But I wasn't aware of ways to automate bookkeeping in it, which makes it difficult to scale.

If you are near a military base consider www.ahrn.com (automated housing referral network) for military folks coming into the area. 

I use investorfuse for my automation and its a great tool to help me stay on top of followups, appointments, team members, virtual assistants and keep track of all the in's and out's of my wholesale business.

I'll drop you from our list right away (hedge if your system is automated enough another letter might already be on its way.)

I'm currently working on a new form to give more automated responses to the homeowner if they qualify for a short sale or not as a way to save time; however, I would recommend doing your own property valuations based on comps rather than relying on appraisers.Sounds like you have a potentially big catch coming up, the first call can eat up alot of your time, but if you get the big questions out of the way (missed payments/what hardship they're facing/recent house valuation) and ask for them to do a little homework for the other details (mortgages/financial statement/etc) on a form you will email them, it maximizes your time.

I don't trust any of those automated appraisal sites.

Afghanistan is a nasty place...get the hell out of there in 1 piece.I graudated with a bachelors in computer engineering..did a bunch of programming and EE design doing industrial automation for AUTOMOTIVE(BZZZ, Mistake..should have moved to silicon valley RIGHT out of college).

We track every touch with investors whether its email, phone or mail and have multiple automated processes in that drip campaign.

Mortgage companies and credit card companies have set up automated reminders in the form of statements.

I suppose either way, each has a downside, but my opinion is that I like to see who is voting for what, particularly if a negative vote system is implemented (which has been discussed several times in the past and thus far, Josh chose to avoid such an implementation.For negative, I believe any should be automated, such as when a poster is non-active for a week, a month, a quarter, etc., they should auto lose points.