Buildout’s Lite CRM Database can enhance your research, streamline your prospecting, and make sure that anything you’re doing out of the office gets tracked in our system.

Your Database is your main information source, and not only serves as intel on all of the potential listings in your market, but also as a way of tracking your clients, co-brokers, and investors. The tool allows you to connect these records to each other and search through them using a variety of filters, as well as letting you log activity and interactions you’re having throughout your day-to-day.

In Buildout, everything starts in Database. It’s the one place where you can add all of the new buildings and people that you come across. Once you’re ready to put together a Proposal, you can easily turn a Property into a Listing or a Contact/Company into a Tenant Rep or Buyer Rep Assignment. Now instead of starting the Marketing process by entering in your Listing’s information, you’ll be able to pull all of those fields directly from your Database with a single click.

Within the Database there are three types of records; Properties, Contacts, and Companies.

Properties represent all of the commercial real estate properties that you’re aware of in your market (or elsewhere) whether you’re actively representing them or not. This can include any type of relevant property from Office buildings to Land parcels.

Note: The required fields for creating a new Property are Address, City, State, and Zip.

Contacts represent the people you work with and the people you represent—essentially any relevant CRE contacts can be added as Contacts so you can track the interactions you have with people on a day-to-day basis.

At least ONE of these fields is required to make a new contact: First Name, Last Name, Email.

Similar to Contacts, a Company is any relevant entity that you’d like to track in your Database. Some of these will be brokerage firms on the other side of a deal, and other times it might be a potential tenant company for a new office.

The only required field for Company is Name.

What makes Database a crucial tool for CRE is that you can associate Properties, Contacts, and Companies with each other in our system.

For example, you might have a Contact who is known to be the Owner of a specific Property or you might want to add a Company as a Tenant under a particular building. These connections are important because they enhance the depth of the information in the Database and allow you to jump from Property records into Contact and Company records easily.

Any two objects you connect in the system will point at each other from their respective pages. For example, let’s say you add someone as a Related Contact from a Property page and set them as a Tenant.

If you click on the Contact’s name from this tab, you’ll be taken to their Contact page where you can see all of the Properties this Contact is related to.

You can add a new connection through any record’s page in the system using the sections outlined above. In order to establish these connections, you’ll need to select a type of Relationship (Owner, Tenant, Investor, etc) and you can also enter in duration (ex: a tenant leasing space from 2017 to 2022). We’ll talk more about exactly where to do this later.

Finally, once you’ve set up Related Contacts for your Properties, you’ll see that by running a quick Property search you can easily generate a list of Related Contacts using the “See Related Contacts” dropdown. The ability to instantly generate a list of Contacts who are related to a list of Properties is a key part of getting the most out of your Database.

Your Database is designed for research and prospecting, so you have a lot of options when it comes to viewing, sorting, and filtering your data.

Here you’ll see which Database you’re currently viewing. By default, you’ll be viewing All Databases.

Switch the Database you’re viewing to any other Database you have access to.

Type here to query your database! You can use address information or keywords and our system will produce a list of all Properties that match.

Organize your database using Groups! These are unique to your user account, so feel free to create any groups you want in order to sort your records appropriately, just keep in mind that your Groups will not be visible to the rest of the users in your Database! The default folder you are viewing is All Properties but you can use this dropdown to select any other group you’ve created. You can create a Group using the Actions Dropdown.

Use this section of the search bar to apply filters to the Properties displayed below. Click on any of these 4 dropdowns to view the parameters you can filter by.

Manage the organization of your entire Database by using Tags! These apply across your entire company and can be used to denote any amount of specific information you’d like to group your Properties by. If you’re a database administrator, you can also edit tags by clicking Manage Tags.

This button allows you to switch between the List view (pictured above) and the Map view (pictured below). The Map will also filter your results based on address as you zoom in so keep that in mind while using Map view!

Select one or more properties and then click on the dropdown labelled Actions and you can create Groups, See Related Contacts, apply Tags or Delete these properties.

Note: The actions you have available to you here are significantly restricted if you’re viewing All Databases, make sure to switch to a single database for full access to all options.

Take your Property data wherever you’d like by selecting them in the search and clicking this button to download a spreadsheet.

10. New Property

Click this button to create a new Property to add to your database. Complete any information you have about it, as well as upload pictures and add Related Contacts.

Change the fields you see in your searches by clicking this icon! You’ll see we have a number of extra data fields you can display directly from the search page. Select any field to add it to your view.

Here you can see a Contact’s information as well as log any activity you might want while searching through your Database. This page will follow you through the Database section and allows you to take notes or record activities on the go.

Contacts and Companies both share a very similar layout for their search pages, although you have slightly more options under the Actions Dropdown for contacts because they have individualized contact information.

We’ll provide a detailed walkthrough below of the Contact search. Keep in mind most of this information is also true for the Company Search.

Here you’ll see which Database you’re currently viewing. By default you’ll be viewing All Databases.

Switch the Database you’re viewing to any other Database you have access to.

Type here to query your database! You can use contact information or keywords and our system will produce a list of all Contacts that match.

Organize your database using Groups! These are unique to your user account, so feel free to create any groups you want in order to sort your records appropriately, just keep in mind that your Groups will not be visible to the rest of the users in your Database! The default folder you’re viewing is All Contacts but you can use this dropdown to select any other group you’ve created. You can create a group using the Actions Dropdown.

