Company Broker — User Guide

Run a brokerage firm — agents, listings, lead distribution, and rank-based authority.

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Overview

The Company Broker workspace is for brokerage principals running a team of agents. What it adds over the individual broker workspace: a firm-wide listing view (Team Listings), internal vs. client messaging (Team Chat vs. Client Messages), a lead directory where your firm competes for seller mandates, a handoff queue for when an agent departs, and rank-based access so working agents, analysts, and managers each see their own scope.

When you log in, you land on your Dashboard — which changes by rank: Staff see their own book; Managers/Admins see the whole firm's metrics and the team registry. The Recently viewed rail keeps comparables handy for advising clients.

This guide is written from the principal's side of the desk. For what your agents see from theirs, the Individual Broker Agent guide covers the same workspace from their seat.

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Getting Started

Step 1: Create the Organization

The sign-up wizard collects your firm's essentials — name, address, and an optional Agency License No. field (FIU / broker license). This establishes the firm's identity on the platform.

Step 2: Configure Settings

Settings (Admin only) — timezone, notification rules, subscription and seats. Set these before inviting anyone.

Step 3: Invite the Team

Team → Invite — email + rank. The invitee gets a secure link (expires for security). On acceptance they get dashboard access matching their rank.

Step 4: Operate

Dashboard shows firm metrics; Team Listings shows all agents' inventory; assign properties and keep the roster working.

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Role Rank System

Who on my team can do what? is answered entirely here — most "my agent can't see X" reports resolve to this table before they ever reach support.

The rank system is the firm's authority structure encoded in software:

Advisor is the rank for a trusted outsider — your firm's lawyer, accountant, or a director — who needs to see the book without ever touching it. An advisor reads the firm's listings, team calendar, and documents org-wide, but has no buttons: no listings to create, no quotes to request, no offers to negotiate, no team controls — and no financials, reports, or lead directory (those stay at rank 2+). Separate it from Viewer, which is for interns and contract staff — same read-only level, but advisor is the understood contract for "trusted counsel looking in," and the roster records who is who.

Worth knowing: the rank model controls which surfaces open for each member — revenue and reporting surfaces sit at rank 2+, team management at 3+, and the firm's keys (Settings, handoffs) at 4.

Rank guidance

• Staff = working agents building their book — listings, clients, calendar
• Analyst = senior agents or BI staff who need the numbers but shouldn't negotiate
• Manager = team leads who distribute work and have deal authority
• Admin = principals only — keep this rank rare
• Advisor = trusted external read-only — lawyer, accountant, director

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Sidebar Navigation

The map of the workspace. Read the rank pattern once — revenue surfaces open at 2+, team management at 3+, and the firm's keys sit at 4 — and most permission questions answer themselves.

The sidebar also shows Ask AI and a My desk shortcut (/dashboard/agent) for members with an agent-desk workspace. Admins may see Upgrade Plan.

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Dashboard

Rank-aware: Staff see personal metrics; rank 2+ sees firm-wide — team size, total listings, pending deals, a firm revenue estimate (a fixed percentage of sold listing prices — directional, not your ledger), plus the team registry table and 6-month performance charts.

Read it as a principal: the registry table is your roster check, and a revenue figure that looks light against closings is a question to take to Financials — where the real ledger lives — not a bug report.

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Team Chat vs. Client Messages

Where does my team say what — and who ends up seeing it? The workspace answers with two deliberately separate channels:

• Team Chat — internal only. Deal coordination, listing links, workload talk. Keep client financials out of here.
• Client Messages — external, tied to client records. Every message is timestamped and attached to the client's history — so when an agent is out, a colleague can read the thread and pick up mid-deal.

The split exists so a client never sees internal negotiation chatter, and internal coordination never gets buried in client threads.

Team Chat — Internal Coordination

Team Chat (/dashboard/company-broker/team/chat) is real-time messaging across the organization, visible from rank 1 — the whole roster can reach it. It's the coordination lane: coverage requests, questions for a manager, firm announcements. For a principal it's also where the rank system's escalation happens in practice — when a Staff agent can't act on an offer, "need a decision on 12 Palm Ave" lands here, not in the client thread.

Client Messages — The Client-Facing Record

Client Messages (/dashboard/company-broker/messages) is where clients live — and for a firm it's built as the shared record, not a chat window. The thread list is searchable, each thread carries its own unread count, and the sidebar badge totals them: replies arrive without refreshing, and opening a thread marks it read. New Engagement starts a conversation from here; search inside a thread recovers the detail half-remembered from a deal three months back.

The thread tools are the record-keeping:

• Attachments — photos, scans, and draft agreements under 10 MB travel inside the conversation they belong to
• Export — a PDF transcript of the thread; the artifact you want in hand when "what was promised" is ever disputed
• Document Room threads — conversations tied to a document room are flagged as such; when the engagement closes the thread stays readable but locks to new messages — the history never disappears

Two behaviours to brief the team on before they learn them the hard way. Delete conversation removes your copy only — the other side keeps theirs, so nobody should write what they wouldn't want re-read. And a pasted phone number or email gets replaced with [REDACTED] automatically — sharing contact details is against the Terms of Service, and the filter is mechanical, not a warning.

One boundary worth briefing the team on: there is no private lane inside a client thread — every message is visible to the people on it. So margin discussions, financing doubts, and negotiation chatter belong in Team Chat, where only the firm is listening — not inside a thread the client can read.

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My Listings vs. Team Listings

• My Listings — your personal inventory: create and edit listings (creation needs rank 3+; rank 1 sees inventory read-only). Statuses: Active → Pending → Sold — new listings can sit at Review Required until cleared.
• Team Listings — every agent's inventory firm-wide. The real use: internal matching. Before hunting external listings for a buyer, check whether a colleague already has the right property — the commission stays in the firm.

