Good afternoon, everyone, and welcome to a webinar for Flexmls highlighting the process for adding and changing listings. My name is Amy Long, and I am your trainer today. Today I’m using our home MLS, which is the Fargo Moorhead MLS. And this is probably gonna look a little bit different than what you all are used to, understandably, but please know that the process I show is going to be the same.
There’s always some differences with every MLS, but the processes and the workflows and that type of thing will be the exact same. So today we are going to cover adding and changing listings in Flexmls. And if you’re a more experienced user, hopefully this will be a nice review for you.
If you’re a newer user to Flexmls, hopefully this will help you understand the process that you will take and the workflow that is required when you are adding listing to the system, how you will find an incomplete listing in the system and make further modifications to that listing. And then once the listing is live in the system, where you will go to make changes to that listing.
And I will try and cover a few other areas as well, such as the menu and where you can find all those functions that you’ll use most frequently for this process, as well as listing input forms, If we have time, the listing activity report and just some help features that are also available. So with that said, let’s get going. I’m gonna shift over now into Flexmls.
And again, this is my home MLS for Fargo Moorhead. So we are going to start by talking just a moment about what we see, and this is what we call the home dashboard. And we’re not gonna do much with this home dashboard. With the exception that you’ll see a few gadgets on here that pertain to contacts, office listings.
This is a training account for the Fargo Moorhead MLS as well, so I’m not going to be able to show what I have in here as I don’t have anything. But ideally you would have your gadgets that would appear on your dashboard offering real information pertaining to, as an example, your office listings. Just to the upper left corner, there is the menu. And so if you’re a newer user, this will hopefully be helpful for you.
Under that blue Flexmls home button, there is the menu option. And when we click on this, all of the functions that are available to users will display. And several of the functions that we highlight today are going to be under the add change category as well as the search category. And then a couple under daily functions. I’m not gonna really get into the hot sheet today.
I don’t know if it’s quite relevant to what we’re doing, although when your listing is finally added into your MLS, it should hopefully appear on your hot sheet. But what we’re going to focus on is the add listing module, the change listing module, my incomplete. And then I also have favorited in my favorites bar, my listings, office listings, as well as input forms.
So this is all areas that we’ll review as we move through today’s training.
Just as a reminder for those who may know and if you don’t know, if you have a function that you use pretty frequently and you don’t see it in your favorites bar, and that’ll, the contents of this favorite bar will certainly differ for every user. But if you have something that you just would like accessible, we’ll just grab the CMA option here.
Click the star and that function will end up in your favorites bar and ready to use at any time you may need it. It’s kind of a nice customization and convenience when you’re working in the system. I’m gonna remove it. I just wanna keep what I kind of had going on previously, but I did wanna highlight how you can ensure that those functions get added if you want them.
All right, let’s take our first step and we’re gonna click add listing. And this is the first area that we’re going to cover.
Add listing by clicking on that function will end up in the add listing module, and it’s a fairly straightforward process and similar to other functions or modules throughout the system, such as quick search or even a CMA. With this process, we are going to start at the top of our screen and work our way down. And then we’re going to go from left to right.
So kind of think about reading a book. So the first thing we will do is we’re going to select the property type. That of course will determine what fields are available for our listing. And you wanna ensure that you do select the correct property type. Residential, for this MLS we have residential and residential lease.
So you wanna ensure that you select residential lease if you were adding a property that would be for lease and not to confuse them.
So just pay attention when you’re adding your property type when you’re first starting the process. All right, the next area we’re going to go down to is the listing member, and that will be set up by default based on you being the user in the system.
So it’s picking up me, it’s picking up that I am the trainer or the listing member as a trainer for this particular user account, and it will just flag my information. If you are working with a co listing agent, that can be a next step and you would enter their information below.
So I will add a co listing agent and I’m just going to pick on another training or testing account that we use and add them accordingly. The next step we can take is the tax ID and not everyone, every MLS will have this feature. But for those who do, it is a really nice feature. I’m gonna copy and paste. I’ve got the parcel ID number or tax ID number for a property.
