Calculate it for ME!

Did you know that Dotloop can do calculations for you!  Super cool, so let me show you how it works.  First let me explain a few perimeters.  In order to do the feature we are discussing you MUST be in the “Templates” and you must be in the “original” of the document for the option to appear on your document.  There is a way to make a document an “original”, but we will save that for later.

Once in the original document (either for the office on the admin side or your personally in your own template folder) click on the field that you want the “answer” to your formula to be appear in.  Then click the little “calculator” button at the top right.

Now that you have clicked the calculator, the “formula box” will appear and you can move it around on the screen a bit so you can see behind it.  From here you notice that it turns the entire page into an excel spreadsheet and adds all the identifiers to each text box field.  Type “=” and then what you want it to do to give you the desired answer.  See the examples of a “Simple Formula” or “Format Formula”.

Simple Formula

Simple Formula Answer

Format Formula

Format Formula Answer

Notice in the images above the difference between the two answers how it shows the decimal point and the “.00” after the whole number.  Another great option is doing the “Textifying” which turns numbers into words.  Make sure when you do this, add true or false after it because it answers the question on “Is this a dollar amount?” True = Yes, False = No.  Textify formula is “=TEXTIFY (T##, true)”

Textify Formula

If you answer “True”

If you answer “False”

If you want o know all the great formulas and how to enter each of them, they can be found on Dotloop’s support website at this page: Formula Calculations

So you are probably wondering about getting the “original”, so here is the “trick”.  If there is a document that you have on Dotloop that is interactive but not your original, here is the trick to “customize it”.  First I want to explain that this is used for if you an office that can’t find the original or if a new version of the contract or form has been published and you don’t have it back from the Dotloop document team.  1. Upload the PDF (or “copy to” and select “flat PDF”) to the folder you are working in.  2. Open the document and click “File, Apply Template” then select the same document with he “fields” on it.  For more information, details and descriptions, visit the other blog post about Apply My Template..

I can be reached at CarolynTechPertise@gmail.com, by phone or text at 918-951-9020 or visit my website at http://www.SearchTulsaHouses.com.  For technology training or consulting assistance visit http://www.iCarolyn.com.

 

 

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No More Duplicates!

With more and more people using Dotloop across the country and in different offices and different companies, duplicates can be an issue if you don’t know some tips to prevent them!  First, my approach to this subject is I want to teach you the preventative measure first and then the reactionary next.

First the Listing Loop:  For every listing you have, you need to do these 3 things to all of them:
1. Loop Status of “Active Listing” – Loop Type will be either Listing for Sale or Listing for Lease in order for that status to be an option.
2. Identity the Role of the “Listing Agent” – This is as simple as selecting listing agent next to your name in the loop, provided you are the listing agent.
3. Add the Address and/or MLS # to the View Details of the loop.
Once these 3 things are done, then your listing will be “searchable” and can be seen by agents when they go to create a loop.

Since the address is not added to the View Details, this loop is not “Searchable”.  You must do ALL 3 of these items in order for your listing to be searchable.

Next is the Buying (Selling) Loop:  When you go to create a loop, search for the property address for the listing you are about to make an offer on.  There are 3 places that you can search for a listing: 1. When you create a Loop, 2. In the View Details above the property address fields, and 3. On the Autofill screen above the address fields.  A few tips to help  your search:  First try searching the house number OR street name OR MLS # because some agents will enter an address with a space or period in the address and that can make it more difficult to find.  Personally I recommend not using periods in the address.

Once you have found the property, it will show you the listing agent’s name (which comes from #2 above) and it will display the MLS # and list price if you have them entered.  Depending on the place you searched it will ask you if you “want to save time and import data” and of course say YES!  So some important things to note here.  The Loop Rules still apply which means: “Anything you add to the loop is private, until you share it” which means that no one will see any of your documents even if the Buying agent selects to connect to the listing agent’s Loop.  The only exception to this is if you are using the Easy Offer (for more info on that, refer to that blog post).

The cool part about these items is that it connects the loops together so the listing agent will not get a second, third or fourth loop when an agent sends an offer, instead it will come in as an additional folder in the Same Loop!!!  From the Buying side, the listing agent will not get the offer or see anything until you “share” the offer to them so no worries there either plus it autofilled the view details so you had less things to type in, that’s what I call a win-win!

