Manage rental properties, tenants, and rent — the full landlord workflow.
Two things decide whether this guide applies to you, and it's worth knowing them before you invest an afternoon in setup:
If both fit how you work, read on — everything below assumes them.
Letting a property is a closed loop. A unit becomes vacant, you fill it, you run the tenancy, and at the end of the lease either you renew it or you start again. This guide follows that loop, so if you're mid-way through a tenancy you'll know exactly which section is yours.
| # | Step | Where you are |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | List the property and set rent | Properties |
| 2 | Receive and screen applications | Applications |
| 3 | Approve — the lease moves into setup | Applications |
| 4 | Prepare the lease; the tenant completes move-in payment | Leases & Occupancy |
| 5 | Run the tenancy — move-in acknowledged, utilities | The Lease Lifecycle |
| 6 | Record and confirm rent each month | Rent Collection |
| 7 | Keep the books | Ledger & Revenue |
| 8 | Handle repairs as they arise | Operations & Repairs |
| 9 | Renew or end the tenancy | The Lease Lifecycle |
| — | The unit is vacant again → back to step 1 |
Three things attach at each stage:
Each section below is written the way a colleague would explain it looking over your shoulder — what the page is really for, the mistake people make on it, and what it earns you. Where a button lives is the easy part; knowing why it's there is what this guide adds.
You land on your Dashboard when you sign in, and the sidebar on the left is how you move between sections. Before you click anything, two things about this workspace are worth carrying with you.
First, it's built around occupancy rather than transactions — the platform's job is to keep the record straight while you keep the keys. Once you see it that way, most of the design choices below make sense. Second, if an item seems to be missing from your sidebar, it isn't a bug: the workspace is shared with company landlords, and a small number of items belong to that workspace only. The Sidebar Navigation table below shows which.
Four setup steps stand between you and a working loop. They're quick, but two of them contain a fact that's much easier to learn here than to discover mid-tenancy.
Choose "Individual Landlord" at sign-up and confirm your email.
Head to Settings → Profile. This is the step most people intend to come back to and never do — which is a shame, because your name, photo, and contact details are what prospective tenants see before they apply. A complete profile reads as a landlord who answers messages, and it gets better applicants.
One field deserves a moment's thought rather than a quick answer: your landlord home country. It's set separately from any individual property's country — a common confusion — and it's used for your landlord identity and cross-border context. When you change it, the platform asks you to confirm, because it affects how your account is presented.
This is the fact that surprises almost everyone, so learn it now rather than on the first of the month: estateTT does not collect rent. Tenants pay you directly; what the platform provides is the record. Rent Collection generates the month's due records and tracks what's paid and what's overdue; Ledger & Revenue keeps the income and expense books. Tenants can report a payment sent; you confirm it — or record it yourself. That shared record is what prevents "I paid / you didn't" from ever becoming an argument.
Open Properties and add the address, type, photos, and rent. Here's the blunt truth: your photos and description decide whether qualified tenants apply at all. Everything the platform does well downstream — screening, the lease record, the rent ledger — starts with someone good choosing your listing over the next one.
One thing to know before you bulk-add: how many properties you can list depends on your plan, and the platform checks your entitlement before a new listing is created. If you hit the wall, that's why — it's not a bug.
This is the map of your whole workspace — every entry is either a stop on the loop or one of the tracks that runs alongside it. Worth a skim now; you'll feel it click into place as you read the sections below.
| # | Label | Href | Badge |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Dashboard | /dashboard/landlord | — |
| 2 | Operations & Repairs | /dashboard/landlord/maintenance | Outstanding maintenance |
| 3 | Ledger & Revenue | /dashboard/landlord/financials | Overdue rent |
| 4 | Rent Collection | /dashboard/landlord/rent | Overdue rent |
| 5 | Leases & Occupancy | /dashboard/landlord/tenants | — |
| 6 | Applications | /dashboard/landlord/applications | — |
| 7 | Quotes | /dashboard/landlord/quotes | Pending quotes |
| 8 | Financing | /dashboard/landlord/financing | — |
| 9 | Properties | /dashboard/landlord/properties | — |
| 10 | Calendar | /dashboard/landlord/calendar | — |
| 11 | Documents | /dashboard/landlord/documents | — |
| 12 | Messages | /dashboard/landlord/messages | Unread |
| 13 | Settings | /dashboard/landlord/settings | — |
The sidebar also shows Ask AI — the in-app assistant — and an Upgrade Plan link when your account is eligible to change plans.
