The complete transaction coordinator checklist (contract to close)

One thing this page does that other checklists don't: next to each task, we mark whether it's work a checklist can only remind you about — or work an AI coordinator simply does: reading the contract, auditing signatures, watching deadlines, drafting the party-routed emails. That column is grounded in what CloudCoord actually does today, not what software might do someday. And where the honest answer is "this is the agent's call," we say so.

How to read the "who does it" column

Every row below is tagged one of three ways:

• Automatic — CloudCoord does this on its own, without being asked, the moment the trigger arrives (an executed contract lands in your inbox, an addendum changes a date).
• Drafted for your approval — CloudCoord writes the email and queues it. The drafts are written in your voice: CloudCoord learns from your own past sent emails, so drafts get closer to how you actually write the more you use it. A human — you — reviews and approves every outbound email before it sends. Nothing goes out unsupervised.
• Your call — judgment work: negotiating, advising, deciding. CloudCoord won't guess on money, dates, or legal obligations. When one of those is unclear, it asks you a question instead of acting. No software should claim otherwise.

If you're using this checklist standalone with no software at all, every row is simply yours. That's the point of publishing it complete.

Phase 1 — Executed contract intake

The first 24 hours set up everything else. Most missed deadlines trace back to sloppy intake.

• 1.1Confirm the contract is fully executed — every party signed, every page, every initial lineAutomaticCloudCoord audits signatures and initials page by page and flags gaps (e.g., "buyer initials missing — page 6")
• 1.2Extract the core terms: property address, parties, purchase price, deposit amount and due dateAutomaticExtracted directly from the contract PDF when it arrives by email
• 1.3Match the contract to your listing agreement or buyer agreement on fileAutomatic
• 1.4Calculate your commission from the agreementAutomaticParsed from the matched agreement
• 1.5Enter every contract deadline into a tracked calendar: deposit, inspection, financing, appraisal, title, closingAutomaticA watch is set on each deadline; CloudCoord tracks six deadline types per file
• 1.6Build the contact sheet: buyer's agent, lender, clients, attorneys — names, emails, phonesAutomaticContact cards filed from the contract and your listing file
• 1.7Verify deposit terms in the contract match the offerAutomaticPart of the intake audit
• 1.8Send an introduction to the cooperating agentDrafted for your approvalIncluding any audit flags it caught
• 1.9Send the executed contract to the lender so their file is completeDrafted for your approvalWith the contract attached
• 1.10Tell your clients they're under contract and what happens nextDrafted for your approvalMilestones and dates only — see routing rules below
• 1.11Decide who handles title/closing if the contract doesn't sayYour callCloudCoord asks the question; you (or your client) answer it

Phase 2 — Earnest money deposit

• 2.1Confirm the deposit amount, holder, and due date from the contractAutomaticExtracted at intake
• 2.2Track the deposit deadline and chase it as it approachesAutomatic
• 2.3Confirm receipt of the deposit and file the receiptAutomaticAutomatic when the receipt arrives by email — the receipt is classified and filed to the transaction
• 2.4Notify relevant parties the deposit was receivedDrafted for your approval
• 2.5Handle a late or short depositYour callA contract-performance issue — CloudCoord flags it, you decide the response

Phase 3 — Inspection

• 3.1Track the inspection contingency deadlineAutomatic
• 3.2Confirm the inspection is scheduledDrafted for your approvalA check-in to the appropriate party
• 3.3File the inspection report when it arrivesAutomaticClassified and attached to the file
• 3.4Track any repair addendum and its response deadlinesAutomaticOnce the addendum is in the file
• 3.5Negotiate repairs or creditsYour callThis is the agent's job, full stop
• 3.6Advise your client on waiving or extending the contingencyYour call
• 3.7Circulate the signed repair addendum to the parties who need itDrafted for your approvalThe lender never receives inspection or repair addendums — see routing rules below

Phase 4 — Financing and appraisal

• 4.1Track the financing contingency deadlineAutomatic
• 4.2Check in with the lender on loan progress before the deadlineDrafted for your approval
• 4.3Track the appraisal: ordered, completed, any value issuesAutomaticFor dates and documents in the file; a low appraisal is escalated to you
• 4.4Respond to a low appraisal — renegotiate, appeal, or walkYour call
• 4.5Confirm loan commitment / clear-to-close and update the file statusAutomaticWhen the lender's clear-to-close email arrives, the financing contingency is marked satisfied and logged; you confirm the status change
• 4.6Tell your clients financing is on trackDrafted for your approvalMilestone confirmation only

Phase 5 — Title and attorney

• 5.1Confirm who is performing the title workYour callCloudCoord asks if it doesn't know, then takes over
• 5.2Send the title company or closing attorney everything they need — contract, addenda, contact sheetDrafted for your approvalThe document-package email is drafted the moment you name the firm
• 5.3Track title commitment receipt and review deadlinesAutomatic
• 5.4Chase unresolved title issuesYour callFlagged automatically; resolution is your call — title defects are legal questions
• 5.5Confirm the closing attorney has current payoff and commission figuresDrafted for your approvalOn listing-side files, CloudCoord drafts the commission disbursement statement to the closing attorney about a week before closing

A note on attorney states. In attorney-closing states — Vermont, where I practice, is one — the "title company" column of most published checklists is wrong for you: an attorney conducts the closing, holds funds, and often does the title search. The tasks above don't change, but the recipient does, and the attorney typically wants the full document package earlier than a title company would. The PDF includes both labels.