OK, so you didn’t know all that and you have a duplicate loop.  My first reaction is NOOOO, I don’t want a duplicate!  So here is how you fix it.  I have to start by telling you that you MUST do this from THE BEGINNING!  Do not think that you can merge it from the end of the transaction, because it won’t work!  I have an entire post written just for Merging Loops, and it explains everything, so click here to access it.

I can be reached at CarolynTechPertise@gmail.com, by phone or text at 918-951-9020 or visit my website at http://www.SearchTulsaHouses.com.  For technology training or consulting assistance visit http://www.iCarolyn.com.

Picture This

Most of the people that read this blog have attended one or more of my classes and I appreciate all of you!  Each and every class is different and has it’s on personality.  As those of you know that have attended a class, I take a “class selfie”.  I usually post them on Twitter and/or Facebook shortly after the class but some of you my want to go back and find your “class picture”.  Here is your chance.  I have posted them all on my Flickr account and linked them to my training website.  I have attached a link for anyone that ones to review them.  They are organized by year so have fun going down memory lane.  Feel free to save, post, tweet, share or print, feel free to tag me!!  Facebook: Carolyn  D Thompson, Twitter: @Carolyndt, Instagram: icarolynt, Flickr: CarolynThompson7

Flickr Collection Link

iCarolyn.com Post with pictures

It’s time for another great year and if your office or association would like to have me back, feel free to call, text, or email me to set something up!  Let’s see if I can beet 2017’s numbers: 120 Dotloop Classes Taught, 2,274 Students, 20 states.  I’m still working on my 50 state goal and looking to train in Alabama, Alaska, Arkansas, Connecticut, Hawaii, Indiana, Kentucky, Maine, Mississippi, Montana, Nevada, New Hampshire, Rhode Island, Washington, West Virginia, Wisconsin, Wyoming (17 left).  I’m a certified CE instructor in the following states: Oklahoma, Michigan, Georgia, South Dakota, Montana, Kansas, Maryland, Utah, New Hampshire, South Carolina, Washington, Missouri, and Florida.  If you want to attend another class or want to know where I will be, I have posted my calendar online and you can find it here: Carolyn’s Calendar.  I try to keep it updated as much as possible, but sometimes I get behind if I’m really busy, so you can always message me to check in.  Happy Looping!!

I can be reached at CarolynTechPertise@gmail.com, by phone or text at 918-951-9020 or visit my real estate website at http://www.SearchTulsaHouses.com.  For technology training or consulting assistance visit http://www.iCarolyn.com.

Editing Heaven

This part of my class gets so many people excited and they always want to know if I have more information, so here we go!  Let’s start with a blank PDF.  If you have a document that you want to turn into your own customized form, then these tips will make you very happy, especially the “OCD and willing to admit it students”.  I’m going to be giving you tips from both the PC and MAC users so look for the one that applies to your type of computer.  

Load your document in your loop or templates, “drag and drop” is my favorite way to put a PDF in the loop.  For this we are going to add a lead based paint document in the loop.  Now that you have a document, open it.  At the top you will see “add” and you have several things you can add to a document.  Many of these items share the same properties and options for shortcuts.  Let’s start by adding some initials.  After you click on “add initial” at the top, you notice that it follows your curser.  Put the TOP LEFT corner in the place you want it to be.  When editing using these shortcuts, the top left is the fixed point and the bottom right is where they will move from.  

To MOVE the field added, hold your SHIFT KEY down and then select the arrows to move the direction you want to move the box to.  If you press the right arrow key it will move the box right, if you press the down arrow, it will move the box down and so on.

To RESIZE you will want to hold the ALT KEY on a PC/OPTION KEY on a MAC and then move the arrows away from the top left to make it larger or toward it to make it smaller.  For example if you want to make it smaller, then you will need to hold the ALT KEY/OPTION KEY and push the left or up arrow.  To make it larger would go the opposite direction, by holding down the ALT KEY/OPTION KEY to the right and down.  

