Property

Units, leases, and rent that falls due whether anybody logs in or not.

For property managers, letting agents, credit controllers and landlords.

Printable: Property user guide (PDF) — the same guide laid out for a desk, a cab or a workshop wall.

What this module is for

A rent roll is not a list of tenants. It is a ledger that grows on its own: every month, every active lease owes another period whether or not anybody opened the app. This module keeps that ledger, ages what is owed, and tells you how full the buildings are.

The one idea to hold on to

Rent falls due because a month passed

Not because somebody pressed a button. Raise what has fallen due, on the Portfolio screen, does not decide what is owed — it writes down what already is. It charges every period from where it left off through to today, so a month nobody pressed it for is still raised the next time somebody does, rather than left as a gap nobody notices until a tenant points it out.

This also means you cannot double-charge a period by pressing it twice. A given lease can only ever hold one charge of a given type for a given month; the second attempt is skipped rather than added, and the message says how many were skipped.

What it does not do

• It does not do your accounts. It records receipts against charges so you know who owes what; it is not a general ledger.
• It does not manage maintenance of the buildings. That is the maintenance module, working from the same buildings and units.
• It does not chase tenants for you. It tells you which ones need chasing and gives you their contact details.

Setting it up

Buildings, then units, then tenants, then leases. In that order.

1. Buildings and units

A building is a tracker group you already have, and each space in it is one of that group's tracked items. An administrator adds them under Tracked Groups and Tracked Items; who can see a building follows that group's whitelist. What this module adds is the letting detail.

Open Property → Units and use Describe a unit for each space:

Field	What to enter
Building	The building the unit is in. Only buildings you can see are offered, narrowed by the department selected in the header.
Unit	The space being described. Offered once a building is chosen; a space that is not listed has not been added to the building yet.
Unit number	The number on the door. Registers show it in place of the name.
Type	Flat, shop, office.
Bedrooms	Where it applies.
Floor area	The unit's floor area.
Market rent	What it should let for. Never charged — it is the benchmark a vacancy is measured against, so an empty unit still has one.
Lettable	Turn it off while a unit is under refurbishment or held back. It then leaves both sides of the occupancy figure rather than counting as vacant.

Press Save unit.

2. Tenants

Open Property → Leases and use Add a tenant in the header. Enter the Name, and a Contact and Email where you have them, then press Add tenant. Contact details matter here: the Arrears screen shows them beside the debt so that chasing somebody does not mean going to look them up.

3. Leases

Grant a lease ties a tenant to a vacant unit from a start date, at a monthly rent, with any other monthly charges it carries.

A lease can carry more than rent

Service charge, water, refuse — each is a separate charge on the lease, added under Other monthly charges, and each is raised, aged and settled independently. Keeping them separate is what lets you tell a tenant who is behind on service charge but current on rent.

The screens, one at a time

Portfolio

Property → Portfolio

The overview, in the order the questions get asked:

• Outstanding — everything owed, and by how many tenants — with 90 days and over beside it.
• Occupancy — let unit-days as a share of lettable unit-days over the last 30 days — and Units, with how many of them are lettable.
• This month's rent — the Raise what has fallen due button.
• Who owes most — the eight largest balances, aged into current, 30, 60 and 90+ days. The full ageing opens Arrears.
• Buildings — each building with its address, its units and how many are lettable. Units opens the unit register.

It is where a credit controller starts the week.

Units

Property → Units

Every unit: its number (with its name beneath), its type, its standing — let, vacant or not lettable — its current tenant and its market rent. A vacant unit is highlighted, which is what makes the void visible. Filter by Building.

Leases

Property → Leases

Every lease: unit, tenant, from and to (open where there is no agreed end), status, and the monthly total of all its charges. Under the status, charged to shows the last period raised. Filter by Building and Status.

This is where tenants are added, leases are granted, and notice is recorded — the Notice button on an active lease.

Arrears

Property → Arrears

The working screen for money owed. Four totals across the top — current, 30 days, 60 days, 90 days and over — then one row per tenant: tenant, contact, the four ageing buckets and the total. Filter by Building.

Statement opens that tenant's account below the table: what is outstanding, the deposits held for them, every charge (period, charge, due date, amount, settled, outstanding), and Record a receipt.

Everyday tasks

Raising the rent

1. Open Property → Portfolio.
2. Under This month's rent, press Raise what has fallen due.
3. The message says how many charges were raised, and how many were already on the ledger and skipped.

The run covers every active lease, and every lease under notice, in the buildings you can see. Pressing it twice is safe.