And the nice thing about what I’m about to do is I am using a listing that has previously been in the MLS. And for many of you adding listings, that is an option and you can autofill a lot of your information. For those that maybe it’s a brand new listing or it had been built and it hadn’t had the opportunity to be in the MLS yet, you’ll just enter all the information that you have for the listing that’s required certainly manually.
But if your property has been in the MLS before and you do have this auto pop feature, this is a really nice way to kind of bypass some of the entry process. So I’m gonna click load my tax record, and this is going to automatically shift me from the general tab over to the address tab.
And because I was able to auto populate a lot of this information, I no longer have to manually input. That won’t be the case for this entire process, but certainly for this area regarding the address fields, it is the case. So you’ll want to just double check and make sure everything came through correctly. There’s no typos or anything like that, not likely to be the case, but certainly could be possible.
And then you’ll want to move on to the next tab. You have a couple options. You can select the buttons at the bottom, so next or back, depending on what you’re most comfortable with. Or you can just simply shift over to the next tab. Before I do so, I do wanna highlight that this timestamp is updating as I move along. So every couple of minutes, the system is gonna save your work.
If you’re taken away for any reason from the process of getting your listing into the system, or maybe you get halfway through and there’s some additional information that you still need before you can finalize everything, the system’s gonna auto save your work and you will not lose what you have started entering.
So just keep that in mind that you will not lose any information, which is helpful to know. All right, so now we’re gonna shift over to the main fields tab, which is where a lot of the work is gonna be accomplished. But before doing so, I’m going to need to geocode or locate the property for this listing. So this map is gonna pop up. It’s gonna have the red pin, which is identifying the location.
Sometimes it can be helpful to adjust the type of map that you’re viewing to ensure that indeed this is over the property. And sometimes the pin might be out in a green space, or in this case on a golf course, maybe it’s in the road and you wanna just make sure that it’s correctly covering that property. So just take a quick look.
And once you have that location solidly identified, just click use location and we are able to move on to the next tab. So now we will find ourselves on the main fields tab. And this is going to allow us to enter a lot of information. There is some information, as I mentioned, that will come over if your listing has previously been in the MLS and you’re able to auto populate.
But there’s plenty, as you can also see, that does not come over.
So you are going to have to manually make those field updates. As you can see, there’s my timestamp. It just updated again after a few minutes.
So we can start to work our way from the top and work our way down. If you do have any questions on fields, oftentimes there’s help text next to the field that can kind of help guide you through the process of adding this field.
If you are working through things and you just want to get done, you are kind of in a time sensitive situation and you wanna ensure that all those required fields are being added, you have the ability to filter what fields that you see. So right now we’re looking at all fields under main fields.
I can switch this to view only required fields, or if maybe I’ve gotten quite a bit done already with the fields that need to be entered, I can look at only the empty required fields to really streamline the process of getting everything complete. So you’ve got a few different ways that you can view what is required. I do wanna note just because a field is not required does not diminish the importance of the field.
As you all know, the more information that’s included in a listing can oftentimes be very beneficial to those agents that would like to show your listing once it is on in the MLS. So just kind of keep that in mind. So for status, the default here is set to active. You can select subtype in this MLS. That’s the next order.
So you’d want to select the appropriate subtype.
Then they have some fields that are probably a little more exclusive to the MLS, which will be typical as every MLS is quite a bit different from the other. But you’re just gonna scroll down and enter all the fields that are applicable. And then again, if you need to filter out those fields to include only those required fields, that is an option.
Once you are done with this process, you can move along to the next tab. I also wanna highlight that there are some information bubbles as well as help text on many of these fields. So if you have a question on particular field and this one happens to be above grade finished area, there’s an information bubble that will kind of help guide you how to use the field properly.
And then for the MLS specifically, what this field is, the intention of the field. So for this particular MLS, it would be footage of on or above grade and what that field would exclude. Different setups at times, but a lot of helpful information can be found when you are entering listing information.
Alright, next step, we’ll move along to the details tab. And here I’m looking at only required fields, so there’s not a lot that is required on the detail tab for this MLS. That doesn’t mean that there aren’t quite a few fields and that they’re not important fields.
