As an Appraiser, you are a small business owner and entrepreneur, and one of your most precious resources is time. Business process automation can save you precious hours. The ability to automate tasks you do regularly frees you up to focus on your core function — appraising real estate.
It is important for appraisers to Automate
Research shows that about 70% of small-medium businesses are still processing most of their data manually, resulting in hours of wasted time better invested in activities like growing your business or spending time with family and friends.
So how do you know if you’re one of that 70 % who are wasting precious time doing manual tasks that can be, and should be, automated?
Here’s a list of indicators that you need to automate your business as well as some tips on how to do it:
1. You are currently manually entering sales data into your accounting program.
Manually entering sales data into your accounting program is not only significantly time-consuming, but can be highly prone to errors. It also creates friction with your bookkeeper or accountant as they usually have to spend hours trying to find and fix discrepancies or holes in the data. If you are still doing this, stop. There is a better way.
With the rise of cloud software like Anow, much of the sales information needed to run your business can now be seamlessly captured as you schedule the appraisal job. When you schedule an appraisal, accept an appraisal order from a Mortgage Broker or AMC, you have the opportunity to capture the sales and payroll information. This can later be easily exported and shared with your accounting program, even your accountant. Enter sales data once!
2. You are currently sending invoices and chasing payments manually.
Research from RBS Invoice Finance shows that small to medium businesses spend on average 130 hours every year chasing payments. Small businesses wait on average 30 days longer than their agreed payment terms. Not only is that time business owners could be spending growing their business, but it is also a significant contributing factor to the cash flow problems plaguing small businesses.
If you are still manually creating and sending invoices and then chasing payments, you are wasting valuable time that you could be using to finish new appraisal jobs (or spending with your family).
To rectify this, appraisers can use the built-in invoicing of programs like Anow or even send invoices with a credit card link and bypass the lengthy process of waiting for a paper check. With no extra work, you then have robust A/R reports and an easy way to export CSV files or Excel sheets for your accountant. Even better if you have staff admin who can update your A/R in Anow and keep your business reports current every day.
3. You are currently manually entering financial results into a spreadsheet or waiting for your accountant.
Knowing your cash flow, your A/R balance, your upcoming payroll requirements are essential to the day to day management of your Appraisal business. As critical is knowing your source of work. Are you relying too much on AMC’s? Have you lost touch with private appraisals? Who is your number one customer source of appraisals that makes you the most money?
Waiting for a quarterly update from your bookkeeper or accountant might be too late for critical business reports.
The good news is that with Anow, the entire process of Business Reports is automated. You capture that data in your day to day job functions and with no extra data input effort you get seamless and valuable financial reports and KPI’s. For those who maintain their financial details in their accounting package, Anow enables you to push all your business details out to their financial software, bookkeeper or accountant.
Take Action!
If you’re making any of these mistakes, it’s time to automate your business and get ahead of the competition. Aside from the significant time savings, automating your business in the ways described above can also help you maintain better appraisal records, get paid faster and builder deeper, more profitable relationships with your customers.
Is your business making these mistakes? If so, what do you need to help you automate? Let us know your pain points and we’ll be happy to show you how the automation built into Anow can help.