You didn't lose control of the deal. You lost track of who can see what.
One purchase. The buyer, you, a mortgage broker, a conveyancing solicitor, a building and pest inspector, and often a partner or a parent who is putting in some of the money and would quite like to be kept in the loop.
Six people, each needing a different slice of the same file. The way that usually gets handled is forwarding.
Forwarding is not a permission model
It has no concept of scope, no expiry, no record, and no way back. Once a PDF is in someone's inbox it is in their inbox permanently, along with whatever was underneath it in the thread you forwarded.
Try it as a test on your last completed deal. Who holds a copy of the building report? Not who should, who does. Most people can name three of the five and are guessing by the fourth.
Not who should have it. Who does. Most people can name three and are guessing by the fourth.
Scoped lanes, not attachments
Each outside party gets their own lane and sees only what belongs to it. The broker doesn't see the solicitor's documents. The inspector doesn't see the client's identity details or the cash-to-settle position. Your due diligence findings never leave your side unless you publish them.
Access is a six-digit PIN on a link that expires after seven days, and it can be revoked or reissued. That's a very different object from a forwarded attachment: it has a scope, a clock, and a record.
Who can invite whom
Owner and Senior BA can invite and manage participants on any deal. Everyone else, including Admin (an oversight role here, as it is everywhere else in Trace), can only invite, revoke or resend on a deal they're personally assigned to.
That constraint is worth understanding rather than working around. The person who can hand out access to a client's file should be a short list, and it should be a list you could name from memory.
We're building this with a small first group of buyer's agents. If you couldn't answer the who-has-the-report question above, we'd like to talk to you.
Apply for a founding partner spot