So that’s again another kind of point that I’d like to make that these can all be very beneficial. So when you’re on the detail tab, this is gonna obviously look a little bit different than it does on the main fields tab. Set up into different groups and then you can make a selection within that group.
There are some that are checkboxes, some list fields you can choose from a particular list based on that field, and some offer an open text field that you would type in a name in this instance for an HOA contact. So you’ll just kind of scroll down, look at the fields that are available in the detail groups.
You know, a pet group, this may not, is not considered required, but could be very important to the property that you are looking to list. Say in a situation that it’s a rental or a lease, it would be good to know if pets in that case were allowed to be residents as well. So just take a look at all of the fields again and indicate what is required.
In this case, the foundation group is required, and you need to select between one and six items in those fields that are considered required.
All right, so as we move towards the bottom, there’s quite a few fields or groups, I should say, in fields within those groups that are not required for this MLS, but they’re still important to creating a listing in the MLS that is gonna offer really good information. All right, next we’re gonna move along to the rooms tab. And this process is fairly straightforward.
You’ll need to follow the prompts. And the first prompt is gonna be to add a room. Once you select that option, you’re gonna have this menu populate. And you will select the room name from a list. So we will want to select, maybe we’re going to add the dining room and indicate which level the dining room would be on. Maybe that’s on the main level likely.
The length and the width, these are not considered required. There is a small red asterisk with those required fields. But certainly the more information, the better.
If you’re going to be, you know, kind of highlighting any specific rooms, dining rooms, kitchens, great rooms, primary beds, anything like that, it’s nice to be able to add some dimensions on how large those rooms are to highlight some of the benefits of that property. Room features, you can indicate anything here.
Maybe we have some beamed ceilings, built in bookcases for our dining room that we would like to include. And any additional remarks you can always update using the remarks field, anything additional that you’d like to highlight about a particular room.
Once you are done, you can move on to add a second room or as many rooms as you feel would be beneficial to the listing. And if you find that you have a room that may not be necessary or duplicated or something along those lines, you can always just remove that room and start over. So a lot of options with the rooms tab.
For this MLS, the room name and level are required, and that would be the extent of it. So I’ll just finish this one and then we will move along.
Okay, now we’re on the photo tab.
And for this MLS, they do require a photo to be added, a primary listing photo. Typically it’s the exterior of the property. So you don’t always have to do this, and not every MLS has this requirement in this position, I understand. But in this case, this MLS does. So you would opt to choose your file.
Gotta find all my photos here. So in this case, we want to use like an exterior photo. I’m going to select that photo. We’ll give it a description.
I’m just gonna call it Rose Creek exterior, which is where this particular listing is located. And then if you wanted to add additional caption, you know, great curb appeal or something that’s probably way more catchy than even that, can do so using the caption option. All right, so now I’m going to shift down to the broker distribution tab.
And again, we started on general, started top to bottom, and just kind of working our way through these various tabs, completing the necessary information that’s required. Okay, now on the broker distribution tab, this is where you’ll work with your clients, your sellers to determine how they want their listing to be viewed on external sites, with third parties, etc.
So if they have any preference to opt out, you would indicate that here on this broker distribution tab for this MLS, these distribution options are set to default. If they do not want maybe this listing shown anywhere, you can certainly modify those fields or those boxes to indicate where it should show up and where it shouldn’t.
All right, so now we’re we’ve had the last auto save at two twenty two p. M. When I try to save this listing, so I’m gonna try and add this listing right now, I’m gonna get an error that there have been significant number of errors that have been found due to incomplete fields, which I’m aware of.
But just know that if you do try to submit your listing before it’s fully complete and all those required fields have been entered, you will get an error and you will not be able to move forward. So with that, and this is gonna even bring me back to the main list fields tab, where it’s telling me you need to finish all of your work in order to allow this listing to go live.
So with that said, I am going to now come up to the save incomplete listing option, Although this has been saving all along, by clicking on this, I am going to be transferred from the add listing module into the incomplete.
And so I’ve got, of course, both these functions in my favorites bar, but this was just an easy transition from the ad listing. Now I’m in the my incomplete listing.
