A sold board that never went up
The sale was agreed three weeks ago. The vendor asks why the board still says for sale. The negotiator meant to order the sold slip but forgot. Down the road, a board for a house that completed in the spring is still up, advertising a sale that finished months ago, and the new owners have rung twice to ask for it to be removed.
Your board contractor is doing exactly what they were asked. The problem is what they were not asked.
Why board ordering slips
Board orders are small, frequent tasks tied to status changes: instructed, sold subject to contract, withdrawn, completed. Each one is an email or a phone call to the contractor, and they are the kind of task that gets forgotten on a busy day. There is usually no list of which boards are up where, so nobody can check.
Some vendors do not want a board, and some locations have rules about boards, which your business will have its own approach to. Those preferences need to be recorded and respected.
| Status change | Board action | Usual trigger |
|---|---|---|
| Instruction goes live | Put up for sale board | Negotiator remembers |
| Sale agreed | Add sold slip, if vendor agrees | Negotiator remembers |
| Withdrawn | Remove board | Often forgotten |
| Completed | Collect board | Often forgotten |
What forgotten boards cost
Boards are some of the cheapest local marketing you have, and a late board loses its early days. Sold slips signal activity to neighbours who might be thinking of selling. Boards left up after completion annoy new owners, and a board still outside a withdrawn property can cause trouble with the vendor. Unnecessary board visits and lost boards cost money too.
Boards are also a visible sign of how organised your office is. Neighbours, potential vendors and competitors all see them. A street with your current boards, correctly slipped, tells a story of an active agent. A street with faded boards from sales that ended months ago tells a different one.
How we automate board orders
- Status triggers: when a property's status changes in your CRM, the matching board action is prepared automatically.
- Consent check: the vendor's board preference, recorded at instruction, is checked first. No board is ordered where the vendor declined.
- Order to contractor: a clear order goes to your board contractor with address, board type, position notes and any access details, by email or through their ordering system if it has an API.
- Board register: every board is recorded with its status, from ordered to up to collected, and the contractor's confirmations update it.
- Stale board alerts: boards still up after completion or withdrawal, beyond a period you set, are flagged to the branch.
Boards that follow the sale
Boards go up when listings go live and slips go on when sales are agreed, without anyone remembering. Old boards come down on time. The branch can see every board it has out, which is also a useful map of activity for canvassing.
The contractor's invoices also become easy to check. Each board visit on the invoice can be matched to an order in the register, so charges for boards that were never ordered, or collections that never happened, stand out. Vendors who declined a board are protected from one going up by mistake, which is exactly the kind of error that damages trust at the start of an instruction.
Is this happening in your patch?
- Board orders are emailed to the contractor by hand.
- Sold slips are sometimes forgotten.
- New owners have asked you to remove an old board.
- You have no list of which boards are up where.