Another option for resizing is best used for a “radio button” but can be used for many fields.  If you have clicked on or if an item is highlighted, you will see at the top right the “more” and when you click on it you will see the “advanced” and once selected will it will open a new box and display the exact pixels for the field highlighted.  You can alter the size of the item be changing the pixel number to higher to increase the size and lower to make it smaller.  You have the options of the X and Y axis which is hight and width.  The radio button is the one button that does not have the arrow to increase or decrease the size with the mouse and this allows your to still resize it.

To DUPLICATE you will combine buttons and hold both the SHIFT AND ALT KEY/OPTION KEY and then push the arrow in the direction you want to duplicate it to.  If you have placed an initial box, then resized it to the correct proportions and need another one exactly like it, then use this tip to duplicate another one.

A lot of times we need to have more than one client initial or sign so a great way to prepare a form to be used for either 1 or 2 buyers then you will want to GROUP.  This is very easy to do and extremely helpful.  Once you have put the initials, signatures or radio buttons on the page, you will need to “click and drag” over each of the items you want to group.  You will notice that they will be highlighted and at the top of the screen (in the menu area next to “assign”) you will see 4 squares (either red or blue) and then when you hover over it you will see the word GROUP above it.  Once you click it, they will be grouped together and will show white with the word UNGROUP above it, signaling they are already grouped together.  Once you have them grouped accordingly, you will need to also ASSIGN it to the ROLE  that you want to be the one to sign or select it.  What this does is makes it so that you can only have 1 of the items grouped together initialed, signed or selected by each person.  For example, if you have 3 items you have “grouped” then only one can be selected or if you have 2 initial boxes grouped then if they are assigned to a buyer then only 1 buyer can initial in each  of the group.  They can not initial both, it’s what I call “client proof”.  Very helpful for setting up templates and not wanting to duplicate efforts.  

When you get the document the way you want it AND you want to use this as a template again, then under “file” at the top you will see an option that says SAVE AS TEMPLATE.  Then it will ask you about saving your work and I would say “yes” and then you will be prompted to select a place to save the template.  It will only allow you to put this in one of your folders in your templates and not in an office template so if you don’t have a custom folder created in your templates, you may want to do that first.  Now that your template is created, you can use this on other documents over and over.  

APPLY TEMPLATE is how you use the template that you just created.  Open a document that you want to apply a template to and click the “file” and APPLY TEMPLATE, then select the template you want to use.  This can also be used if you have an updated document that needs to be slightly edited.  For example, your real estate commission or association puts out an updated version of a form already in Dotloop.  You have it as a PDF from the commission or association and load it into your loop or templates and then APPLY TEMPLATE and select the older version to layer over all of the fields from the old form onto the new one.  Then you can adjust the boxes as needed to be in the right place sets for the new version of the document.  

One thing to note is that in order to save the templates and apply the templates, you will need to have Dotloop Premium.  If you are not a Premium user, you will need to upgrade in order to use these two features.  If you want to know all of the custom features and everything that you can do for all of the shortcuts, they are called “Hot Keys” and this is a link to the Dotloop support page with Hot Keys.

Two more tips: COPY and PASTE which are also shown on the bottom right of your screen when you are in a document, but here is how to use them.  First to COPY you will select or click on the item(s) you want to copy and then push these buttons on your keyboard together once: PC – CONTROL+SHIFT+C or MAC – COMAND+SHIFT+C and then click somewhere else on the screen or page you want to past them on and click all together once: PC – CONTROL+SHIFT+V or MAC – COMAND+SHIFT+V.  Then it will follow your curser and when you click, it will past the item you copied where ever you click and if you hold your SHIFT key down, it will allow you to past it multiple times until you let go of the SHIFT key.

I hope you enjoy these tips on Editing Heaven.  If you would like to have me come to your office to show you even more tips and tricks, complete the information below to get the ball rolling!  You never know what state I will be in.  I have trained in 34 states now and have 17 left to go (including D.C. as one of the places I have trained).  If you are in one of the 17, I’m ready to come your way!!

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I can be reached at CarolynTechPertise@gmail.com, by phone or text at 918-951-9020 or visit my real estate website at http://www.SearchTulsaHouses.com.  For technology training or consulting assistance visit http://www.iCarolyn.com.

What Filter?