So maybe there’s quite a bit of information that I was waiting on in order to complete those various main list fields that are still required.
And I can’t complete it quite yet because I’m waiting on that information. But what I can do in the meantime is I can maybe add photos and or any associated documents or possibly even links to videos and virtual tours. So the next step would be to go into photos.
And we have our exterior photos, so that was already done, and that was a requirement in the add listing portion. So to follow the next couple of steps, I’m going to click add photos.
And now I can select all of the photos that I would like to include. So I’m going to click or select my bathroom, dining room. Looks like I’ve got a couple different options here, kitchen, and living room. Okay, so I’m going to open those.
And as long as you have the photos that you wish to include for your listing on your computer, you can select many at a time to upload.
I’m just gonna demonstrate on these six photos, but certainly you will likely have many more than just six and you can select those all at one time.
All right, so now we’re in the process of setting up these photos. And my exterior photo, because I added it during the ad listing process, is front and center. But that’s not going to always be the case for everyone.
And there may be a time that your bathroom photo will say has been identified as a primary photo or not necessarily bathroom, any photo that maybe don’t want to be considered the primary or profile photo.
The way to change that is you’ll notice that the primary or profile photo will have kind of this blue square around it and this flag at the top that is has a blue flag. What you’ll want to do is select the photo that you would like to make your primary and click that flag.
So this was correct from the beginning, but just in case any of yours show up that are not quite the way you would like them, this is how you would change it. You also have the option to click and drag or change by number, depending on how many photos you’re working with and what your preference might be to move photos around to reorder.
So I’d like my kitchen to be the second photo in this lineup. I think I’d like my living room to be the third and going to kind of just reorder things a bit. So again, you can use a number option to reorder or just click on the photos. Your mouse will turn into a four prong arrow and that will allow you to click, drag and reorder.
And if you’re working with forty, fifty photos, who knows what, it can be nice to kind of make ensure that they’re in an order that you would like them to be viewed when once your listing is live. Additional photo menu features aside from the flag option to make it primary or profile.
If any photos come in and they’re kind of out of order, in addition to being sideways or upside down, something like that, you have the option to use these menu items to shift the order or excuse me, the direction of the photo.
So if they come in sideways, upside down, anything like that, you can make those adjustments and they will not appear distorted or hard to view in your listing. If you end up with one that maybe needs a replacement. So for this example of an exterior photo, maybe the lighting was a little bit off.
You took it on a cloudy day and you would like to retake it on a day with more natural light with sunshine. Using this feature, this arrow feature will allow you just to replace that one photo, which is real nice.
If you need to get rid of anything, there’s a duplicate or photo ended up in there, multiple photos that are not associated with the listing, certainly you would not wanna keep those and then that little trash can option is an option as well.
Once you’re all set and done, your listings live, maybe you’re closed, ready to close your listing or your listing just closed further down the road certainly since we’re just talking about adding and changing things right now. But this select all option is gonna open up a menu of a few more options. And you can mark your photos as private, private while off market, delete.
And then we also have some help features that are built into the system. If you have any questions on what it is that that means.
So I recommend taking a look at that before you make any deletions to your photos, anything like that.
But there are opportunities to select and mark the photos as private or private while off market that can ensure the listing integrity, and also ensured that those photos are private. Alright, so now I’m going to uncheck that since I’m not going to focus on that right now and will return to our listing.
And we do have a check mark, and that was there even when we got into the incomplete module area because we added that first exterior photo from the add listing screen. But that check mark is going to indicate that, yes, you’ve accomplished something. You’ve successfully added photos. You know, you can always return to add additional, but that part, that component has been completed.
All right, on to documents. Fairly similar process. So we’re going to add a, it looks like the listing contract is a required document for this MLS, and so we’d want to upload that. You’d opt to choose your file. And I don’t know if I have I’d probably do somewhere. Let’s see. I don’t know what I’ve got. Nope, I don’t have it here.
But where you would find it on your system, simply choose your file, add the necessary documents, and then you can indicate whether or not you would like that document to be private, public, available to the data share if that’s applicable, or has edit privileges.
