Does Your Reporting Take Too Much Time?

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Do you dread the end of the month because it’s reporting time? If you have to set aside hours and hours (or even days) each month to complete this task, there’s a better way to handle it--no matter how big your business is.

Reporting is often complex

The volume of properties you handle has nothing to do with how complicated the reporting process is.

Even if you’re a new or small-time agent, you still have to pull data from multiple sources to get an accurate picture of how well you did in a given month--and budgeting or tax season makes it all even worse. You’ve been there: your complicated network of spreadsheets was absolutely perfect, until that one little number changed somewhere, requiring you to start from the beginning and recalculate everything.

This is also true if you’re a spreadsheet professional who revels in pivot tables and elaborate formulas. You’re still faced with having to set everything up in the first place and then managing your files to ensure you are always working off the most updated numbers.

Even if you have other people working in these files too, you run into version compatibility, switching between applications, difficulty accessing a file if someone else has it open, or constantly sending spreadsheets back and forth between users.

Reporting takes up more time than you think

Not sure that the reporting process really eats up that much of your time?

Take the monthly reporting challenge--use a timer app to track every minute you spend in the spreadsheet trenches (including any changes after you’ve labeled your file “final”), and then think about what else that time could have been spent on.

Chances are, you’ve got a long list of to-do’s that would love your attention, especially if it includes activities that will generate income for your business, which the reporting process itself won’t.

Options for reducing reporting

So what’s the solution?

Many tools have been developed for the exact purpose of reducing monthly reporting. When you implement one of these tools instead of a network of messy spreadsheets, your business will benefit in a number of ways.

You’ll save time, avoid mistakes (and the time spent fixing those mistakes). You’ll reduce your own stress level because you won’t have to dread reporting time anymore and you can always get an accurate snapshot of your business’s performance at any time, which helps you to be nimble with decision-making.

When you choose a tool that integrates with other systems you already use, the benefits are even greater.

Ditch the time-wasting spreadsheets and join Zipi, a convenient online tool for planning, tracking, and reporting on every aspect of your real estate business. Read how to make your real estate reporting easy here.