Ok, so one of the most common support questions that people have concerns “Filters”. In class, I explain it as, “Have you ever thought you lost a loop?”. What I mean by that is that, you can’t seem to find it, but you remember creating it. It is usually a matter of clearing your filters and it appears.

First I would recommend you toggle to the “list view”, circle at the top right below your photo with 3 lines in it or if you are on the list view it will have 4 boxes in the circle. Another way to know you are on the list view is that you will see a search bar at the top.

Now that you are on the list view and can see the search bar, type in something in one of these categories which applies to the loop you are looking for. Categories are: street number, street name, city, state, zip code, MLS #, or Loop Name. Every time you are searching in the search bar, the system is looking through these 7 categories. If your loop is still not listed, then click at the top under the main menu items on the “filter” and the top will expand and show you what things you are being filtered for currently. Click the “clear all” button on the right and then click “Filter” and it will show you every loop regardless of status or category. Poof, they should appear. If your loop is still not there then change the text to are searching for or if you are using more than one account or profile, it could be on another account or profile, in which case you will need to toggle to the other profile and repeat the search and clear the filters again.

Once you are done and ready to go back to the original search list, just select the items you want to view, for example, I check all except: sold, leased, archived or done.

I can be reached at CarolynTechPertise@gmail.com, by phone or text at 918-951-9020 or visit my real estate website at http://www.SearchTulsaHouses.com.  For technology training or consulting assistance visit http://www.iCarolyn.com.

2016 Recap & 2017 Tip

It’s now 2017 and so much happened in 2016.  Most of the people that read this blog have attended one of my classes and I wanted to take some time to say “Thank YOU”.  I have enjoyed traveling the country and meeting so many new people.  I taught 108 classes in 54 1/2 days and spent 39 days traveling with 14 days away at functions or on the road.  In case you are wondering, that is 107.5 days (29% of the year) on the road traveling and training.  I have now trained in 33 states, only 18 to go.  The 51st one is DC, I counted that as a separate location even though it is not a “state”, but it’s not in a state, so 51 it is!

I’m looking forward to a new year with more new friends to meet and some great places to visit.  While I’m on the subject, if anyone knows offices in the states I have not trained in and would like to help me reach my 2017 year end goal of training in all 50 states.  This list of places I am looking for contacts to reach out to is here: Alabama, Alaska, Arkansas, Connecticut, Hawaii, Indiana, Kentucky, Maine, Mississippi, Montana, Nevada, New Hampshire, Rhode Island, Utah (I will be there next week), Washington, West Virginia, Wisconsin, Wyoming.  Thank you in advance for helping by emailing or texting me with any leads.

This is a tech blog, so I can’t go without giving you a tech tip!!  Since it is the year end and soon it will be tax time now might be a good time to give you want of my favorite tracking apps for my real estate and training business.  MileIQ and a link to a referral is here: https://www.mileiq.com/invite/IIPRG.  You may not know this, but years ago for an entire year I wrote emails (should have done it as a blog!) every week on “Apps” and every four weeks I did a “Four for Fun”.  Of course I explained how it works and what it does so this is like going back to that.  Here goes!

MileIQ, it’s Free to download, but only gives you 40 free drives each month.  It is absolutely worth it to spend the $5.99 per month or $59.99 per year for this!

What does it do?  It tracks everywhere you drive.  Yes it runs in the background, but doesn’t take up too much battery or data.  It will show you a map of where you started and where you ended.  Starting mark is green and ending is red.  It’s as easy as “swiping”.  Swipe right for “business” and left for “personal”.  If you swipe slowly in either direction, you can select from custom categories in either the business or personal side.  A couple of cool things is that you can “name” a location so that you remember were you are going.  I name my listings so that I know when I’m going to a listing or showing houses.  You can also select “auto classify” when it pops up so that you don’t have keep answering the same question.  It is super smart and when you are done it shows you a “star” in an award type badge that tells you that month is complete.  It can send you email reports of either a month or year end which makes doing your taxes a breeze!!  Another option is adding multiple vehicles and adding the odometer for each vehicle as well.  I have some screen shots to show you how it works.

App Store showing the logo on the app and the “Auto-Classify” feature.