Two items belong to the Company Landlord workspace: Offers (purchase offers on properties you have listed for sale) and Staff Registry (inviting and managing a team). Both are operations functions — selling inventory and staffing a firm — and neither applies to an individual landlord letting one property at a time. If you operate a portfolio with staff, see the Company Landlord guide. To sell a property you own as an individual, use the Individual Seller guide.
Sign in and this is the first thing you see — four numbers that answer "how are things?" before you've finished your coffee:
That last figure has a trap built into it, so read it twice. It's computed from what's been recorded in your ledger — not rent due, not rent expected, and not cash already sitting in your account. If you collected rent but never recorded it, this still reads zero. The other subtlety: a property that's listed but not yet tenanted still counts in your portfolio, which is why vacancy rate — not the raw portfolio number — is usually the figure worth acting on.
Don't skip the Recently viewed rail. When you're pricing a unit, the comparable rentals you browsed last week are sitting right there — the platform remembered so you don't have to.
The header carries two actions: Add Property, and Export Archive — a CSV download of your property portfolio (address, city, price, status, type). Be clear about what that export is and isn't: it exports your properties, not your transactions, so it won't serve as a ledger export at tax time.
Read the page the way a colleague would: work whichever number looks worst. A vacancy problem sends you to Properties or Applications; a revenue gap sends you to Rent Collection or the Ledger.
Step 1 of the loop, and the front door to everything else — a unit can't attract an
application until it exists here. Properties in the sidebar
(/dashboard/landlord/properties) shows your whole portfolio: add properties, edit details
and photos, and open any property to see its units and current occupancy.
The mistake people make here is treating the listing as done once it's live. A vacant unit with a stale listing is doubly expensive — it costs you rent every month and it quietly repels the applicants your other properties would attract. When you re-market a unit, refresh the photos and description rather than relisting the old one.
Price against the market, not memory. Browse comparable rentals before you set the number — the Recently viewed rail on your dashboard keeps the ones you looked at handy. And complete every field before a listing goes live: an incomplete listing doesn't just look thin, it fails to attract the applicants your other properties would.
Once a property is live, applications start arriving — and that's where the next section picks up.
Step 2 — and the section where speed quietly decides outcomes. Open Applications in the
sidebar (/dashboard/landlord/applications) and you'll see every application against your
properties, with the applicant's details, their linked documents, and a lease link once one
exists.
Applications move through three states you'll actually see:
The thing that trips people up: there is no separate "approved" waiting room. Approving an application is creating the lease — the moment you approve, the platform builds the lease and the application's badge flips to Lease in setup. From there the tenancy is a lease problem, not an application problem — which is why the record links straight through to it.
Now the part worth internalising: speed is selection. Good tenants apply to several properties at once, and the landlord who responds first usually gets the pick. But fast doesn't mean trusting — verify employment and income details against the linked documents before you approve. The application is their claim; your verification is what makes it trustworthy.
When you approve an applicant, the platform creates their lease and moves the application to Lease in setup. And here's the moment that confuses nearly every new landlord: the lease is not in force yet. It comes into force only once you record the move-in payment in the lease's Payments & Ledger (the tenant reports paying, you confirm receipt) and then confirm the move-in is complete on the lease record. Until both happen, the tenant won't appear in Leases & Occupancy — which looks like a bug and isn't. Troubleshooting covers it if it catches you.
Step 4 — the occupancy register, and the answer to "who's actually living in my properties
right now?" Leases & Occupancy in the sidebar (/dashboard/landlord/tenants) is the
Occupancy Registry: every tenant and lease across your portfolio with start and end
dates, rent, and payment history. Each row links through to that lease's own record.
