Hi Megan, I'm almost in the same boat but I was lucky to get one tenant to setup automatic payment, while the other tenant has been late since she signed the lease and still owes the previous landlord money.  

Sign up for automatic updates on sites like Zillow, Redfin, Trulia.

Only about 1/3 of the MLS's around the country automatically syndicate to Zillow. 

When a tenant moves out and “disconnects” it just automatically  switches back over to you instead of shutting off.

Late fees are charged automatically and show up on the account right away, so no-one can ever "forget" to pay them.

He requested the copies of leases from the seller, totaled up what the deposits should be with accrued interest (we have to accrue interest and pay that back to the tenants upon move out here in MD), figured up the prorated rent for the month that was due to us, and then he automatically moved the security deposits and rents to us at closing from the sellers statement.

Or maybe there is another piece of the management process that you could automate, either be using a VA or forwarding maintenance calls to a handyman automatically?

I work diligently to improve my credit score, and to automatically set money aside. 

If it's a smaller property, you might be able to get away with just a handyman, but he's got to be able to collect rents for you if you don't have a way of automatically collecting them from tenants, such as direct debit, if that's legal where you are looking.  

Your agent can set up an automatic search for All new listings, or just for REO's.