Processing Resale documents is an absolutely essential part of HOA or Condominium management. This is most likely the second-largest revenue generator for your company. As such, it has the potential to be your most significant source of profit. Although this is a large revenue source, it is proportionally a smaller part of the business and often neglected or overlooked.
Consequently, maximizing your employees' time and company profits requires some thought, commitment, and monitoring. Otherwise, it is hard to know what (if anything) is hindering the processing of resale documents.
Common mistakes regarding your resale documents aren't necessarily detrimental to your business but definitely cost you in lost employee time, confusion or frustration.
We can probably all agree that anything that is inconsistent is a "time sucker". In the resale document processing part of your business, there are two areas where I see this all the time.
Document naming:
I am referring to having a common name or acronym for the same document type. Here are a few examples of document types: CC&R's, Annual Budgets, Monthly Balance Sheets, Parking Restrictions, etc.
Here is an example scenario regarding balance sheets following the March 2021 board meetings: Mary in accounting names her balance sheet "Mar Fin Main Street Assoc" and John names his "2021.03_Bal BR" and then Jenn is told to "update the financials". Jenn is pretty intelligent, and she does this all time, so she can figure out what to do. Unfortunately, Jenn is on vacation, and Billy is asked to update the documents and has no idea what goes where.
Solution: Get with your staff and come up with a common way to name the documents, get everyone to agree, write it down, and move forward with implementing this from now on. I don't even recommend changing the names of the already existing documents. Just be consistent going forward.
Association nicknames or acronyms: Most management companies have nicknames or acronyms for the communities they manage, especially those with long names. This makes perfect sense for conversations around the office or a quick email to a colleague. For example, Green Valley River HOA might be called GVR around the office. However, it goes awry when you also have Big Valley River, which is referred to as Big River. For conversation, this is fine but can get confusing when writing them down or naming documents, as in the example above.
Solution: Create a naming convention that makes sense, write it down and implement it. The most typical acronym we see is to use the first letter of each word, like GVR in the example above. This works really well until you have two associations with the same first letters. I have seen other creative solutions, such as the first three letters of each word in the name. There is no one-size-fits-all solution here; collaborate with your team and find a solution that works for you. The sequence can vary as long as everyone is on the same page in the end.
Combining both of these ideas: Using standardized document type names or acronyms along with association acronyms for your associations will save your processors a lot of time while working with, updating, and searching for documents.
Solution: As mentioned above, collaborate with your team, find what works best, and implement it. WARNING: your team won't like it (they don't like change), and they don't think there is anything wrong with what they are doing now. Put in the work, and it will pay dividends.
Resale Document processing efficiencies with GDN
With this blog post, you now have two new arrows in your document processing efficiency quiver. The challenge now lies in shooting those arrows, hitting the target, and reaping the benefits of more efficient processing. If this sounds challenging, it's because it is. That's also why GetDocsNow created a system that automatically creates an acronym for each association.
Having association acronyms allows you to take advantage of automated, time-saving features within the GDN system.
If you’re interested in discussing this further or learning more about how we at GetDocsNow increase profitability and efficiency please reach out via email at bgreene@getdocsnow.com or click here to schedule a conversation.