So I’m going to cancel out of there and we’ll return to my edit this incomplete listing just a bit further. And then the last option under the incomplete listing screen will be for videos and virtual tours. And here’s where we will add links. So we don’t host anything.
Your video or virtual tour would be hosted elsewhere, but you would be able to take the link and add it. So we would say Rose Creek, probably use the address number or something like that for the description. And then you would copy and paste the code. And you also have the ability to control the visibility status for that. So do you want it to just be public or private or private while off market?
Okay, and then this little guy down here, hopefully once you get accustomed to seeing some of these icons or symbols throughout the system, these are links to guided help and will offer some helpful resources as you’re working your way through the system.
So there’s a lot of help available with in these various modules and offering definitions on what certain functions and fields and settings mean. Alright, so same process would follow for the virtual tour. Similar process of naming the tour and copying and pasting the link, setting those privacy settings.
All right, now we’re going to return back to the incomplete portion. So I realize that there’s still a lot to do to make that particular listing live.
But the next thing I want to highlight, we’re gonna change users and I’m just gonna use my superpowers to super use at the root account.
And I’m gonna show you what the change listing screen will look like. And then we’ll talk a little bit about input forms, where you can find it, as well as a listing activity report. So going into change listing, and I’m in a live system right now as I was previously, but I’m not going to do anything that would compromise any listings in this MLS.
I’m just gonna show you what you’ll see rather than make a change.
So let’s see, that’s a land listing that will work just fine. So this is kind of an overview of what you will first see when you are in your listing and you need to make a change. And this is, of course, is once that listing is live. So you’ve got your property type listed at the top and your listing number.
You have a menu of options, such as the input form directly from here, activity, which we’ll highlight in a moment that activity report, and then listing history. But this is going to hopefully look fairly familiar to you. This general category, which is going to be where you update all that general information.
So main list fields details, if there’s a change, maybe that listing member is no longer going to be included in the listing and you need to remove a member or something along those lines. I can’t imagine that happens all that often, but it could. Listing information, make any updates or changes to the information that you provided, or maybe add some additional information that you didn’t include.
You got through those required fields to ensure the listing got into the MLS. And now you wanna go back and enhance that listing just a little bit and add some more detail using those non required fields. So that’s where you would get that done.
The status change area, you have the ability to pend your listings, add a contingency, if that’s something that your MLS offers, close your listing, etcetera. And then towards the right at the top, you have the option to change your listing price. So we’re not, I’m not going to change anything. This is an actual live listing.
But if you need to update the price, you would simply clear out what is currently in the new price field, put a new price. Maybe they’re ready to take it down a little bit, and they’re gonna put it at one hundred sixty five. Make that update in this field and save your change and you are good to go. Again, I’m not going to do that to this listing, but that’s where you would make that change in price.
The media area, so this is what we just kind of walked through with regard to photos, documents, and video and virtual tours of links. Given this is a land listing, it doesn’t look like it offers a lot with regard to photos or media, pretty straightforward with the photos that it does. It shows the place and then kind of a view of what the land looks like.
But you can always add more photos, especially when you’re working in commercial or residential, rental, anything like that, that you’d want a lot more photos offering description of that property. And then scheduled marketing activities, control open houses, tour of homes. If you use a third party, such as Showing Time, that would be available here as well.
Open house information, follow the prompts to add an open house. And I’m not going to do this to this agent, so don’t worry, but you would simply put in the details for the open house, any comments that might be applicable, and then add that open house. All right, let’s return back now to the change listing screen. I’d like to show you now the listing activity report.
So once you get your listing into your MLS, and you kind of want to keep tabs on how things are going, looks like this piece of land has been on the market for quite some time. Hopefully when you get your listings on, they move a little faster.
But you’ll be able to see all the information pertaining to your listing. Listing specifics such as the original list price and the current list price. If you want to look at a specific snapshot in time, you know, maybe as an example, your listing went on the market and the first week there was a lot of activity and a lot of interest and the second two weeks it kind of dropped off.
