Help

Getting set up

About 15 minutes for most landlords. You can stop and come back any time; Home shows what's left.

1. Settings → Business: your business name and your address for service. It's printed on every lease and RTB notice, so use the address where tenants can deliver documents to you.
2. Properties → Add a property, with its suites. Name suites the way your leases do ("Unit 2", "Basement"). Several buildings? Import them from a spreadsheet.
3. Tenants: add the tenants already living there, with their rent and start date. More than a few? Download the template, fill it in and upload it; you'll see what will be added before anything is saved.
4. Rent: choose how rent is recorded (see Recording rent).
5. Your website: your listings, application form and waitlist are ready as they are. Settings is where you add your own words, colour and logo.

• Tip: Rent tracking starts from a month you choose (Settings → Rent tracking), so months before you joined never show as owed.

Recording rent

What each suite should pay comes from its tenant. What it did pay comes from your bank or from you.

1. Paid by e-transfer: connect the bank account rent goes into, and payments are matched to suites automatically. Or, each month, download your account's statement as a CSV file and upload it on the Rent page: matching deposits fill themselves in.
2. Paid by cheque or cash: on the Rent page, tap the suite's month and mark it paid.
3. Anything the matching couldn't place waits under Needs review for you to say which suite and month it's for.

• Tip: Rent not in after a few days? Mark it late. If it's still unpaid, the Tenants page offers the 10-day notice (see Unpaid rent).
• Tip: An agreed discount: on the Tenants page, mark the shortfall as agreed and give the reason, so it stops showing as owing.

Finding a tenant: listing to signed lease

From a vacancy to a signed lease and a new tenancy, without retyping anything.

1. Listings → Add a listing for the vacant suite. It appears on your website with an application form.
2. Applications arrive complete, with references and income. You get an email for each one.
3. Open an application and press Approve. You go straight to Prepare the lease.
4. Check who signs, the rent and dates, what's included and your clauses (change any clause for this tenant if you've agreed something different), then press Make the lease and send it for signature.
5. Each tenant and you get your own signing link by email. The application page shows who has signed.
6. When everyone has signed, press Create the tenancy. The details come from the lease; rent tracking starts, the listing closes, and the signed lease is filed in the tenancy file.

• Tip: A tenant without email signs in person: open their signing page from the application and hand them your phone or laptop.
• Tip: Signed on paper instead? Upload the signed copy on the application page.

Your lease clauses

Every lease is the BC tenancy agreement (RTB-1) plus your own addendum of extra terms, as one PDF.

1. Settings → Lease clauses: write your standard extra terms once, or several sets (one per building, say).
2. On each lease, the clauses can be changed, reordered or added to for that tenant only. Press Save wording to the clause set if a change should apply to future leases too.

• Tip: Clauses must not take away rights the Residential Tenancy Act gives tenants; those terms can't be enforced. If unsure, ask a lawyer or the Residential Tenancy Branch.

Rent increases (RTB-7)

The year's allowed increase, the earliest date and the serve-by date are worked out for every tenant.

1. The Rent page lists each tenancy's next possible increase: the earliest date (12 months after the last increase or the start) and the last day to serve the notice (3 full months before).
2. Choose the new rent (up to the year's cap) and make the RTB-7. It's the official form, filled in.
3. Serve it, then record how and when you served it, so the dates and the tenant's new rent follow.

• Tip: The yearly cap is set by the province each fall. Settings shows the caps in use; check the new year's figure when it's announced.

Unpaid rent: the 10-day notice (RTB-30)

The official notice, filled in, with the dates that follow from how you serve it.

1. On the Tenants page, a tenant who owes rent shows the option to make a 10-day notice.
2. Choose how you'll serve it (in person, attached to the door, by mail…). The date it takes effect follows from that.
3. Record what happened next: paid within 5 days (the notice is cancelled), disputed, or moved out. The Deadlines page shows each date as it comes up.

Move-outs and deposits

The deposit, BC's interest on it, and the 15-day deadline to return it, worked out for you.

1. On the Tenants page, press End on the tenancy and enter the move-out date.
2. Under Move-outs, enter the forwarding address and anything you're keeping (with the tenant's written agreement or an RTB order).
3. The final statement shows the deposit, the interest owed and what's returned. Return it within 15 days of the later of the move-out and receiving the forwarding address.

Your team

Give someone their own login instead of sharing yours.

1. Settings → Team → add their email and choose a role: Manager (day-to-day: rent, tenants, applications, notices) or Read-only (sees everything, changes nothing; good for an accountant).
2. Only the owner can add people and choose the plan.

Your records and documents

Your data is yours. You can take a full copy at any time.

1. Settings → Backup & export downloads everything as zip files: one with all your records, and one (or a few) with every document.
2. Keep your own copies of signed leases and served notices too.