How Deferred automated referral payouts

Deferred helps real estate investors defer capital gains by executing 1031 exchanges. As a Qualified Intermediary, Deferred is trusted with hundreds of millions of dollars in client funds and partners with leading financial institutions, including JPMorgan Chase and Raymond James, to securely manage the exchange process.

Deferred partners with real estate brokers and other professionals, and referral partners are a core growth channel for the business. Accurate and timely partner payouts are mission-critical and are fuel for the company's growth engine.

Referral partner payouts are mission-critical to Deferred's growth, but rapid growth pushed the existing process to its limits. Before FullSeam, payouts were a manual, cross-functional process shared between Finance and the Head of Partnerships, with no single system of record. Data lived across the CRM, Google Sheets, internal admin tools, and email. Critical information, like W-9s and banking details, was often incomplete or hard to locate. "We built strong partner relationships early," said CEO Judd Schoenholtz, "but our internal systems couldn't keep up with our growth and the increased sophistication of the business."

Because of this fragmentation, payouts were handled ad hoc and typically batched monthly. The finance team spent 10+ hours per month coordinating payouts, chasing missing information, fixing errors, and responding to partner questions, often pulling senior team members into the process. "Our team was doing the right things for partners," Judd said, "but they were doing it the hard way."

The downstream impact showed up as the business scaled. Payouts were sometimes delayed or unclear, documentation issues surfaced late, and a backlog of unpaid or disputed payouts began to grow. "None of this was about intent or discipline," the CEO explained. "It was a system problem. We needed infrastructure that matched the quality of our partnerships."

Without a clear end-to-end owner or a reliable source of truth, the process became increasingly fragile as volume increased.

Deferred replaced the entire payout workflow with FullSeam's AI-powered Accounts Payable system—an AI-powered system customized to Deferred's business logic. Instead of fragmented tools and manual handoffs, referral partners are now onboarded through a structured signup flow that collects all required information upfront, including W-9s and banking details. Each partner is directly linked to the customers they refer, creating a clear, auditable relationship between revenue and payouts.

"We wanted a system that reflected how our business actually works," the CEO said. "Not another tool we'd have to work around."

Payout calculations are now automated and tracked in a centralized dashboard, giving the team real-time visibility into what's owed, what's been paid, and what's pending. Payments themselves are fully orchestrated by the system—no manual sends, no spreadsheet handoffs, no guesswork. When exceptions do occur, there's a defined, repeatable process to resolve them quickly.

"For the first time, we have a clean, end-to-end view of partner payouts," the CEO noted. "It's predictable, transparent, and easy to manage."

Most importantly, the finance team is no longer involved in day-to-day payout operations. What had been a recurring operational burden is now a background process that scales automatically as the business grows. "Our team can finally focus on higher-value work," the CEO said. "The payout system just runs—which is exactly how it should be."