Learning More About ACT! by Sage&

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ACT! for Real Estate is designed specifically for residential real estate professionals.  It delivers all the great contact and customer management features included with ACT! by Sage, plus industry-specific functionality. You can utilize a custom layout with dozens of real estate-specific fields and seller property tab designed for residential real estate professionals for managing information most relevant to you. Track key buyer, seller, and property information, keep detailed notes on listed properties, track real estate-specific appointments and to-dos, attach critical documents such as inspection reports, house photos, and MLS listings, and manage property listings with custom sales processes – in addition to all the great functionality already included with ACT!. fficeffice" />

 

One of the new features that was introduced in ACT! by Sage for Real Estate 2008 (10.0) is the ability to merge picture fields onto flyers. ACT! for Real Estate delivers three custom flyers designed for real estate. These flyers contain placeholders for a photo, detailed property description, list price, and more using fields in ACT! for Real Estate. Flyers include: 1) For ffice:smarttags" />Sale; 2) Open House; and 3) Home Feature Sheet.

 

With flyers, it is typical to include more than one photo on the flyer. The steps to achieve this may be simpler than you think! The first thing you will need to do is create a picture field on Seller Property Tab (in addition to the picture field that already exists on Seller Property Tab). Once the field is created, you can add or merge that field onto a new flyer template you create or simply add it and modify an existing flyer template. You can do add this field into ACT! Word Processor flyer template, or Microsoft Word flyer template. The template creation tool depends on your word-processing tool selection.

 

1.    Create a new picture field on Seller Property Tab. Be careful – You would want to label each picture field differently so you can recognize which ones to add to the flyer template later.

2.    To add a picture field to a word-processing template: Do the following for your selected word processor:

             I.    ACT! word processor: From the View menu, select Mail Merge Fields.

            II.    Word 2002 or 2003: From the ACT! menu, select Show Field List.

          III.    Word 2007: Click the Add-Ins tab. From the ACT! menu commands, click Show Field List.

3.    Position the pointer where you want to place the picture/pictures in the template.

4.    From the list of Contact Fields, select the picture field. Click Add.

5.    Repeat Steps 3 and 4 to add more picture fields until done.

6.    When you are done making all changes/additions, choose File, Save As…, type the name of the template, and click Save.

7.    Insert the picture image into the field.

 

As a real estate professional, you often perform similar sets of activities for sellers, another set of activities for buyers, and so on. With ACT! for Real Estate, you can automate and expedite activities with multiple steps using one of 10 real estate-specific Activity Series. These Activity Series allow you to schedule multiple steps at once for a specific deliverable like a new listing or a closing. Because activities in the series are linked, a date change in one will push out dates for all other activities in the series. Now there is no need to worry about staying on top of deliverables with multiple steps because you can track them, including every step along the way, using custom Activity Series in ACT! for Real Estate.

 

To use an activity series:

1.    Lookup the contact(s) you will schedule the Activity Series for.

2.    Click Schedule and then choose Activity Series, which will launch the Schedule Activity Series dialog box.

3.    To see a list of available activity series templates for ACT! for Real Estate 2008 (10.0), click on the arrow down button under Activity Series template on the dialog box. Choose one of the activity series templates.

4.    Select the date from the Series anchor date: pop-up calendar.

5.    If you wish to add more contacts (like from a current lookup), choose the arrow button on Contacts, Select Contacts, and add them to the list of selected contacts. Once you are done adding contacts, click OK to return.

6.    Click Schedule.