Thanks for the kind words. I am licensed in Oklahoma. I love Austin. I agree with your logic of making it modular, but from a management/bookkeeping standpoint it becomes a nightmare. And you hit the nail on the head with getting people to actually use it-- I believe if they were paying top dollar then they would be inclined to do so, and even perhaps grow their business to incorporate services they currently do not offer. And $200/mo. is not bad for every feature if you compare what top producer or some of these other lead generating applications costs. I would even be inclined to charge a one-time fee, and then require an annual renewal option for support and upgrades.
[quote=āveritrisā post=21269][quote=ānbnewellā post=21267]Vetris,
By using the Accounts module for properties, (ie: listings), we run into an additional issue with leads auto-populating account information if related to an Account or Opportunity which for the business model for our brokerage is less than desireable in regards to sales and lead tracking.
When you have an inquiry, they may inquire about one property initially, but look at many and the Accounts module would need to be almost entirely overwritten in order to accommodate listingsā¦ We need to track that activity both in the lead history for marketing purposes, , but also in the history of each and every property shown as our listing agreements protect us for a period of time after a listing expires. It is NOT uncommon for a client to list for 6 months then attempt to contact a lead we introduced them to in order to avoid paying commissions.
I agree. I think SuiteCRM can be effectively used for brokerage and property management ops. The thing that ticks me off is that something as basic and simple as calculated fields and formulas are not offered in Sugar or Suite unless you get the pro versions. I mean seriously!
Maybe I should rethink my last statement. This is kind of driving me nuts! Trying to relate Contacts to Contracts. Should be a many to many but itās one to many by default. A Contract should have a property and list its tenants. I donāt want to relate tenants to a property because itās the lease (contract) which ties contacts (tenants) to a property. Once the contract ends, the tenants are no longer related to the property. Keep going in circles creating and removing relationships! Argh!!
Single Contact to contracts, multiple contracts to accounts solves your issue. The contact isnāt related to the property, true. But the lease of each person is. 
When the listviea is properly configured, you would then be able to see the contacts attached to a property and jump to their record individually or their contract itself.
Well, a lease usually has multiple tenants so Iāll need to create a new contract per tenant which doesnāt reflect the correct relationship. I guess I could do it but whatever happened to customizing suite the way you want?
Its called logic. If you canāt conform to it then learn to code and customize it. There are many modules and ways to accomplish what you are saying, but nevertheless, its wrong the way youāre trying to do. The relationships already in place have been thought through and through to achieve whatever it is youāre trying to accomplish. Try abstracting your mind from the relationship aspect of it and focusing more towards the model/design view and you will understand how to customize it the way you want.
Hmmm ok. That sounds good but a little harder to visualize although I am getting some of it the more time I spend which has been quite a lot the last few days. Youāre telling me to keep one tenant per contract in this case. Thatās ok I can try that. I also decoupled the contract from accounts although now Iām not so sure about that. Basically when the lease ends the tenants are no longer associated with the property or landlord (account) just the expired contract.
Why would you no longer want them associated? As a REALTOR, you understand the importance of record keeping for periods of time. Ideally, what would happen is the contract status would change to āterminated, expired, etc.ā and being that the contact is attached to the contract, that transaction history would be available should you ever need to refer back to it for some reason. Maybe it was a bad tenant who had animals even though it was not permitted in the lease agreement. Later on down the line, they apply for occupancy in another unit you own or mange. Wouldnāt you want to review that persons credibility and previous history if it existed? Once the contract status has changed, the account (property) would also do the same. In other words, if there were no active contracts on an account then its status should be āAvailableā. There are ways to do this programmatically to auto update based on the status of other fieldsā¦
Never mind, scratch that. I realized I had it attached to an account and thatās how it should be, youāre right. An account for me is not a property, itās a management account which holds a landlord(s) and associated property(ies). An account has multiple contract (leases) attached to it, only one of which would be active at a given time (actually 2 if I have 1 contract per tenant per our previous exchange). Iām slowly but surely moving towards a usable SuiteCRM system!
On another note, Iāve been playing with logic hooks and date/time calculations for most of the day, the latter is driving me a little nuts. One of the downsides to coding for me: I take it personally when I canāt figure something out and spend endless hours getting it done. Iām trying to use the TimeDate class (or the Datetime PHP class) to set a renewal date based on the renewal days on the lease. For example, if the lease ends on 7/31/2015 and the lease has a 45 day notice period, the renewal date should be 45 days before the end date (a workflow will send the tenants email a week earlier).
