Real Estate Stack · Chapter 03 of 10

Transactions: SkySlope from the first buyer to closing

Every buyer signs paperwork before you show them a house, and every file needs someone watching the dates until it closes. This chapter builds both: the packet and the tracker.

This chapter covers one job: getting a buyer under a signed agreement and then not losing track of the file between signature and closing. It uses SkySlope as the working example because that is the system a working Arizona buyer's agent runs today, but the pattern (forms library, one signing envelope, a separate date tracker) applies whichever transaction management tool your brokerage assigns you. The instructions below generalize the operator's own procedure: term lengths, retainer defaults and file structure are examples to adjust to your market and your broker's policy, not universal numbers.

What SkySlope is, and who provides it

SkySlope is transaction and forms management software: it holds your forms library, runs e-signature through DigiSign, and stores signed documents and brokerage compliance records for each file. operator Most agents do not choose SkySlope themselves. The brokerage picks a transaction management platform and assigns every agent an account, so your first setup step is finding out which platform your brokerage already runs and whether it is SkySlope, Dotloop, or something else.

What it costs, if your brokerage does not already provide it: SkySlope publishes a starting price for the Suite of $340 a month with no long-term contract required, Forms included, and DigiSign (unlimited signatures) and Books sold as add-ons verified [5]. The DigiSign order runs on a 12-month term that renews automatically until you cancel by email to support or in DigiSign's Billing Management verified [6]. In 2026 the vendor also markets a set of AI features under the name Smart Suite: automatic splitting and routing of uploaded PDFs to checklist items, an auditor assistant that spots completed signatures and possible compliance gaps, automatic file creation when a listing agreement is signed in Forms, contract data extraction for two Florida MLSs, suggested cover emails when you send for signature, auto-placed signature blocks, voice-started offers in California and North Carolina, a weekly brokerage podcast, and a coaching app claim [7]. None of those replace the steps below; they shorten them.

Read the terms once, because they decide how you may use Claude with this tool. SkySlope's End User Terms of Use (last updated February 2026) make you responsible for protecting your login, state that "any access to the Services using Your login and password shall be deemed access by You," and prohibit running "any processes that run or are activated while You are not logged into" the service and any action that "crawls, scrapes, or spiders" the site by manual, automated or any other means verified [8]. The practical reading, which is ours and not the vendor's: a browser assistant working inside your own live signed-in session, with you present and approving each step, is your access; an unattended script, a shared login, or a scraper is not inference.

SkySlope's own product line splits into three parts that show up by name inside the account:

Forms, the document library and fill-in-the-field editor for your state association's forms and your brokerage's own disclosures.
DigiSign, the e-signature envelope tool that sends forms out for signature and tracks who has signed.
Books, back-office compliance and file-review tracking, mostly used by brokers and transaction coordinators rather than the agent sending the packet.

If your brokerage runs something other than SkySlope, the same three functions exist under different names. Dotloop bundles forms, e-sign and file storage into one "loop." Docusign for REALTORS is the e-signature layer on top of your state association's own forms library (zipForm in many states), reached through the NAR Realtor Benefits Program at the member price verified $20 a month per user with unlimited envelopes, versus DocuSign's general Personal plan at $11 a month for only 5 envelopes [1]. Lone Wolf, a separate vendor, sells Lone Wolf Transactions (the zipForm and TransactionDesk editions) as a forms and transaction product that many state associations provide to members as a benefit, with e-signature (Authentisign) as a paid add-on [2]. Whichever platform you land on, the setup and workflow in this chapter transfer with a rename.

First-time setup

Sign in to your transaction platform with the credentials your brokerage issued. Do this in a browser you keep signed in, because later in this chapter Claude in Chrome will need that same signed-in session to help fill forms; never hand your password to Claude or any other tool.

