GSBOR's Transaction Desk Help Desk

Branding Tips & Tricks

Branding is uploading your personal photo, company logo and a banner so that all of your documents, forms, e-mails and fax back cover sheets are personalized with your name, contact info, and picture.  It is easy to set up your own branding within your Transaction Desk account.

To prepare for the branding process, you will first want to make sure that your logo, personal photo and banner is saved on your hard drive and ready to be uploaded.  Here are few tips to remember:

Tip 1:  Personal Photo and Logo Dimensions should be 145 pixels high x 120 pixels wide.  Most photo editing software on your computer will allow you to enter these dimensions and then resize your picture accordingly.

 

Tip 2:  Banner dimensions should be no more than 125 pixels high x 800 pixels wide.

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If you're struggling with creating a banner on your own, we have found a few web sites that are easy to use and that are FREE.  Within minutes you can create your banner, save it as a jpeg format, and then upload into your Transaction Desk Account.  You get directly to these web sites by clicking on the link here:

• www.cooltext.com
• www.mybannermaker.com
• www.etntalk.com/cgi-bin/bcreator/bcreator.cgi

Tip 3:  Photos, Logos and Banners are only accepted in the these formats:

.jpg
.bmp
.gif
.tif

Tip 4:  Save your photo, logo and banner to your computer's desktop so that it easy to find when you are uploading it into Transaction Desk.

After you log into the system, click on the "Settings" link.  Then select the box labeled "Branding".  Here is where you will upload your saved pictures.  Select each item and upload the photos and banner you saved to your computer desktop.  Once this is completed, all of your actions in Transaction Desk are now branded with your identity.

The Difference Between Closing & Archiving a Transaction

Congratulations! You have successfully closed one of your transactions and collected your commission check.  Now comes the time when you are ready to file away all documents related to this transaction either in your literal filing cabinet or your virtual one here in Transaction Desk.  So what do you do, do you "close" the transaction or "archive" the transaction?

First, when you mark a transaction as "closed" you're technically not doing anything with it other than changing the status for easy sorted viewing in your existing transactions list.  That way you can sort all of your transactions by "open" or "closed" or both and quickly find your active files.

I suggest only changing the status of a transaction to "closed" if it is a dead transaction and has the possibility of coming back to life.  (Example: one that has fallen thru or is only a backup offer).   However, you really don't have to limit yourself to closing only these types of transactions. Remember it is just a way of sorting your transactions.  Many Agents often choose to change the status of ALL of their completed (fallen thru or not) transactions to "closed" until the end of the year and then archive the ones that are truly closed for good.

Archiving a transaction just pulls all of the data from a transaction file and merges it into one clean PDF document package for long term storage/record keeping.  You are basically pulling it out of the TD online system and putting it into long term storage on your computer hard drive (local disk) or external hard drive.  In our office, we archive a transaction to our external hard drive with a file labeled "2007 Closed Files", once it is completely finished.  The great thing about this system is that there is no right or wrong way to finalize your transaction files, it's all up to you and your Broker on how it should be completed. Now go spend that commission check!

If You Sign Up...Then Show Up

We have scheduled many Transaction Desk training modules as many as we possibly can for the next 30 days.  Due to the overwhelming response we have received, we have even added classes because all of the other classes have been "sold out" and waiting lists have been formed. 

Then comes the problem of Agents signing up to attend the class and then doing a no-call-no-show.  If you can't attend a class that you signed up for, we are requesting that you contact Renee at The Board to cancel your reservation allowing another Agent on the waiting list to fill your spot.  Please show us this courtesy by showing up for your scheduled class.  Thank you for your cooperation.

Contact, Task & Calendar Management Class on Thursday

Don't miss the class this coming Thursday (December 13, 2007) at The Board.  This class will specifically be geared to those of you who are planning on using Transaction Desk to manage your tasks, calendar appointments and contact management.  This system is great because it easily syncs with Microsoft Outlook (which most likely syncs to your Palm or mobile device).  Therefore it's nice to have all your info in a centralized location like Transaction Desk.  We will be offering online video tutorials soon about how to import/export your information within Transaction Desk and Outlook.

Attention Affiliates & Third Party Vendors!