During rainy days and in between projects, I've been working on taking my processes to the next level.

I've finally taken the lease that I use and have fully automated it to follow my procedures. I still have more bells and whistles that I want to add to streamline it even more, but it's 100% functional and pretty awesome because it can be added to ANY document using google docs.

When I open the document, there's a menu item "Populate Lease", which fires off my program.

It asks me for the house's numerical address, "123" for example. If it finds a singular match in my database of properties, it automatically pulls in all of that property's info that I need for my lease. If I have more than one property with the same numerical address, it will prompt me for the street name and then pull all of its info into the lease. If it can't find a match it will call me bad names and remind me that I've forgotten to add it to my database.

It then prompts me for the following:

Number of tenants:

Tenants' names:

Lease starting date:

BASE monthly rent:

Any pets: yes/no

Number of pets:

Pet rent per animal:

Pet 1 - XX name/breed/type:

Security Deposit percentage: 100%, 150%, 200% (of base rent)

Lease term: 6/12/24 months

If 6 months, it automatically adds a 20% monthly premium to

the base rent.

Will they be renting washer/dryer: yes/no

If yes, it prompts for appliance rent amount and then

appliance details.

30 or 60 days notice required to terminate?

THEN if the lease term is >6 months, the program will notify me if the lease terminates during winter (November-February) and gives me the option to automatically extend it out until March 31, which is now my standard operating procedure. ( I can stagger them if needed, but right now this works for me).

It then calculates EVERYTHING. The prorated rent amount (if applicable), the security deposit, the total to bring to lease signing, the money due for the entire term, date the lease ends (adjusts for leap years).

It does EVERYTHING that I used to do by hand. I don't use payday rent options, but if I did, it would calculate those payment options out as well.

After all of the information has been entered, it copies my original lease (It leaves my original lease untouched/unmodified so I always have ONE working original copy to work from). It then fills in all of the information throughout the document where it needs to go.

THEN after the document has been filled out, it scans my google drive to see if I already have a folder for that property. If I do, it will create a new folder within it and name it "lease start year - lease end year, tenant 1 last name, tenant 2 last name". If I don't, it will create all of the folders for me.

It will then save the lease to that folder and will name the lease with the naming convention I use for all of my leases.

After all of that, It will check my google calendar for any previous lease expiration events for that property and will delete any that are found.

It will then add the following events to my google calendar:

Lease signing date

Lease expiration date with a 30 and 60 day advanced reminder notification at 9:00 AM.

Finally it will send a confirmation email letting me know the lease file name/location where it was saved, and what events/dates were added onto the calendar.

I can't wait to get the down time I need to automate my screening process the rest of the way.

You rock Jason! Wish you were my neighbor.

I'm automating google voice so all calls go to voicemail as many here have recommended. Then I won't need a helper this year. Like others here, I've made a "Prospect Questionnaire" to send to inquires that follow the instructions in my ads. Wish I were as far along in doing what you are doing,

Google has its own scripting service called Google Apps Script. It uses javascript coding and can be made to trigger on demand or run in the background of the document.

For me, I wrote a separate function to populate the menubar with an action item, which then fires off my lease population script.

We are using that to generate stock emails based on the pre-screening answers to our Google Form. Have not at all used it to potential yet.

But for instance, "income" triggers an email that says, "Thanks for your interest, but your stated income does not qualify you for this unit..."

Or "seasonal" sends, "Thanks for your interest, but we do only long-term annual leases, not seasonal housing..."

Hoosier, I'm by no means a programmer, but 1000+ lines of code later and it does exactly what I want and how I want it to be done.

I'm sure a programmer could have had it all working with a fraction of the code I used, but I'm really happy with it.