Business items, and categories.  Notice the “potential” at the top right and naming the locations to any name that you want. (Swipe right)

Personal drives can be categorized differently as well. (Swipe left)

Monthly summary shows the amount of personal vs business drives and the year end totals show the graph of the milage driven.  You will notice that Jan is really short because I didn’t decide to use the “paid version” until February.  The nice thing is that it did remember the drives for a month, but not all the way back.  This is another reason why I’m telling you about this now.

I can be reached at CarolynTechPertise@gmail.com, by phone or text at 918-951-9020 or visit my real estate website at http://www.SearchTulsaHouses.com.  For technology training or consulting assistance visit http://www.iCarolyn.com.

Changing Dotloop Email

I have had this question a lot: “How do I change my email address when it says that my email is already in use?”  First, I should explain why this happens and a few background information.  In Dotloop your email address is your username and in that respect each email is a different “profile” or person.  Many of us have more than one email and we sometimes end up wanting to change an email affiliated with an account.  If you have never used the email before in Dotloop or never been sent anything in Dotloop to that email, then you will have no problem changing your email in the “my account” section of the account you want to keep.  If it gives you an error, this is how you fix it.

The reason it will not let you add that email is because the system sees that the email already has a profile or person with that email address and won’t allow duplicates, so like it or not, that email has an account already.  We are going to call the account with the email address that you want to change and the loops that you want to keep, the “Keep Account” (Example email address myemail@yahoo.com).  The account that is using the email address that you want to put on the Keep account that you do not want to use we are going to call the “Junk Account” (Example email address myemail@gmail.com).  This will require a 3rd email address (or use a family member’s) (Example email address myemail@hotmail.com)

Step 1: Sign-in* to the Junk Account and go to the “my Account” section in the top right below your picture, when you hover over the photo.  You will see the email that you want to use on the Keep Account.  Change the email address to a 3rd email (you can change it to the one listed on the Keep Account later, but not now).  The 3rd email needs to be one that has not been used before or you will get the same error message.  Click “save”.  A verification email will be sent from Dotloop to that email so you will need to access that email and then confirm the email change.  If you do not confirm this, you will not be able to proceed to the next step.  Log out of that account.  The password will be the same, just a different email to sign-in with.  Example: Sign-in to myemail@gmail.com and change the email address to myemail@hotmail.com.

Step 2: Sign-in* to the Keep Account and repeat the process by going into the “my Account” section and change the email address from the one you don’t want to the one you do want in the Keep Account.  Click “save”.  If you get an error message, make sure you completed all of step 1 because if you do not confirm, it won’t clear out the email for the new account.  Now go into that email account and confirm the email from Dotloop that changes the email.  Once you have done this, log out and log back in using the email address you just changed the Keep Account to and the password you used to sign-in before.  Example: Sign-in to myemail@yahoo.com and change email address to myemail@gmail.com.

Optional Step 3: If you want to make the Junk Account with the email address that was originally on the Keep Account, repeat Step 1 with the exception of changing it to the email you want it to be on.  Example: Sign-in to the myemail@hotmail.com and change to myemail@yahoo.com.  Then you will no longer have a Dotloop account on the myemail@hotmail.com.

 

*If you do not know your password, no worries, go to dotloop.com and click “sign in” at the top right and then click the magical button that says “forgot your password?”. 🙂 Enter the email you don’t know the password to and it will send you a “reset password” email.  Change it to whatever you want.

 

 

Side Note: Profiles are not the same thing as accounts.  You can still have multiple profiles on the same email account.  I have a personal profile that I call “Carolyn Thompson” and a real estate profile attached to my office which I call “KWRA Carolyn”.  The “Carolyn Thompson” used to be called “Default” which was confusing.  You can change your profile names in your “my account” section under “profiles”.  No one else sees these but you and this way if someone adds you to a loop, it will pop up a box when you first click on it that says, “which profile”.  You can also deactivate a profile if you are not using them, also in the same area (top of the profile).

I can be reached at CarolynTechPertise@gmail.com, by phone or text at 918-951-9020 or visit my real estate website at http://www.SearchTulsaHouses.com.  For technology training or consulting assistance visit http://www.iCarolyn.com.

Loop Template Timesavers!