Filter your contacts based on their Contact Type by using this dropdown! You can edit a contact’s type by clicking on it on the search page.

Manage the organization of your entire Database by using Tags! These apply across your entire company and can be used to denote any amount of specific information you’d like to group your Contacts by. If you’re a database administrator you can also edit tags by clicking Manage Tags.

Select one or more contacts and then click on the dropdown labeled Actions and you can put these contacts into a Group or Tag them, create Tasks for them, get their Email as a list, or add them as Leads to a Project.

Note: The actions you have available to you here are significantly restricted if you’re viewing All Databases, make sure to switch to a single database for full access to all options.

Take your Contact data wherever you’d like by selecting them in the search and clicking this button to download a spreadsheet.

Click here and you can create a new Contact to add to your database and input contact information as well as set Related Properties.

Change the fields you see in your searches by clicking this icon! You’ll see we have a number of extra data fields you can display directly from the search page, just check the box next to any field to add it to your view.

Here you can see a Contact or Company’s information as well as log any activity you might want while searching through your Database. This page will follow you through the Database section and allows you to take notes or record activities on the go.

The Search pages let you view your Database from a broader perspective, but once you’ve found a particular Property, Contact, or Company, you can drill down to get more detailed information. Clicking on a Property, Contact, or Company in the Database will take you to its Record Page.

After clicking on a Property, you’ll see all of the information that has been added in your Database. The New Project button lets you turn this Property into a Listing to start the marketing process. You can click the gear icon to edit it.

On the left side of the screen, you’ll see links to associated Listings, Groups and Tags as well as a place to add Attachments to this property. On the right side of the screen you’ll see four tabs:

Overview - View all of your Property’s basic information and view it on the map.

Comps - See all prior transactions related to this Property

Tenancy - Verify any known tenants of this property and view their contact info

Contacts - Set up your Related Contacts for this Property

Just like their search pages, Contacts and Companies share a similar layout in their record pages as well. Here, we’ve shown a Contact page but you’ll find most of the same information on a Company page with the added ability to connect Contacts to a Company as employees.

Clicking on a Contact or a Company will take you to its record page in the database. In Properties you can use the New Project button to create a new Listing, but in a Contact or Company page you can use the New Assignment button to create a new tenant or buyer rep deal.

On the right side, you’ll see three tabs:

Activity Feed - Here you’ll add Activities & Tasks to this Contact (more on this below)

Properties - See all of the Related Properties for this Contact

Projects - See all of the Projects you’re currently working with this Contact on

On each of these pages, you’ll see an Activity Feed section:

In addition to storing all of each record’s information in the system, we also want to be able to track how you’re interacting with all of these records—whether it’s a Property you’re keeping an eye on or a Company you’re finding a space for.

By default, this section will be showing you all activity for a record, but you can use the tabs above to filter by a specific type of interaction. You can also click the New Task button to create a Task for the future or record an Activity that happened in the past.

Activities are used whenever you’re recording an interaction that has already happened. If you’re on a Contact or Company page, you’ll be able to record an Activity using the window on the right side of the page:

When recording an Activity, you can select between a Call, Email, or Meeting, set the date/time, and add any details that you want to record for future reference. You can also assign this activity to another person in your office if you’re recording it on their behalf, or add any associated Contacts, Properties, or Projects.

You’ll also see you can set a Critical Date to note a particular deadline on the Activity feed.

For Properties, this same functionality can be found under New Task on the bottom right of the page above the Activity Feed.

If Activities represent actions in the past, then Tasks represent actions in the future! You can use Tasks to create to-do lists for yourself, and you can also assign Tasks to others in your office. The major difference between an Activity and a Task is that a Task has an Incomplete/Complete status that lets you track your work as you finish it.

To create a Task, you can use the window on the right side of a Contact or Company page:

While creating a Task, you can set the Type, and then create a Due Date. You can also set up an Email Reminder. Just like an Activity, you’ll be able to enter any additional details you might need and associate this with other records in the Database. Finally, you can also assign tasks to others in your office by selecting them in the Assigned To dropdown.

You can also create tasks by using the New Task button in the bottom right of a Property Page or the top right of the Tasks page in the Database dropdown.

You have the ability to create tasks from in different pages throughout your Database as well as in the Marketing tab. The Tasks tab in the Database dropdown lets you manage your Tasks and keep yourself organized.

On the left you’ll see different chronological filters as well as the By Project option which breaks up your tasks by which Project (either a Listing or an Assignment) they are associated with. You can also use the filters on the top right to drill down into specifics on your tasks, whether that’s by date, assignee, creator, or type.

Save any deal you close as a Comp and it will appear in this section of your Database! For those of you who are familiar with Buildout Marketing, we’ve always had the ability to add comparable properties to your account and use them in marketing materials, and now they are also linked to your properties in the Database.

From this screen, click on any comp and you’ll be taken to the Comps tab of the Property it belongs to, and you can also export your comps from this screen using Export as CSV.

In addition to recording activities and tasks directly through Buildout, you can also set up a number of integrations from your Profile Settings menu that make it easier to pull in some of this information from the tools you’re already using.

Email Forwarding - Add your CRM email address to the CC or BCC field in your email, and any emails you send to Contacts in your database will show up in their activity feed if you add your CRM email address to the CC or BCC field in your email

Calendar Sync - Set up a Google calendar integration and any events you set up with your contacts will show up as Meetings on their activity feed!