Confirm your state association's forms library is connected before you try to build a packet. operator In Arizona: go to User Settings, then Library, then Add an association library, and add "Arizona Association of REALTORS - AAR." This takes seconds and needs no extra credentials. If a form you expect to find (the AAR buyer packet, for example) does not show up when you search for it, this disconnected library is the most common cause, and reconnecting it is the fix. The Arizona REALTORS license their forms to eight platforms: TransactionDesk, zipForm, dotloop, DocuSign, SkySlope, Brokermint, Jointly and Total Brokerage, so whichever one your brokerage runs can carry the state, local and MLS forms by subscription. TransactionDesk itself is free to every Arizona member, with Authentisign e-signature reached through the association's single sign-on verified [9]. Other state associations publish the same kind of list; find yours before you assume a platform has your forms.

Set your file naming convention before you create your first file. The operator default is "Client name MM/DD/YYYY", for example "Smith 03/09/2026". SkySlope auto-names new files with a timestamp, so if you do not rename the file at creation your file list becomes a wall of unreadable timestamps within a few weeks.

The exact-substring search quirk

SkySlope's form search matches an exact substring of the form's title, not a natural-language guess. Search for "buyer broker" and an Arizona AAR form titled "Buyer-Broker Exclusive Employment Agreement" returns nothing, because AAR spells it with a hyphen and the search does not fuzzy-match around punctuation. Single, short words work reliably. Here is the search-term table for the operator's standard six-document Arizona buyer packet operator:

Search this word	Form it should return
buyer	Buyer Advisory - AAR
buyer	Buyer-Broker Exclusive Employment Agreement - AAR
wire	Buyers Wire Fraud Advisory - AAR
agency	Real Estate Agency Disclosure and Election - Buyer or Tenant - AAR
market	Market Conditions Advisory for Buyers - AAR
general disclosure	your brokerage's own general disclosure form

Other states run their own version of a pre-showing buyer packet with a different document list. Ask your broker what your state association's equivalent six (or however many) documents are, build your own version of this table once, and keep it next to your desk. It saves the search-term guessing every single time.

The buyer packet procedure, step by step

This is the repeatable sequence operator for taking a new buyer from "I've got a client" to a sent signing envelope.

Collect the per-buyer facts in one batch, before you open the software. Buyer's full legal name (and a second name if it is a couple), buyer's email address, buyer's phone, the compensation term you and your buyer are agreeing to, the agreement term length, the geographic area the agreement covers, and the tail period (the window after the agreement expires during which your compensation still applies if the buyer closes on a home you showed them). Read the email address back to the buyer to confirm the spelling. A typo here does not bounce; the packet silently goes nowhere and you find out only when nobody has signed a week later.
Create the file. Start a new buyer agreement or buyer file, then immediately rename it to your naming convention before you do anything else, so it does not get lost in the timestamp list.
Add the forms using the exact-substring search table above (or your state's equivalent), confirming the total count before moving on. Most transaction platforms show a running count of documents added to the packet; check it matches the number you expect.
Enter the buyer's details once, in the file's main details screen, not on each form individually. Most transaction platforms auto-populate the buyer's name, email and phone across every form in the file from this one entry, which is faster and less error-prone than typing it six times.
Fill only the fields that need real work. In the operator's Arizona packet, five of the six documents just carry the auto-filled contact details. Only the Buyer-Broker Exclusive Employment Agreement needs a human to enter the term dates, the compensation percentage, the geographic area and the tail period, and one other form (the agency disclosure) needs a page filled by hand because it does not auto-populate. Check your own state's packet for which forms behave the same way; it varies by form design, not by platform.
Review the whole packet once, top to bottom, before moving to the signature step. This is the last point where a wrong term date or a missed checkbox is easy to fix.
Send one DigiSign envelope covering every document at once, rather than sending forms one at a time. Confirm the signer list: the buyer (and co-buyer if applicable) with signature fields on every document, and you as the counter-signer on the agreement and disclosure forms that need your signature.
Read the destination email address back one more time in the send confirmation screen before clicking send. This is the second and last checkpoint against a silent misfire.

The operator's default term for the buyer-broker agreement is 90 days with a 90-day tail and no retainer. Adjust every one of those numbers to your market and your broker's policy; they are not a rule, just a starting point that has worked in one Phoenix-metro practice.

