Real Estate Transaction Management

I’m brand new to Asana, so I apologize in advance if this is the wrong forum for this or if my questions is too basic.

I would like to know if Asana can be implemented to have dependent or trigger tasks (whatever the term that they’re actually called) to work within our real estate transaction management workflow.

Whenever a new transaction is started, there are timelines established for certain tasks (for example, Cleaning is due 5 days before the closing date). We take all the timelines, input them into an Excel sheet, which calculates the actual date each thing is due. In my cleaning example, we will input the closing date and then the excel sheet would calculate the due date (in this example 5 days before that date).

As an extra step to stay on track, I then take the dates that Excel outputs and add them to a calendar so I can keep track of the dates on my own. Not only is this one extra manual step, but also falls apart if there are any delays along the way. In fact, I’m here testing Asana because I just had a closing delayed and I had to manually move all the dates connected to the closing date manually. Ugh.

In a perfect world, I would just take the timelines from the contracts, input them into one place, and have all my tasks populated for me to reference. Then if there was a delay down the line, all the dates tied to that delay would auto-adjust. Maybe that’s reaching, but I’m hopeful Asana can be configured like this.

I saw another post about Flowsana, but wanted to see what shakes loose from the core Asana software before I start with addons. Again, thank you for your help in advance, and looking forward to simplifying the process!

Hi @Nick_Kawakami and welcome to the forum! I understand exactly what you are looking for and unfortunately the way Asana does auto-shifting dependency dates, it will only shift dates of dependent (or precedent) tasks if in moving their precedent (or dependent) tasks the task dates come into conflict.

Here is a past post around this topic which also discusses options with Flowsana. Auto-shifting dependency dates is now available on all projects! If you have any questions around Flowsana @Phil_Seeman is the one to ask!

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Thanks for the mention, @Bernie_Orelup.

@Nick_Kawakami what you’re looking for is unfortunately not available in native Asana. As mentioned, Flowsana can handle it; specifically what you’re wanting is the Workback Workflow variant of the Dynamic Duration workflow type.

The Dynamic Duration workflow is where you set durations for and optionally lag times between tasks, so that’s how you handle the “Cleaning is due 5 days before the closing date” scenario; and the Workback variant would likely be best for you; that’s where instead of the more common behavior of setting a project start date and having Flowsana keep everything adjusted flowing forward, you instead set a project end date (your closing date) and Flowsana keeps tasks adjusted flowing backward from there.

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@Bernie_Orelup & @Phil_Seeman, thank you for your quick responses! I will give Flowsana a try and see if this will work for our needs.

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@Nick_Kawakami
Don’t hesitate to write to support@flowsana.net if you need any assistance!