Summary: Learn how to customize REI BlackBook to match your unique investment strategy. This guide covers creating custom data fields, organizing them into tabs, defining specific deal types, and managing your repair estimators and intake forms.
1. Accessing Deal Settings
To begin customizing your pipeline architecture, navigate to your main dashboard. Click on your name/profile in the top right corner and select Deal Settings from the dropdown menu.
This dashboard is your command center for customization, allowing you to manage:
- Deal Fields & Tabs: Custom data points related to your deal.
- Seller Sheet: Your lead intake script.
- Repair List: Your renovation cost estimator.
- Deal Tabs: Customize the organization of your deal data points.
- Deal Tags: Labels for segmentation.
- Deal Types: The specific pipelines (e.g., Wholesale vs. Rental) and their stages.
2. Customizing Deal Fields and Tabs
While the system comes with over 150 pre-built fields, you may need to track specific data points unique to your business.
- Deal Fields: You can create new custom fields attached specifically to the deal object. When creating a field, you can select the "Field Group" (e.g., Loan Details, Occupancy) to keep your data organized.
- Deal Tabs: To keep your interface clean, you can group related fields into custom Tabs.
- Example: If you are doing "Slow Flips," you can create a dedicated "Slow Flip" tab that houses all the specific finance and timeline fields relevant to that strategy.
3. Defining Deal Types and Statuses
A Deal Type effectively acts as a distinct pipeline with its own unique workflow. Out of the box, you have access to types like Seller Leads, Wholesale, Fix & Flip, and Rental.
- Creating/Editing Types: You can edit existing types or create brand new ones (e.g., a "Probate" deal type) with a completely custom list of statuses.
- Ordering Stages: You should arrange your statuses in a linear sequence representing the flow of a transaction, such as: New Lead → Analysis → Offer Made → Under Contract → Closed.
4. Enforcing Data Integrity (Required Fields)
To ensure your team is collecting the right data, you can require specific fields to be filled out before a deal can be moved to a certain status.
- The "Reason Dead" Example: You can configure the "Dead" status so that when a user drags a deal there, a popup asks for the "Reason Dead" (e.g., Price too high, Sold to competitor). This ensures you capture why deals are failing for future analysis.
5. Configuring the Seller Sheet & Repair List
These two tools help you gather data efficiently during the deal lifecycle.
- The Seller Sheet (Intake Form): This acts as your script when talking to sellers. You can turn off sections you don't use or add custom questions. The form is dynamic, meaning it can hide or show questions based on previous answers.
- The Repair List: You can set your own default pricing for renovation items.
- Example: If you know your cost for vinyl flooring is exactly $2.00/sq ft, you can save this default price. When you run an estimate later, the math is done automatically based on your preset values.