Overview
Property Managers need a CRM that can help manage properties locations and contacts, maintenance requests, and closing on available listings.
Below are the steps you can take to use custom objects, custom fields, opportunities, and events at scale.
Configuration Steps
1. Organize your Property details
For this use case, we are configuring the CRM to manage a database of properties and their related maintenance and listings.
The columns on the spreadsheet are going to translate to the custom fields we are going to build in the CRM. Your data might look different, so understanding what data points you need to be able to report, forecast, search and filter by will be important.
2. Create the Custom Objects for your properties
We created a custom object for managing ‘Properties’.
Keep in mind when choosing between Record Name Field options, you can select a text field or an auto number ("Property# 001"). We chose text field so we could enter the property name.
3. Add custom fields to the property object
Copying what is currently being tracked on the spreadsheet, we created corresponding fields on the Properties object.
Manager, Agent, and Maintenance Manager fields are Lookup Relationship fields so I can link to contacts in the system
4. Update the custom fields on Opportunities to track available listings
Whenever a unit or property you manage becomes available to rent or buy, use Opportunities to manage the showings and signing process.
Here's a glimpse at the sample fields we created on our Opportunity to manage the listing details.
To link the Listing Opportunity to the Property, we created a Lookup Relationship field.
Now, as people express interest in viewing the listed unit, we will add them to Insightly as a contact and link them to the opportunity.
5. Get organized with custom list views
Now that we've customized our objects to track properties and listings, we can start adding records manually or using an import.
Once the data is in the system, we can create custom lists to be able to sort and segment our inventory and rentals.
Any spreadsheet can be recreated in the CRM by creating a custom List View and choosing the desired columns. Here we've created a list view of our Properties.
In Opportunities, we can get a clear visual of our available listings and prioritize them by move-in date.
6. Customizing Events to schedule Maintenance
By adding custom fields to Events, you can manage your maintenance requests and calendar from within the CRM.
Scheduling maintenance for your Properties is simple from the Property's Related tab thanks to the Lookup field we created on Events.
Your scheduled rentals will then appear on the calendar like so →
Workflow Automation Ideas
- Notification to maintenance manager and rep that an event is scheduled
- Notification to maintenance team when a new listing is created that needs to be prepped
- Notification to sales team when a listing has closed
- Notification to property manager when a maintenance request is completed