Phase 6 — Pre-closing (final two weeks)

• 6.1Confirm the closing date, time, and location with all partiesDrafted for your approval
• 6.2Remind your clients to set up utility transfersDrafted for your approvalSent to your represented client
• 6.3Schedule the final walkthroughYour callYour call to schedule; CloudCoord reminds
• 6.4Review the settlement statement / Closing Disclosure against the contract — price, deposit credit, commissions, prorationsAutomaticCloudCoord cross-references the CD against the transaction data and flags mismatches
• 6.5Resolve settlement-statement discrepanciesYour callMoney questions are never guessed at
• 6.6Confirm every contingency is released or resolvedAutomaticThe deadline watches make an open contingency impossible to miss
• 6.7Send clients the what-to-bring / logistics emailDrafted for your approval

Phase 7 — Closing day

• 7.1Confirm walkthrough completed with no new issuesYour callYou're the one in the house
• 7.2Attend closing (or confirm remote signing logistics)Your call
• 7.3Confirm recording and disbursementYour callYour call to confirm; CloudCoord logs it
• 7.4Mark the file closedYour callEverything downstream — the post-close thank-you draft, the archive, your production log — then runs automatically

Phase 8 — Post-close

• 8.1Send a thank-you and ask for a reviewDrafted for your approvalCloudCoord drafts this about a day after closing, with your review link
• 8.2Verify your commission was disbursed correctlyYour callCheck the number yourself
• 8.3Archive the complete file — every document, every email, every audit findingAutomaticEvery step was logged as it happened, so the compliance file already exists
• 8.4Log the closed deal for your production recordsAutomatic

When an addendum changes a date, the whole checklist moves

Here's where a printed checklist genuinely breaks down. Say the parties sign an addendum extending closing by two weeks. On paper, you now re-derive every downstream date — the walkthrough, the CD review, the utility reminders, the attorney's figures deadline — and hope you caught them all.

In CloudCoord, when an addendum changes a date, every downstream date and reminder updates automatically. The addendum is read the same way the contract was, the changed terms are extracted, and the deadline watches move with them.

More on how this works: Live file updates.

Who gets which email (routing rules)

The communications rows above aren't interchangeable — the fastest way to blow up a deal is sending the right email to the wrong person. Two rules are hard-coded into CloudCoord and worth adopting even if you coordinate by hand:

• Clients receive logistics and milestone confirmations only — never problem emails. "Inspection is scheduled for the 5th" goes to your sellers. "The buyer's initials are missing on page 6" goes to the cooperating agent. Problem-solving is agent-to-agent.
• Lenders never receive inspection or repair addendums. The lender gets the executed contract and financing-relevant updates; repair negotiations are not their file.

What a checklist can't do (and what software honestly can't either)

A complete checklist is genuinely useful on its own — that's why this one is free and ungated. If you're a practicing TC or studying for the role, take it and go; you're exactly who it's for.

But be honest about what it is: a reminder system. It can't read the contract, notice the missing initials, or know that yesterday's addendum just moved four deadlines. Most transaction coordinator software doesn't close that gap either — it gives you a nicer place to store the checklist. Tools like Open to Close and tcDocs are solid workflow trackers, and DocJacket and Nekst offer real free tiers if a tracker is all you need. Those are fair choices.

The category difference with an AI coordinator is autonomy — and what autonomy buys isn't better remembering, it's not having to remember at all. Every deadline, document, and follow-up in the "Automatic" rows is held for you, so the attention you used to spend keeping the file in your head goes back to the work that actually grows a business: prospecting, showings, clients. CloudCoord does the "Automatic" rows above without being told, drafts the "Drafted" rows for your approval — in your voice, learned from your own sent emails — and asks a question when it hits a "Your call." What that role even is, and whether you need one: What is a transaction coordinator? — and if you're weighing a human hire against software, that comparison is here.

ListedKit is the closest AI comparison, and the honest dividing line isn't price or volume — it's workflow. ListedKit is command-driven: you spend your time telling the AI what to do, task by task, and it does it well (and its client portal, where your clients can follow the transaction themselves, is a genuine strength CloudCoord doesn't have yet). CloudCoord is for the agent who wants the work already done when they open the app.

The worked math, since cost is usually the next question: CloudCoord is flat — $149/month solo, $499/month for a team of up to ten agents, both starting with a two-week free trial and no onboarding fee. A solo agent closing 24 deals a year pays $1,788 for the year, about $74.50 per closing, whether it's a slow February or a triple-closing June. The team math is starker: $499 × 12 = $5,988 a year — about a tenth of hiring a full-time in-house coordinator at a $50,000–$70,000 salary (under a tenth once payroll taxes and benefits are counted), and a fraction of per-file human TC fees at team volume (a team closing 15 sides a month at $300–$500 per file spends $54,000–$90,000 a year). Per-file pricing scales the other way: Transactly's Elite Monthly plan is $379/month and includes one transaction credit — each additional file bills at the per-file rate ($379 on that plan, $399 pay-as-you-go), so a 24-deal year runs about $9,096. ListedKit bills per credit — $14.99 for a buyer-side file, two credits ($29.98) for a full sale — genuinely cheap at any volume; the difference is the workflow above, not the invoice. Full cost breakdown: What does a transaction coordinator cost?

Flat lines stay flat. Per-file lines don't.

Human TC and Transactly figures assume every additional file bills at the same per-file rate; ListedKit assumes buyer-side files at $14.99/credit. Pricing sourced from each vendor's site, July 2026.

One honest limitation: CloudCoord is a newer product, and its independent-review footprint is thinner than incumbents like Open to Close or Transactly — you'll find fewer third-party writeups to cross-check us against. That's exactly what the trial is for: every plan starts with a two-week free trial, so you can watch it run one of your own files before paying anything. Onboarding is high-touch — I personally onboard early customers — and it's free; there is no onboarding fee.

Frequently asked questions