Granting a lease

1. Open Property → Leases and choose Grant a lease in the header.
2. Pick the Unit and the Tenant. Only vacant units are offered — lettable, and free of a current lease. Add the tenant first if they are new.
3. Set Starts. Charges are raised from this month forward, including any months already past.
4. Set Ends where the lease has one; leave it blank for no agreed end. A lease that ends in March stops being charged in March.
5. Enter the Monthly rent, and the Deposit where one is required. A deposit is held for the tenant; it is not income and never appears in arrears.
6. Under Other monthly charges, use Add a charge for anything else the tenant pays each month — a code, a label and an amount.
7. Press Grant lease. The lease is active at once.

Backdating raises every past period at once

The next Raise what has fallen due charges every month from the start date to today. That is usually exactly what you want when entering an existing tenancy — but it means a lease backdated two years produces twenty-four charges immediately. Enter the receipts alongside it, or the tenant will appear to be deeply in arrears.

Recording a receipt

1. Open Property → Arrears and find the tenant.
2. Press Statement on their row.
3. Under Record a receipt, enter the Amount, and the Method and Reference where you have them.
4. Press Record. Outstanding reduces; anything left over is reported as unallocated.

TIP

A receipt settles the oldest charge first. That is what a tenant expects, and it keeps the ageing honest — clearing a current charge while a 90-day one sits behind it would make the portfolio look healthier than it is.

A statement can be partial

If the tenant also holds a lease in a building you are not whitelisted on, the statement says so, and the export carries the same caveat. Do not send it as a full account.

Ending a lease

Press Notice on an active lease's row when the tenant gives notice; its status becomes notice given. A lease under notice goes on being charged up to its end date — and a lease with no agreed end takes the day notice was recorded as its end. Anything already outstanding stays on the arrears screen, because a debt does not disappear when a tenant does.

How the figures are worked out

Which periods have fallen due

Every period between the lease's start and today, stopping at the lease's end where it has one. A period is a calendar month, and its charge is due on the first of the month — a lease starting on the 14th still owes that whole month. The run is a catch-up, not a tick: it charges from wherever it left off through to now.

Rent as at a date

A lease's rent can change during its life — a review, an agreed reduction. The charge for a period uses the rent that applied in that period, not the current one. A rent raised in July does not retrospectively change what was owed in May.

Ageing

Outstanding amounts are bucketed by how long they have been past their due date — not by when the charge was raised, so a charge entered late for a month long past is overdue by its due date:

Bucket	Meaning
Current	Less than 30 days past its due date.
30 days	Between 30 and 59 days past due.
60 days	Between 60 and 89 days past due.
90+ days	Ninety days or more. The bucket that needs a decision rather than a reminder.

Deposits appear in no bucket. They are held for the tenant, not owed by them.

Occupancy

Let unit-days as a share of lettable unit-days, over the last 30 days. A unit marked not lettable — under refurbishment, held back — is not counted as a void, because including it would make a deliberate decision look like a failure to let.

When something looks wrong

What you see	Why, and what to do
A tenant is suddenly deeply in arrears	A lease was backdated and raised all its historic periods at once. Enter the receipts that were already taken.
A period was not charged	Nobody has pressed Raise what has fallen due since that month began. Press it on Portfolio — it catches up every missed period.
A charge appears twice	It cannot. One lease holds one charge of one type per period. Two similar rows are two different charges, or two different periods — check the period column.
Rent for an old month looks wrong	It uses the rent that applied then, not the current rent. That is correct behaviour.
Occupancy looks too high	Units marked not lettable are not counted as voids. Check which units are marked lettable.
A unit is not offered when granting a lease	Only vacant units are offered. A let unit already has a lease, and a unit marked not lettable is not on offer.
A space is not offered in Describe a unit	It has not been added to that building yet. An administrator adds it under Tracked Items.
A building is missing	You are not whitelisted on its tracker group, or the department selected in the header does not include it. Ask the group owner or the account holder.

Reference

Lease status

Status	Meaning
Active	In force. Raised on every run.
Notice given	Still in force and still charged, up to its end date.
Ended	Finished. Raises nothing further; outstanding debt remains.

Words this module uses

Term	Meaning
Unit	A lettable space in a building — a flat, a shop, an office.
Lettable	Available to let. Units marked not lettable are not counted as voids.
Standing	Whether a unit is let, vacant or not lettable.
Charge	A thing the tenant pays each month: rent, service charge, water. Each is raised and aged separately.
Period	The month a charge belongs to.
Deposit	Money held for the tenant. Not income, and never in arrears.
Void	A lettable unit with no active lease.

Taking the data with you

The unit register (Units) and the rent roll (Leases) offer reading-mode preview, Excel, PDF, print and share, and so does a tenant's statement once it is open on Arrears. Exports carry the building and status filters on screen and cover the whole list under them — every page of it, not only the one you are looking at — up to 5,000 rows. Past that the screen says so before you press anything, and the export's subtitle says which part it holds; narrow the filter to take the rest. See Taking data away.