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Quotes

This page works the opposite way most principals assume: Quotes holds professional proposals addressed to the firm — when a transaction needs a notary or valuation, the professional's priced quote lands here for whoever is the signing party, moving quote requested → quote provided → payment pending → payment confirmed. Line-itemed proposals are part of the model.

For a firm it's deal hygiene at scale: a transaction waiting on a quote nobody answered is a deal stalling in plain sight — and since the badge counts actionable quotes, an unread badge here means a client is waiting.

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Calendar — Brokerage Scheduling

Can I see my agents' books without reading their inbox? Yes — this is the surface that answers "where is everyone on Tuesday."

The page calls itself Brokerage scheduling (/dashboard/company-broker/calendar), and its subtitle is worth believing: coordinate brokerage appointments with manager team scope and staff privacy preserved. That's the rank model applied to time — Managers and Admins get a per-member scope filter that narrows the calendar to a single agent's book, while rank-1 staff see their own. An agent's diary is visible to the people managing them without being opened to the whole firm.

Month, Week, Day, and Agenda views cover however the firm thinks about time, with a Today jump for when browsing runs ahead. Search plus event and status filters keep a crowded calendar navigable. Watch the attention queue — bookings still awaiting an answer, which is where showing requests silently die if nobody chases them.

Click a slot to create an appointment; open any event for its details and each participant's response. When plans move, rescheduling sends the other party a reconfirmation rather than silently rewriting their day. The mechanic underneath all of it is participant confirmation — a booking only counts as agreed once everyone on it has answered, so an agent's day can't be silently rewritten by a manager's request. The attention queue holds whatever's still waiting on a response.

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Documents

Where did the deal's paperwork go when the agent who ran it left? Documents (/dashboard/company-broker/documents) is the firm's answer — contracts and files organized for the firm, attached to the firm's deals rather than to one agent's account.

That framing does real work on the day someone exits. Files held at firm level survive the departure: the Handoff Queue reassigns the deal, and the record behind it is already where the incoming agent can reach it. A deal whose paperwork lived in a departing agent's inbox is a deal the firm has to reconstruct — this page is the difference between a handoff and a salvage job.

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Lead Directory (Rank 2+)

Where do the firm's mandates come from? A board of seller listings open to representation — owners inviting agents to bid. Your agents win by submitting a commission bid with a pitch message; a winning bid moves into a mandate the seller signs, and won mandates are tracked on the same surface.

For principals: this is inbound demand rather than cold prospecting — sellers who already raised their hand. Worth coaching the team on bid discipline: the lowest commission doesn't always win, but an unpriced or vague pitch always loses.

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Notifications

The system event feed — offer activity, team events, platform announcements. Separate from messages: this is the platform telling you something changed, not a person writing.

When a lead or a deal surfaces that nobody remembers routing, this feed is where the "how it got here" is recorded — check it before asking who assigned what.

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Analytics, Financials & Reports (Rank 2+)

• Analytics — the firm's activity at a glance: team growth trends (new listings, closed deals, active agents) and an agent leaderboard by listings and sales. The principal's question it answers: is the firm growing, and who's carrying it?
• Financials — the firm's manual ledger: commission income, agent payouts, operating costs, and net margin with a monthly view and category breakdown. One honest boundary: entries are logged by your team — closing a deal doesn't auto-post a commission, so the ledger is only as current as the habit of recording it.
• Reports — exportable summaries (sales, agent performance, commissions, activity) as CSV. Built for reviews, commission reconciliation, and stakeholder reporting.

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Team & Team Members (Rank 3+)

Roster, performance metrics, per-agent listing counts, and a leaderboard. The management use: workload balancing — an agent at 15 active listings and another at 3 is a distribution problem, and incoming leads can be routed accordingly.

Handoff Queue (Rank 4)

When a member is removed from the firm, the platform creates a handoff case — everything they were carrying lands here for an Admin to assign a successor and work through. The queue's badge is your continuity watch — an unworked case is a deal with no owner.

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Settings (Rank 4)

Organization profile, notifications, subscription and seats — plus document-readiness settings for the firm. Watch seat utilization — hitting the cap blocks invites.

The firm profile is worth maintaining for its own sake — it's how the firm presents itself. And seats are part of what your subscription pays for — review them when the roster changes.

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Workflow: Onboarding a New Agent

1. Check seat availability (Team or Settings — at capacity means upgrade first)
2. Team → Invite — email + rank (start conservatively: Staff, promote later)
3. They accept the emailed link → active member
4. Orient them on firm conventions; assign properties/leads so they appear in their My Listings

Workflow: A Deal Through the Firm

1. Lead arrives (mandate won in Lead Directory, inquiry, referral) → worked in Client Messages
2. Agent works the client — showings via Calendar, communication in Client Messages
3. The deal advances through your firm's own process — milestones and documents coordinate through Documents
4. Closed → commission logged in Financials; Reports captures it for review

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Troubleshooting

Agent can't see their listings? Verify they're active in Team, under the right organization, and the listings are assigned to their account.

Can't invite? Invites need Manager+; also check seat capacity.

Analytics/Financials missing? Rank 2+ required (Analytics also needs the plan feature).

Team section missing? Rank 3+ only — Staff/Analysts use Team Chat.

Lead Directory missing? Rank 2+ required.

Settings missing? Admin only — non-admins route requests through an Admin.

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Need Help?

Click the Help button on any page, email support@estatett.com, or reach us through the contact page.