You can kind of look at this report based on a specific date range and see, you know, and figure out what may be changed and where you can market it just a little bit better. Where people are viewing this particular listing, whether it’s directly in Flexmls, IDX, email, via portal. Are people rating this listing?
If they use a portal, they have the ability to rate a listing. Actions people took for this particular listing. You can see if your listing’s been shared anywhere, etcetera. Is there any feedback with regard to an open house? Probably not for a land listing, but certainly for another type of listing there could be.
And then additional listings that are kind of in your possible competition. So those who have viewed your listing and then what else they viewed along with that listing. You have the option to print this report.
And as I mentioned, you can look at a specific date range, which could be very handy, especially when you’re dealing with a listing such as this that’s been on the market for some time. You can set up auto emails, so sort of a subscription, if you will.
Send them directly to you, maybe your assistant, send them to the sellers of the listing to ensure that they kind of have some insight into what’s going on with regard to their listing and how that process is going. So that’s kind of a nice feature once your listing is actually live in the system.
And the last thing we’re gonna do, but I’m gonna get out of the root account, and I’m just gonna go back to my training account. Bear with me just a moment.
Okay, and I want to talk about listing input forms. I know this is a pretty common ask of where you find these when you go out and meet with a client and you are going to list their property. You’ll find listing input forms under menu, and you can scroll to find them. And if you prefer not to do that, just start to put in input in the search bar.
This one, of course, is favorited in my favorites bar, but you’ll find it under daily functions. And you will be able to find your input forms here. So select by property type, residential lease, print, you have the option to print possible values for fields with lists so you can see what what’s included in there and highlight anything that might be relevant.
Probably always a good thing. And then you have the option to print those form. And bring them with you when you have your meeting. And of course, with every MLS, every MLS is different. So input forms are probably going to look a little bit different based on the listing requirements and fields and all that.
So some may be a bit more lengthy and some may not. For some of these with cities and counties and that sort of thing, it’ll take up quite a bit of real estate with regard to pages.
But that is where you will find your input forms.
Alright, we are just coming up to the end of our time. I would like to highlight before you all take off some of the help features that are available, and I did reference guided help while we were going through the ad listing module. But I do also want to highlight another version of guided help. Guided help is pretty versatile and there’s links throughout the system.
You’ll find links within quick search, CMA module, contact management, all sorts of areas of the system. And what these are is they’re there to help you accomplish the task.
So if you do run into questions, if you are a newer user and you aren’t quite sure how to complete a task, using guided help is a really great resource.
The main guided help is always going to be on your desktop, kind of just to the right of the quick launch bar. But here you have the option to select a category. And we just talked about adding listings. So where are we for that? Create or manage a new listing, add a new listing, find your incomplete listing.
We talked about that under my incomplete, change listing information, add or manage photos or media. So that’s going to talk about everything from photos to documents and videos, virtual tour links. So all that’s going to be available, and this is by clicking on the hand, this is going to walk you step by step on how to complete this task.
So it’s a nice feature, and I encourage you to take advantage of it if you do run into areas and you have questions.
With that said, on the right side of my screen, I’m going to click help, and you always can contact support, Flexmls FBS support, so you have the opportunity to reach out via phone or email to ask any questions you might have, and they’re an exceptional team, and they will get you back on your feet and make sure that you understand everything that you need to do to accomplish your task.
If let’s say guided help is not quite cutting it for your particular need. And the final area of the system that I’d like to highlight is the Flex the MLS Academy. This is going to open in a new tab, but this is kind of a one stop shop for a whole ton of different resources. Resources such as short tip videos.
If you are a visual learner and you enjoy watching videos, Josh, our lead trainer has developed a nice library of tools that you can use short, and I do mean short, a minute five, a minute fifty five, to kind of get through a task within the system.
Upcoming webinars, this is gonna allow you to get registered for webinars not specific to your MLS, but what you did today, signing up for a general webinar and offered some really hopefully helpful training and education on the Flexmls system. So that is going to bring us to the end of our time. Hopefully you’ve had an opportunity to ask questions that you have.
I appreciate you all very much for attending, and I look forward to the opportunity to train with you again. Thanks so much.
