CommissionTrac, an Atlanta software startup helping streamline the operations of real estate brokerages, has closed a $1.15 million seed funding round. The startup now counts several commercial real estate brokerages and professionals as backers.
Those investors include President and CEO of Colliers Atlanta Bob Matthews, President and Co-Owner of Hailey Realty Jay Young, Jr., and several others.
“We felt it was important to go to people who would be more than just a check,” CommissionTrac’s founder Turner Levison tells Hypepotamus. “All of those people, with all of their industry connections, are now cheering for CommissionTrac.”
Cox Enterprises also contributed to the round, following on their investment from when CommissionTrac was accepted into the Techstars Atlanta accelerator, which is sponsored by Cox.
“CommissionTrac has experienced great traction to date and we are excited to support the business as it grows in Atlanta,” says Kim Shriver, of Cox Enterprises Corporate Strategy & Development.
Levison founded the startup with his father, a successful CRE broker, in 2015. He had observed all the inefficiencies in the back-end operations of brokerages, which often rely on complicated, tedious manual data entry to track sales, commissions, fee structure, and payouts.
The platform automates all of that, streamlining those operations, freeing up administrator’s time, and allowing the firm’s management to get a broad view of all of their agents’ performances and the overall financial health of the firm.
Levison claims that some of the brokerages using the platform have been saving an average of 4-5 hours of work per week.
“CommissionTrac is the most comprehensive tool for managing brokers I have seen. In running a commission-based business, the demand for complete transparency with our brokers and their commissions is essential,” says Matthews. “CommissionTrac enables the efficient flow of deal information and accounting reports that inform both the leadership and your most important assets, your people.”
The platform also allows individual brokers to prioritize their deals, with an indicator tool that lets them assigns levels of importance to each deal based on financial incentives and timing.
“The broker can prioritize their activities and not let let the small client consume more than their fair share of time that should be spent with the more “profitable” clients,” explains Rick Spiller, a partner at Wilson, Hull & Neal and another CommissionTrac investor.
Having a direct source that the broker can access at any time should be useful to any broker. In addition the broker can prioritize his activities based upon the commission value of each account. The broker can prioritize their activities and not let let the small client consume more than their fair share of time that should be spent with the more “profitable” clients.
During the 2018 Techstars program, the startup focused on their product development goals. They completed several platform integrations, including Quickbooks and a few additional real estate-specific platforms, and conducted pilots to ensure the platform was serving the needs of its clients.
Since the program graduation last fall, CommissionTrac has about doubled the number of brokers using the platform. They have 30 brokerages on the platform with over 360 total users, and have processed over $100 million in deal flow.
That growth all came about with almost no outbound marketing, as the startup just brought on their first salesperson. They are now a team of six, and are continuing to hire as they scale up customer acquisition.