Loop Templates are something that an office can set up and help their agents me more efficient and turn in the files in a proper order.  This blog post is going to focus on office or brokerage options in Loop Templates.  Agents if your office is not using these, feel free to forward this to them so they can utilize their tools in dotloop.

Loop Templates can be found under “Templates” on the brokerage admin profile.  The top option on the left says “Loops”.  If you have not set up any loop templates, you will see a screen that says “Try it now”.  If you have, then you will see all of your loop templates on the left below “Loops”.  Click on the “New Template” or “Try it now” and get started.  It will pop up a screen that asks you to name the loop template.  You can use anything and some examples are: Residential Listing Package, Residential Sale Documents, Rental Listing, Referral (Sending, not receiving).  Once you have named it, you will also have a drop down below that asks you what kind of loop, if you are setting up a real estate transaction, you will want to select “sale”.  This will automatically add the correct fields and roles needed for that type of transaction.

At the top is where you add a folder for the documents and then add the documents.  If we are working on a “Residential Listing Package”, then we might add folders with the names: “Listing Documents”, “Offer Documents (1 per folder)”, “Inspections, Reports & Other”.  By adding the folder names the way the office wants to receive them, they are more likely to come in complete in the correct format according to your office needs.  Now that you have folders, add the documents or placeholders that you want in each folder.  I should note that you can only create placeholders in the document section and not on the loop templates, but once you create them in your document templates, you can load them into your loop templates.  If you leave your loop templates page to go create and organize the documents in the document templates, don’t forget to “save” at the bottom so you don’t loose what you have done.

The next section is for the “people”.  Offices typically don’t add many people in this section, but if you have a title company or attorney that everyone uses, then this is where you would add them.  Below people are the “Tasks”.  This is where you can add any compliance or task lists that you want to appear on every loop using this template.  The negative is that you will have to type them out and can not load from your task list templates, but you only have to type it once.  This will save you time from adding the task lists later when doing compliance.

The “Roles” section is interesting because you cad add roles that you might have wanted to use before, but were not able to edit.  A good example of this is to add “Referral Agent”.  Many times referrals are sent and received and we don’t have a standard “role” in the loop.   Along with adding roles, you can add fields of information that you want for each of these roles, for example the referral agent’s address or phone number.

The bottom is my favorite part of the loop templates, which are the “Fields”.  What is cool about this section is that you can now require information to be input before an agent can submit their file.  For example, if they are turning in a listing, you can require the agent to enter the “List Date” and “Expiration Date” and “Original List Price”.  By requiring this information, you insure that you get exactly what you need completed, filled out.  It also allows you to sort for this information as well.  If it is blank you won’t find the loops sorting by the price, list date or expiration date in this example.  New fields can also be added in any of these categories or create a new category.  Some offices have certain forms that they want the agent to complete and maybe that information has to be put into another system like MLS or franchise system.  You could add a field to ask the agent “Greensheet Completed?” and make that a multiple choice, fill in the blank or an amount.

Last but certainly not least, don’t forget to “SAVE” and in order for your agents to see these, you will need to “Enable Template” at the top of each.  Until you enable them, the agents can not see them.  This gives you time to get them the way you want them and the activate them for all to see.  There are endless possibilities with these loop templets.  Happy looping and enjoy creating new possibilities of organization for your office!

I can be reached at Carolyn@icarolyn.com, by phone or text at 918-951-9020 or visit my website at http://www.SearchTulsaHouses.com.  For technology training or consulting assistance visit http://www.iCarolyn.com.

Who do you Trust?

As a REALTOR®, we know many service providers.  The question is “Who do you trust to provide a great service to your clients?”  A great way to include those providers into your transactions as a Trusted Service Provider or TSP.  If you work with the same title representative, closing coordinator, or lender you can add them as your TSP so it is easier to “connect” to them, so here is how it works.

Once logged into your dotloop account, click on the “People” section and the top one on the list to the left says “Trusted Service Providers” right above the “Contacts”.  If you do not see TSP’s then you are not a premium dotloop user and this is necessary for this feature.  If you have no TSP’s added it will show a button at the bottom that says “Get Started for Free”, click on that button and it will pop up a window that asks the field the TSP is in, for example: Mortgage, Escrow/Title, Attorney, Home Warranty, etc.  Then you will enter the Name and email of the TSP.  More than one TSP can be added at a time.  They will not display in the loops until the TSP becomes a premium user.

