out with the tenant ledgers. I used to keep them on paper - 8x11 sheets ruled to look like check ledgers. Rents would come in, I'd scribble them in the ledger sheets - whoops, ran out of space in this one! Let's see if we can get just one more payment into the margin! One day, I thought "Gee, I bet the computer could do a good job at this".

    I am presently working on modules to do bank deposits and payroll. My staff suffers putting together a big deposit, all on paper - they add it up multiple times - Here, you check my total - why is yours different? - I think I can make it pretty trivial for them. And oh - why not stick the payments in the tenants ledgers while we're at it? Another thing is payroll - right now that takes me a whole day. I think I could slim it down to an hour by having people enter their own timesheets and workorders.

    It's taken a lot of time; there's probably a hundred thousand lines of Perl. But it's a lot more fun than doing donkey work. And I honestly think I've had a net time
    savings.

    The maintenance module has been very helpful during evictions: the tenant cries "Uninhabitability!" and I show up in court with a printout that shows everything that's been done in that apartment for the past few years, and handwritten workorders supporting the printout. Haven't lost one yet...

    - Jerry Kaidor

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