Overview
The Owner Leads Board is where every new property management relationship begins. It tracks prospective property owners from the moment they reach out—whether through your website, an email, or a cold call—all the way through to a signed Property Management Agreement (PMA) and a fully set-up portfolio in your PMS.
Think of it as your business development pipeline. Without it, leads slip through the cracks, follow-ups get missed, and the handoff from "interested prospect" to "active client" becomes a manual scramble. With it, your team has a clear, automated process for every step of the journey.
This board also connects directly to your Portfolio Board and your PMS (such as RentVine), so once an owner signs, the work of setting up their property flows naturally into your operations team—no duplicated data entry, no dropped handoffs.
How It Works: The Big Picture
The Owner Leads Board moves a prospect through a series of stages, each representing a meaningful milestone in the sales and onboarding process. Here's the general flow:
New Lead → Engaged → Scheduled Consult → Consult Complete → Ready for PMA → PMA Sent → PMA Signed
There are also passive and exit stages: Active Nurture, Lost, and Invalid. These let you keep your pipeline clean without throwing away contacts who might convert later.
At each stage, automations handle the repetitive work: sending emails, assigning tasks, notifying teammates, and even moving the card forward when criteria are met (like a scheduled consultation date appearing on the card). You focus on the relationship; Aptly handles the logistics.
Setting Up Your Owner Leads Board
Installing the Board
The Owner Leads Board comes pre-built in Aptly's template gallery. To install it:
- Click + New Board from your main navigation.
- Select Create from Gallery.
- Search for Owner Leads and install it.
The board will come pre-loaded with stages, automations, and communication templates. You don't need to build from scratch—but you will need to review and customize before going live.
Customizing Your Stages
The default stages cover most workflows, but you may want to adjust them to match how your team operates.
To manage stages:
- Click the vertical dots at the top of any stage column (or on the stage header itself).
- Select Manage Stages.
- From here, you can rename stages, drag to reorder, and configure loss reason prompts.
Note on Lost Reasons: Because this is a lead board, Aptly will prompt for a reason when a card is moved to Lost. This is intentional—capturing why a lead didn't convert is valuable data over time. You can customize the available reasons here as well.
Customizing Board Fields
Your board comes with pre-built fields covering the most common owner lead data: desired management service, consultation date, property info, and agreement details. To review or add fields:
- Click Board Fields from the top of the board.
- Review the existing field groups (e.g., Property Info, Agreement Details).
- To add a new field or group, click the + Add button at the bottom of the field list.
If you have specific qualifying questions you ask every prospect, this is the place to add them—so your team captures consistent information regardless of who handles the lead.
Setting Your Card Naming Convention
By default, cards may be named inconsistently depending on how they were created. To standardize:
- Go to Board Settings (top right of the board).
- Under Card Options, select your preferred naming method.
- For a clean, searchable format, use Custom Name and pull from fields—for example: Owner Name – Property Address.
This makes it much easier to find specific leads when your pipeline grows.
Collecting Owner Leads: Your Three Entry Points
The Owner Leads Board is different from most boards in Aptly—you're not pulling data from your PMS. Instead, you're capturing inbound interest from the outside world. There are three ways leads enter the board.
1. Manual Entry
If you're on the phone with a prospect and want to get them into the system immediately, click + New Card directly on the board. Capture their name, contact info, and any notes. This is fast and useful, but rely on it only when speed matters—web forms and board email are better for capturing complete information upfront.
2. Board Email (Recommended for Website Lead Forms)
If you have a lead capture form on your website that sends notification emails, you can route those emails directly onto your board using a Board Email address.
To set up Board Email:
- Click the Integrations icon (grid icon, top navigation).
- Select Board Email.
- Toggle it on—this generates a unique email address for your board.
- Copy that email address (it's case-sensitive).
- Set it as the notification recipient in your website form or lead source.
When an email arrives at that address, Aptly creates a new card automatically. If you're using an email parser (for platforms like PMW), you'll configure similar settings to route those emails through the inbox and onto the board.
Important: Leads coming in via Board Email will appear in your Files tab on the card, not the Email tab. That's expected—the email created the card, so it lives under Files. Leads parsed from your inbox will appear under the Email tab.
3. Web Form (Recommended for Direct Lead Capture)
Aptly includes two pre-built forms for the Owner Leads Board:
- New Owner Lead Form — Collects initial contact and property interest info. Creates a new card.