Never give up. Look into dispage enhanced studio. It lets you code directly within the studio and even has syntax checking. Even better, it provides a much better date time module, and I wouldnāt use logic hooks for renewals. I personally would use the scheduler to run nightly at midnight and kick off and generate a report, then kick off an e-mail. LiveSite (our integrated scheduling app) allows for digital signature and document transmissions, as well as processing of payments upto $500 with $0 transaction fees. This would be a great way to get leases signed and receive rent payments, and even distribute profits to landlords.
The dispage advanced date time module allows you to do calculations on the fly. Upload multiple files at once and display them in listview and lots of other neat stuff.
Hmm I might try the free version to get an idea of what it can do. I spent most of yesterday trying to figure out date/time objects and how to manipulate them correctly. Canāt say Iām 100% confident but I did manage to get something into a logic hook which seems to work. An admin also posted some code in my other thread. I think manipulating dates and times are a critical function.
So when are we all going to get together and show each other our modules? Its cool weāre all working on different aspects of the real estate industry and could possibly combine our forces to come up with some pretty amazing items.
Hey folks. Sorry but we had a bit of a holiday here in BC, Canada. Just to try to catch up as quick as possible so you know where Iām at and coming from:
Iām a run-of-the-mill residential Canadian REALTOR who also has started commercial business sales transactions and also bringing some buyers into commercial leases. 95% of my work for the next while will be the former and the commercial leases about 5% with those numbers slowly switching the other way over time.
How Iām using suite is as follows which may be dumb now that Iāve re-read some of your posts. I will back it up with screenshots so you can better critique my setup:
leads: pretty much anyone whom I enter with whom I have the even most remote possibility of doing a real estate transaction. This means pretty much 90% of my database. I have categorized the lead (all changs done via studio) as either commercial buyer, residential, etc) assuming that I would one day need to perform searches according to those categories and that eventually iād get the web-to-lead capture feature working and the person themself would categorize themself upon filling out the form.
Once the lead has become a very good chance of becoming a transaction (sometimes right away sometimes over time) I āconvertā the lead to an opportunity to which I give a name format "prospects name-property-address-opportunity-typeā as per screenshot.
Within the opportunity, I create key fields like āsubject removal dateā, deposit due dates, etc. The idea there is not just for keeping records but more importantly so that I can create workflows that send me reminders about those dates. After I finally figured out the bloody cron job setup, it started working! I have a brain with a memory that lasts only hours so these reminders are by far the most necessary part of the CRM
When things change with the client along the sales cycle, I adjust those things in the Opportunity (ie. completion date).
Tasks: I have been using tasks as my reminder system. āFollow up wtih commercial buyerā would be an example of a task and then I put the due date in there. Then I create another workflow to send me a reminder when the task is getting close to due. This is another critical part of CRM for me.
It seems as though i have been totally unable to figure out how āaccountsā fits in and this post shows me that I may have to rethink my setup. I was also thinking we could use the software 'View your mind" http://sourceforge.net/projects/vym/ which is awesome brainstorming software to show each other where stuff should be in the flowā¦ Anyway, I need to take a step back and make sure that I donāt get too far ahead of myself with this setup and then have to redo it later.
I have not at all used the āmodule builderā feature yet, because I was simply afraid. haha I have instead been building all my features right into the core modules of Suite CRM.
What I need right away to figure out are the following:
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How to synchronize the internal calendar with Mozillaā thunderbirdās network calendar (I live there and itās ripping my mind out of my head that it wonāt work because it āalmostā works) see this thread: https://suitecrm.com/forum/suitecrm-7-0-discussion/1042-best-calendar-for-suite-crm-plugin-share seems oddly to be a deserted thread even though unresolved. Hoping someone here might be able to figure out. The internal calendar and all the business scheduled items are key for success
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Figure out the flow of all the stuff we are talking about here. seems as though Iām doubling my entry work on some of the stuff and we have enough people here to really make this thing fly.
Letās keep this rolling! Enjoy my screenshots and hopefully they are of value to everyone even in their current state. If you are reading this do NOT set up the way I have yet until we have determined which is the best way which will happen soon I feel.
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Veritris, $200/mo would be a bargain IF your offering has the right Lead Generation and Lead Nurturing features. I am an agent strictly focused on US residential sales (no property management, leases, commercial) and in the last month I have researched extensively for a Lead Gen / Lead Nurturing CRM and believe that there is a huge opportunity for a CRM developer with the right vision.
