If you have physical document storage, then the folders are probably organized by the property owner's last name. For decades, this organizational style made it relatively easy to find the files you needed based on the types of requests real estate businesses handled. Someone was selling their property, so you'd find the property owner's folder. Someone else's property records need to be audited, and the majority of the relevant records were organized by their last name. 

But that organization system isn't sufficient anymore. Properties are being held by couples without the same last name. Other properties are being held by entities and small LLCs as private owners start to dabble more and more into real estate investing, and that means you might not have a consistent organization hierarchy. Even worse, not all searches are based on the property owner, and you might need to pull information based on another filter. Here's how digital document management can help.

Tools built for the real estate industry can help you organize by document type.

Property folders have standard documents, such as titles, deeds, and any contracts as they change hands over time. But some properties will also have permits, foreclosure documents, and liens. Your company might also have tax records and property valuation documents. Older systems of document management required you to specify the document type manually in the title. For example, you might have saved PDF scans as "[Document type] - [Property Owner] - [Year]" so you could easily identify them. But manual processes create mistakes, and they also take too long. New, automated scanning software can both identify standard document types and save that information as a searchable tag. They can also title the document in a programmed style that makes sense to the program and to future, human searches.

These tags and document-type filters do more than help you browse through folders. You can filter reports based on documents types, look for missing documents, and even start to analyze your records for customer personas and upcoming deadlines, all without doing the work manually.

If you want to see how automation can improve every aspect of your business, contact our team today.