- Property Info Form — Collects detailed property data. Updates an existing card.
The distinction matters: always use the Create Card link for your New Owner Lead form and the Update Card link for your Property Info form. Using the wrong link type will either create a duplicate card or fail to update the right one.
To access and share your forms:
- Go to Templates & Forms in your board navigation.
- Select the form you want to share.
- Click Share to grab the embed code, copy the direct link, or download a QR code.
To make a field required on the form, add an asterisk (*) to the end of the field label, then click Save.
Understanding and Configuring Automations
Automations are the engine of the Owner Leads Board. Before going live, you need to review every automation and make sure it reflects your team's process.
Finding and Reviewing Automations
Click the sparkle icon (✨) in the top navigation to open your automations panel. Automations are grouped by folder to make them easier to scan.
To quickly see how cards move between stages, use the Sort by Action filter and select Change Stage. This gives you a clean view of every trigger that moves a card forward—so you're never guessing why something ended up in the wrong column.
Key Automations to Configure Before Launch
When a card enters New Lead:
- Assigns the card to a team member — update the assignee to the right person or role.
- Sends an automated email to the prospect — check the template and sending inbox.
When there is a scheduled consultation date in the future:
- Moves the card to Scheduled Consult — turn this on before launch and verify it's active.
When a prospect replies to an email or text (in Active Nurture):
- Moves the card to Engaged — this is how warm leads resurface automatically.
When a card enters Ready for PMA:
- Creates a task to draft and send the PMA — configure the task template with your team's workflow.
When the PMA document is counter-signed (eSignature users):
- Moves the card to PMA Signed automatically.
Configuring Email Automations
For each email automation, verify:
- Send From: Is it sending from the assignee's inbox, a shared inbox, or a specific address like hello@yourcompany.com?
- Template: Does the email content reflect your company's voice and current offerings?
- Send To: Is the contact type set correctly? For most owner lead emails, this should be set to Owner Prospect.
SMS Note (Twilio Users): If you're using Twilio and SMS responses aren't triggering the card to move to Engaged, make sure your automation trigger is set to Inbound Activity rather than a response-specific field. Aptly recently released Inbox Rules for Twilio, which also allow you to route inbound SMS to the correct assignee.
Customizing Email Templates
To edit the content of any automated email:
- Click the notebook icon in the top navigation.
- Go to Templates → Communication Templates.
- Find the template you want to edit and update the copy.
Every template on the Owner Leads Board is pre-written, but they're meant to be a starting point—not a final version. Make sure the language sounds like your company.
Sending the Property Info Form Mid-Process
After the initial consultation is scheduled or completed, you'll typically want to collect more detailed property information before drafting the PMA. This is where the Property Info Form comes in.
The key here is to send this as an Update Card link—not a new form submission. This way, the details the owner fills out write directly back to their existing lead card.
To generate the update link for a specific card:
- Open the card.
- Go to Templates & Forms.
- Select the Property Info Form and copy the Update Card URL for that card.
- Include this link in an email to the owner (you can embed it in a communication template).
When the owner submits the form, fields like number of bedrooms, bathrooms, estimated rent, and availability will populate directly on their card—no manual data entry required.
Moving to PMA Sent and Tracking Signature Status
Once you're ready to send the PMA, here's what the workflow looks like depending on your signature platform.
If You Use Aptly Sign
- Open the lead card and go to Documents.
- Click + and send your PMA for signature.
- Aptly will monitor the document status automatically.
- When the document shows Action Required, an automation notifies the assignee to counter-sign.
- Once counter-signed and the status changes to Complete, the card automatically moves to PMA Signed.
If You Use an External Signature Platform
Since Aptly can't monitor document status on external platforms, you'll need a reminder automation to make sure nothing sits in PMA Sent without follow-up.
To set this up:
- Create a new automation.
- Set the trigger: Card is in stage: PMA Sent AND Last Updated is less than 3 days ago (or whatever interval works for your team).
- Set the action: Notify via Mention or Create a Task (e.g., "Call owner prospect to follow up on PMA signature").
This ensures someone on your team is prompted regularly until the PMA comes back signed—even if the board isn't checked daily.
PMA Signed: Transitioning to Active Management
When a PMA is signed and the card moves to PMA Signed, your operations process begins. This is the handoff point from business development to active management.
What Happens at PMA Signed
For teams using RentVine, a task is automatically created: Create Portfolio in RentVine. Here's how the workflow flows:
- Open the task on the card and fill in the required fields: Primary Owner, Management Fee, and Rental Property Address.