The cool thing about the TSP becoming a premium user is that it is not just for 1 agent or office.  If trusted service provider is a premium user that allows them to be seen as a TSP for any agent or office, on all of their loops and there is no limit!  Adding TSP’s do not automatically share any documents or people with the TSP.  They only know that they have been added to a loop so you will still need to share any information that you want them to seas with any other person you add to the loop.

I can be reached at Carolyn@icarolyn.com, by phone or text at 918-951-9020 or visit my website at http://www.SearchTulsaHouses.com.  For technology training or consulting assistance visit http://www.iCarolyn.com.

Paperless REALTOR®

My normal posts and articles are about tips and tricks and a lot of how-to’s.  This is great and many people follow my blog for that reason, however sometimes it’s good to take another perspective.  I typically right about things based on questions that I get from people about how to do things and this is no exception.  When I tell people that “I am a paperless REALTOR®”, they look at me a little funny with skepticism in their eyes so I felt it was time to explain what that really means.

First, I have to tell you that becoming a paperless agent was a choice that had to be made.  I’m sure many agents still have the very first file they ever closed XX years ago and I am no exception!  I still have in my garage the first real estate transaction I ever closed in 1998, which my family is not overly thrilled about.  They look at me and say “Do you really need that?” or “When was the last time you used that?”  I get it and so I had to move forward and in my case that was “paperless”.  You see if I have the paper, I will want to keep it, store it and not throw it away and THAT is not an option any more!

Here is how it works from a listing side where I represent the seller.  I may give the seller a printed listing presentation, if they want one to keep but mine is always on my iPad.  When it comes time to list the house, I send all of the documents through dotloop, provided they have an email address.  I will be perfectly honest, I don’t work as well with clients that do not have email, but I can.  The client can sign, print and view the documents for 7 years online.  If they request me to print things, I will!  When they receive offers, that also comes via dotloop and is presented to the client with full explanation.  This does not mean I send them an email and say “here you go”, but I TALK to my clients and explain what I sent and walk them through each part of a document.

Buyer sides of the transaction tend to accumulate more paper than the seller’s side.  This is because you are showing them listings and looking at homes.  I have cut that out as well.  I always meet with a new buyer and present them with a “Buyer Packet” of information, yes in paper format in a binder.  Once we meet and I review this within about an hour and a half, I tell them “this is all the paper you will receive from me unless you request more.”  Most people are fine with that and the ones that do want paper, I print it for them.  I have a buyer sign an agreement with a pen, also known as “wet sign” and then I scan the copies of hand written items and email them to myself.  I also end the appointment with “I will send you a digital version (via dotloop) of the same documents you have already signed so you get an opportunity to experience e-signing and online documents.”  Most clients think it is cool and can’t wait to try it.  Even when we are looking at homes, I print my MLS sheets to PDF and load them on my iPad via dropbox.  I can still write on, highlight and organize them in any way I want.  The difference is I don’t have lots of useless papers later, it’s a simple “delete” to get rid of them.

Any papers I am given like a termite report at an inspection or a copy of the receipt of earnest money, I simply scan into the computer and load it into my dotloop file as a PDF.  The ONLY paper I keep are checks because until they accept wired funds for earnest money, I will have to have at least 1 thing.  I keep them in a safe place (with my iPad which also features a GPS for tracking).  The originals of some things get given to others like the closing company or the client.  If no one needs the originals, they are shredded.  Even the people that I work with regularly, like my title/closing officer knows I don’t want paper.  She has stopped making copies for me at closing and just scans and emails them to me!  I love it, less mess and fuss.

Now when you hear me say, “I’m a paperless REALTOR®”, know that I mean every word of that.  Don’t drown in your paperwork, it’s time to convert to PeopleWork in the digital age.  Dotloop is the major tool I use in order to make that happen in my business.  Look for more tips next time and until then, try going paperless, it’s can be a freeing experience!

I can be reached at Carolynt@kw.com, by phone or text at 918-951-9020 or visit my website at http://www.SearchTulsaHouses.com.  For technology training or consulting assistance visit http://www.iCarolyn.com.