The under-contract pipeline file

A sent packet is the start of the paperwork, not the end of the work. Once a buyer is under contract on a home, the file needs contract dates, closing dates, earnest money, lender information and inspection deadlines tracked somewhere, and updated as they change.

Here is the finding that shapes this whole section: operator in one working agent's experience, SkySlope Forms holds no transaction dates at all. Every acceptance and closing date field across every file came back blank when checked directly. Whether or not your platform behaves the same way, do not assume it is tracking dates for you just because it looks like a transaction management system; verify it, and if it is not tracking dates, build the tracker yourself. The fix that has worked is a single plain text file that lives outside the software, one block per buyer, with a question mark standing in for anything unknown:

BUYER: [name]
Email / phone: [contact]
File / envelope ID: [SkySlope file id, DigiSign envelope id]
Builder or seller: [who]
Packet status: [sent / signed / countersigned], sent [date]
Agreement term: [start] to [end], tail [N] days, compensation [%]
Stage: [step number in your buyer process, 1-13]

Under contract:
  Contract (acceptance) date: ?
  Earnest money deposit: ?, due ?
  Lender: ?
  Inspection deadline: ?
  Loan contingency / appraisal deadline: ?
  Close of escrow date: ?

NEEDS FROM [AGENT]: [every date or fact still marked ? above]

The question marks are the point. A field left blank is easy to miss; a field that reads "?" is a standing prompt to go find the answer, and it is what makes an automated morning check possible.

Build a daily brief around that file: something (a person, a scheduled task, a checklist you run yourself each morning) reads the current envelope status from your e-signature tool and reads this pipeline file, and reports back only the files that need action today, not a full re-read of every file. operator The operator runs this as a scheduled task that checks envelope status and the pipeline file every morning and applies simple chase rules: an unsigned envelope sitting more than a day or two, a "?" date that is now overdue to ask about, an inspection deadline approaching. The report only lists what is stale or due, not everything, so it stays short enough to actually read every morning.

Resend, extension and expiry

Buyer agreements expire on the date you set in the term field, and a buyer who has gone quiet is common enough to plan for. Two situations come up repeatedly:

Resend an unsigned envelope. Most e-signature tools auto-remind an unsigned recipient after a fixed window (24 hours is the operator's tool's default), but a manual resend with a short personal note works better once that window has passed without action. Confirm the email address is still correct before resending; a typo caught late is still a typo.
Extend an agreement nearing its term. Renewing a buyer-broker agreement before it lapses, rather than after, keeps the relationship on solid footing and takes only a couple of minutes in most transaction platforms: reopen the agreement's term fields, set new start and end dates, and send a short new envelope covering just the renewed term if your platform requires a fresh signature for changed dates.

Track expiry dates in the same pipeline file described above; do not rely on the transaction platform to surface an approaching expiration on its own.

Claude in Chrome driving SkySlope

Claude in Chrome can fill in the parts of this workflow that are pure data entry, with a human signing in first and reviewing every document before it sends. The official limits matter here: Claude in Chrome pauses at logins and CAPTCHAs rather than trying to get past them, and it is built to run in an "ask before every action" mode as well as a more automatic mode with its own separate safety checks verified [3]. Never give it your SkySlope or DigiSign credentials; it works by reading and acting inside a browser tab you have already signed in to yourself, the same way it would act inside Gmail or a CRM you are already logged into [4].

The working pattern:

You sign in to SkySlope yourself, in the browser Claude in Chrome is attached to.
Claude creates the file, searches for and adds the known forms by the exact-substring terms above, and fills in the fields you have already given it (buyer name, email, phone, term dates, compensation, geographic area, tail period).
Claude reads back the current envelope status when you ask for an update, rather than you clicking through the file list yourself.
You review every form, top to bottom, before the packet goes out. This is not optional and it is not a formality: a wrong term date or a missed checkbox in a legal agreement is a real problem, and Claude filling a field correctly according to what you told it does not mean what you told it was right.
You click send. Claude prepares the envelope; a human sends it.

Claude workflow: buyer packet in SkySlope with Claude in Chrome

Trigger: you have a new buyer ready to sign the pre-showing packet.