Three CRM providers - Boomtown, Commissions Inc, and TigerLeads - have Lead Generation/ Lead Nurturing CRMs, tightly integrated with an IDX capability, where their CRMs are LEAGUES AHEAD of the next tier down competitors. My investigation has been mainly on Boomtown and Commissions Inc:
- Boomtown charges $1,500/mo for their CRM and Commissions Inc charges $1,700/mo for theirs. They both also provide Internet Marketing Services (PPC), which is an additional cost above the CRM charge.
- They both are raking in > $1M/month on the CRM fees by my estimation. If you do a reverse IP lookup of one of their clientās websites, you can see find their servers with > 700 customers each and at $1,500 a popā¦ā¦
- As mentioned, when looking for a better priced alternative, there simply are none that offer roughly the same features. The several providers with a fair subset of features have so many customers reporting issues, bugs, etc I donāt think it is worth the trouble.
Iāve been trying to figure out a way to cobble together the features in a reasonably priced system that I have control over but am struggling to find it. The best I can come up with is Infusionsoft+wordpress+idx plus some infusionsoft 3rd party add-ons all totaling ~ $600/mo. BUT it would still be missing several important capabilities AND I would be spending a lot of time making it all work rather than calling leads and making money.
Veritris if you could develop something that offered 90% of Boomtown/Commissions Inc features, you could simply partner with a really good PPC/SEO service and contact all of those Boomtown/CINC clients I mentioned and show them how they can save $1,000+ per month. If you got 5% of them, that would be > $14k/month alone. And the bigger pie would be everybody that wasnāt willing to pay the high fees of Boomtown/Cinc but would easily pay $200 - $400 / month. I know I would buy it! ā¦.after it is polished a bit and wouldnāt make me a development guinea pig 
Okay, itās ready!
The worldās first fully-integrated lead/listing/lease platform featuring; front-end web site and customer self-service portal with 2 factor lead generation and capturing, appointment scheduling/reminder with secure document sharing and signing, IDX integration, contract/lease management, call/sms tracking, and last but not least ā fully mobile responsive for any device. Perfect for the agent or agency of residential or commercial real estate, land lords, and any other aspect of monetization as it applies to REALTY.
You can view a front end example at www.vvrokc.com. A demo backend will be publicly available soon. This is our test site. so keep in mind this is very, very alpha.
Schedule a demo to tour the front and backend of the system.
wayneoutthere I would like to collaborate with you to see what you have so far and share ideas
How is the development coming along for your Real Estate module for SuiteCRM? Iād be interested in checking it out if itās available.
Tom
EVERYONE ON THIS THREAD
This is an open source project.
If you make changes and distribute those changes ā¦ you MUST make all the changes available for anyone to download. You are legally bound to do so by the AGPL3 license. There are NO exceptions. This includes (specifically addressed by the Affero extension to GPL3) changes that are distributed as a software as a service proposition. Additionally, the whole solution inherits the original license and is open source.
I will say it only one more time: You MUST make changes you distribute available for download. This is how open source grows. Not by people privatising the efforts of others, but by collaboratively sharing modifications.
Read the license and understand what open source is.
Itās free as in freedom, not free lunch.
The project will pursue transgressions as will a myriad of other bodies whose job it is to protect open source.
hey there salesagility.
First of all, thank you so much for your work on this project. I am a fairly new convert to gpl and gnu stuff and Iām fully sold which i why Iām over here. I want to do all my future business with these licenses.
I am so thankful for this project that I cannot express it. When our company grows I will certainly put thanks back in with either cold cash or my time. The problem is that I do not know how to code. I wish I did. All that I have been able to do with SuiteCRM is work within the releases. I thought that I was contributing the best waY i could without contributing by trying to make customized fields for real estate.
I think the issue is that most of the world is lost in their proprietary systems and thinking so we are all just a little ignorant. You know as well as I do that no one reads the details of a license. I have learned it by surrounding myself in it. It has also helped me become an ambassador of the mindset.
So, my point of this is to say that some people in this thread may have gotten scared by your post when instead they might have had some stuff to share but donāt know how.
If there is anything at all that I can share with you, by the way, or anyone in charge of the project donāt hesitate to contact me. Iāll share as freely as the few in this thread who reached me but I donāt have any code to share. I wish I did!
Hope this helps.
Thank you all so much again. Iām building another new company and shared this with at least 3 other new businesses.