- Mark the task complete.
- A second task immediately appears: Verify RentVine Required Fields — confirm Property Type, Property Status, and Year Built are all populated.
- A card source on your Portfolio Board is watching for PMA Signed leads with complete address and owner info. Once that filter is met, it will prompt you to create the portfolio in RentVine.
- Once the portfolio is created, a similar card source on your Units Board handles creating the unit in RentVine.
For multi-unit properties (duplexes, multifamily): You will need to create each unit individually in your PMS. The board will create the portfolio, but individual units must be added separately.
If You Use a Different PMS
The task template is fully customizable. Instead of RentVine-specific steps, edit the task to say something like "Create Portfolio and Property in [Your PMS]" and add whatever to-dos your team needs to complete setup. The same card source logic can be adapted to trigger off your PMA Signed stage.
Important Notes
- Board Email addresses are case-sensitive. Copy the address exactly—don't retype it.
- Create Card vs. Update Card forms are not interchangeable. Using the wrong link type is a common source of duplicate cards or lost data. The New Owner Lead form should always use Create Card; the Property Info form should always use Update Card.
- Automations are off by default on new boards. Before going live, open every automation and toggle it on after reviewing the settings.
- If you rename your board, any merge fields in your forms that reference the board name will break. Go into each form and update the merge fields to point to the correct board after renaming.
- Automation retries: If an automation has already fired, you can mark it to Retry from the automation log. If it hasn't fired yet, you can mark it to Skip. You cannot force-fire an automation that hasn't triggered—instead, use Load Template to manually apply a task template.
Best Practices
Do these three things before going live with any board:
- Review all communication templates. Make sure every automated email and SMS sounds like your company. Check tone, contact info, and any links or CTAs embedded in the messages.
- Audit email automations. For each one, confirm the sending inbox, the template being used, and the contact type being targeted.
- Set up your lead intake method. Decide whether you're using Board Email, a web form, or both—and test a submission before launching.
Nurture leads you're not ready to lose. If a prospect isn't ready to sign but you don't want to close them out, move them to Active Nurture and let your drip campaign run. Set a check-in reminder so they don't go cold indefinitely.
Use card naming conventions from day one. Once your pipeline grows past 20–30 leads, inconsistent card names become a search and reporting problem. Set the naming convention (Owner Name – Address) before you have too many cards to fix retroactively.
Don't skip the Property Info form. It might feel easier to collect this information verbally during the consult and enter it manually. But the form creates a consistent record, reduces data entry errors, and gives you a complete card before you ever open your PMS—which makes the PMA Signed handoff much smoother.
Troubleshooting
Cards aren't being created from my website form
Why it happens: The notification email from your website may not be routing to your Board Email address, or the format of the email doesn't match what Aptly's parser expects.
Fix: Confirm the Board Email address is set correctly as the notification recipient in your website's form settings. If you're using an email parser, reach out to your account manager—parser formatting can be specific.
My card didn't move to Scheduled Consult after I added a consultation date
Why it happens: The automation that triggers this move may not be turned on, or the card may have been in a stage that isn't included in the automation's trigger conditions.
Fix: Go to Automations → Sort by Action → Change Stage and find the "Move to Scheduled Consult" automation. Confirm it's toggled on and that the card's current stage is included in the trigger conditions.
SMS replies aren't moving cards to Engaged
Why it happens: If you're using Twilio, the automation trigger may be set to a field that doesn't capture SMS activity, or Inbox Rules may not be configured.
Fix: Update the automation trigger to Inbound Activity. Also check your Twilio Inbox Rules settings to ensure inbound SMS is routing to the correct assignee. Contact your account manager if the issue persists—this changed with a recent Aptly release.
A task I expected to appear at PMA Signed isn't showing up
Why it happens: The task template may have been deleted from the board at some point, or the automation that creates it may be turned off.
Fix: Check your automations for the PMA Signed stage. If the task-creation automation is missing or off, contact your account manager to restore the template or reconfigure it.
Merge fields in my form are showing errors after I renamed the board
Why it happens: Merge fields reference the board by name. When the board is renamed, those references break.
Fix: Go into each form, find any merge fields that reference the old board name, and update them to point to the correct (renamed) board. Save each form after updating.
Questions? Reach out to your account manager. You can also drop into Office Hours throughout the week for live help.