What Claude prepares: asks for the per-buyer facts in one batch (name, email, phone, term, compensation, area, tail), creates and renames the file, adds the packet's forms by exact-substring search, enters the buyer's details once in the file details screen so they auto-populate, and fills the one or two forms that need real field work.

What the human checks and does: confirms the buyer's email spelling out loud before Claude enters it, reviews the completed packet top to bottom, confirms the signer list on the e-signature envelope, and clicks send.

What is never automated: signing in to the account, entering any password, clicking send on the envelope, and confirming legal terms (compensation percentage, term length) with the buyer before they are entered as agreed fact.

Claude workflow: under-contract date tracker and the morning brief

Trigger: a buyer goes under contract, or it is the start of a work day with buyers already in the pipeline.

What Claude prepares: creates or updates the buyer's block in the plain-text pipeline file with every fact you give it and a "?" for everything you have not confirmed yet; each morning, reads current envelope status and the pipeline file and drafts a short report of only the files with something stale or due.

What the human checks and does: supplies every real date and fact (contract date, earnest money, lender, deadlines) as it becomes known, corrects any "?" Claude has not been given yet rather than letting Claude guess, and follows up on whatever the morning brief flags.

What is never automated: inventing a date or figure to fill a blank field. A missing date stays a "?" until a human supplies it.

Claude workflow: contract to keys client checklist

Trigger: a buyer's file moves under contract and they ask "what happens now."

What Claude prepares: a 13-step, client-facing checklist drafted from the buyer's own pipeline file, written in plain language a buyer can follow (roughly: contract signed, earnest money deposited, inspections scheduled, loan underwriting, appraisal, walkthrough, closing). The exact step count and order should match whatever process document your brokerage or builder relationship already uses.

What the human checks and does: reviews the draft against the actual file before sharing it, corrects any step that does not match this specific transaction, and sends it to the buyer themselves.

What is never automated: promising a specific closing date or outcome to the buyer; the checklist describes the process, not a guarantee.

What stays human

Signing in to the transaction platform and the e-signature tool; credentials are never shared with Claude or any other tool.
Confirming the compensation percentage, term length, geographic area and tail period with the buyer before they go into a signed agreement.
Reading back the buyer's email address before every send, and again before every resend.
Reviewing every document in a packet, top to bottom, before it is sent for signature.
Clicking send on the signature envelope.
Entering every date in the pipeline file from a verified source, never a guess; unknowns stay marked "?" until confirmed.

Do this today

Confirm which transaction management platform your brokerage actually uses, sign in, and check whether your state association's forms library is connected.
Build your own state's search-term table for the equivalent of the six-document buyer packet, and save it somewhere you will actually look at it next time.
Create the plain-text pipeline file template above (or copy it as is) and add any buyer currently under contract, marking every date you do not have with "?".

Sources

DocuSign for REALTORS pricing, retrieved 2026-09-03.
Lone Wolf product family, retrieved 2026-09-03.
Claude in Chrome safety limits, support.claude.com, retrieved 2026-09-03.
Claude Code and Claude in Chrome integration, code.claude.com, retrieved 2026-09-03.
SkySlope pricing page: Suite "starting at $340 per month, no long-term contracts required," Forms included, DigiSign and Books add-ons, skyslope.com/pricing, retrieved 2026-09-04
SkySlope DigiSign Sales Order terms (12-month initial term, auto-renewal, cancellation), skyslope.com/digisign-sales-order, retrieved 2026-09-04
SkySlope Smart Suite AI feature page, skyslope.com/smart-suite, retrieved 2026-09-04
SkySlope End User Terms of Use, Last Updated February 2026, sections 2.2.3 and 4(j) to 4(k), skyslope.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/02/END-USER-TERMS-OF-USE.pdf, retrieved 2026-09-04
Arizona REALTORS, Business Technology and eSign pages (forms licensing agreements, TransactionDesk member benefit, Authentisign via single sign-on), aaronline.com/efficient-business-tools, retrieved 2026-09-04

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