How Setpoint Empowers Backflip to Scale with Lean Operations

About Backflip

Backflip is a real estate financial technology company empowering entrepreneurs to acquire and renovate single-family homes, revitalizing communities. Backflip’s platform combines technology, data, and capital solutions to help real estate investors scale their businesses effectively.

The Problem

Manual processes held back growth and drained resources

Backflip, an innovative real estate technology company, empowers real estate entrepreneurs with both technology and capital solutions for fix-and-flip investing. Their lending product provides Residential Transition Loans (RTLs) averaging $250,000, supported by warehouse facilities. As their portfolio grew, inefficiencies in managing these facilities began to take a toll.

“The whole industry is done based on spreadsheets and sending things via Box drives – it’s a pretty antiquated process,” explains Richard Porteous, VP of Capital Markets at Backflip.

These manual processes consumed the team’s time, created opportunities for errors, and limited their ability to scale effectively.

“A team member once told me during a one-on-one that all they were doing was sending spreadsheets back and forth with the warehouse provider,” recalls Porteous. “That’s when I knew we needed to make a change—not just to free up their time, but to allow the entire team to focus on what truly drives the business forward.”

The manual process was not only time-consuming but also prone to errors. “Prior to Setpoint, we used to spend nearly a full day trying to get tied out on a standard warehouse line request, sometimes multiple days,” says Porteous. “There was a lot of back and forth of email communication sending files over mail or FTP. The delays were inevitable and kind of persistent.”

Ultimately, the inefficiencies and bottlenecks highlighted a critical need for a smarter, more scalable solution.

The Solution

A fully integrated platform to automate and streamline warehouse management

After evaluating several vendors, Backflip chose Setpoint’s warehouse management platform. “What we liked about Setpoint was that it was a truly fully integrated end-to-end solution for warehouse management. Nobody else was really offering something that was quite as robust,” Porteous explains. “So, it was sort of a no-brainer when we looked at other solutions.”

Setpoint’s platform streamlines Backflip’s warehouse management process through several key functions:

1. Automated loan boarding: Simplify the addition of loans to warehouse facilities while ensuring compliance with facility terms.
2. Loan-level compliance insight: Rapidly identify and address loan-level violations, ensuring adherence to concentration limits and risk parameters in real time.
3. Streamlined capital access: Expedite funding requests through a centralized portal, eliminating delays and errors.
4. Comprehensive risk management: Gain real-time visibility into the entire loan portfolio, from state-level concentrations to FICO band distribution.

The system’s seamless integration with Backflip’s existing loan operating system (LOS) further enhanced its impact, enabling easy data synchronization and eliminating inefficiencies.

“Setpoint has become a single source of truth for our cross-functional teams,” says Porteous. “Everybody from our accounting team looking at month-end reports to our operations team seeing third party diligence reviews have passed. Everybody at Backflip is using it.”

The Result

Time savings, lean operations, and strategic growth

The implementation of Setpoint’s platform has delivered transformative results for Backflip:

• 10x faster funding requests: Reduced from up to two days to just one hour.
• Lean team operations: Warehouse management now requires only part of one employee’s time, freeing up others for high-impact work.
• Enhanced visibility: Single source of truth and real-time insights into loan performance and risk parameters have empowered better decision-making across departments.
• Seamless integration: Direct connection with loan operating system ensures data accuracy and prevents any slippage or leakage with funding amounts.

“Setpoint has not only made us more efficient but also freed up mental capacity,” says Porteous. “Instead of worrying about whether a funding request will go through or if a spreadsheet error will cause delays, we know everything is accurate and moving smoothly. That’s priceless in a fast-paced startup environment.”

The platform’s impact has been so transformative that Backflip now includes Setpoint as a requirement for new warehouse relationships.

“Setpoint is one of the most critical pieces of software we use,” says Porteous. “I would strongly recommend it to anyone managing warehouse lines. It’s saved us time, improved accuracy, and helped us scale without adding unnecessary headcount. It’s hard to imagine going back to the old way of doing things.”