The thing to know before you panic: this list is built from leases that are already in force. A lease isn't in force until its move-in payment is recorded and you've confirmed the move-in is complete. So if a Lease in setup applicant seems to be missing from this screen while their lease exists — the lease is real, it's simply waiting on you to confirm move-in.
Every row in this register is a lease in force — the page only lists active tenancies, which is exactly what "who's living in my properties now" means.
Two habits make this page earn its keep. First, treat the payment history here as the tenant's track record — it's the difference between renewing confidently and hoping. Second, before you promise anyone a renewal date, check this screen: the end date on the lease is what governs, not the date in your head. Open any lease from here and you arrive at its lifecycle surfaces — which is where we go next.
Steps 5 and 9 of the loop — everything that happens while one lease runs, and how it ends.
Open a lease and you land on its own record: the hub. It holds the terms, the payments due, and the documents, and from it you reach five surfaces:
| Surface | What it records, and what it asks of you |
|---|---|
| Lease record | Terms, status, payments due, and documents. Tabs for Overview, Payments & Ledger, and Agreement & Docs |
| Utilities | Which utilities the tenant is responsible for, and their current status |
| Move-in | The renter submits a move-in record; you acknowledge it, or mark it disputed with a note |
| Renewal | You propose terms — rent, length, start and end date — and send them to the tenant. Their response attaches to the lease |
| Move-out | You save a move-out record. It cannot complete until the renter submits notice |
Two design choices here are worth understanding rather than fighting. The renter initiates move-in and notice — your side of the table is to acknowledge, dispute, or propose. And renewal is a proposal, not a completion: you send terms, the tenant responds on their side, and the outcome is recorded against the lease. If you're used to just agreeing these things by text message, this is the platform formalising that exchange so both of you can see it.
Signing works the way most landlords already sign: off-platform. What the Agreement & Docs tab gives you is the paperwork around it — turn the lease record into an editable draft, revise the clauses, then Set as Final when the wording is approved for tenant review. Create terms summary produces a summary straight from the lease record itself. Once the lease is signed — however you choose to sign it — upload the signed copy back to the lease so the record stays complete.
When a tenancy renews, you're back at step 6 collecting rent. When it moves out, you're back at step 1 with a vacant unit. The loop closes either way.
Step 6 — the monthly record, and the heartbeat of the whole loop.
Most landlords open this page on the first of the month asking one question: who hasn't
paid? The overdue badge on the sidebar answers before you even click. Inside
(/dashboard/landlord/rent) you'll find what's due, what's paid, what's overdue — per
lease, per tenant, searchable and filterable by All, pending, overdue, or paid.
Here's the part that confuses everyone at first: you don't wait on the tenant for the record to exist. Generate Monthly Payments creates this month's due record for every active lease. From there each record carries one of four states — paid, pending, overdue, or processing — and when money arrives, the tenant can report that they sent it. But your confirmation is what makes it official: Confirm on a payment the tenant reported, or Mark Paid if they paid you without reporting it. That asymmetry is deliberate — the record you both see is the one you vouched for.
And because this is where it matters most, the boundary again: rent is paid directly to you, outside the platform. estateTT records it.
The actions on a record, and what each one changes:
| Action | What happens | Result |
|---|---|---|
| Generate Monthly Payments | You create this month's due records for all active leases | Records appear as pending; the tenant sees what they owe |
| Confirm / Mark Paid | You confirm a payment the tenant reported — or mark it paid yourself if they paid without reporting | The record becomes the official one for both of you |
| Dispute | On a payment the tenant reported, you give a written reason for disagreeing | The record is marked disputed, with your reason and the date attached |
| Edit | You correct the amount or due date | The record is updated |
| Delete | You remove the record | Gone — this cannot be undone |
Dispute is the row in that table that makes the whole shared record worth having. When a tenant says "I paid" and you have nothing — don't argue in chat. Dispute it with a written reason and the disagreement becomes a documented fact with a date on it, instead of two memories drifting apart. That's the moment this page earns its keep.
Three habits keep this page working for you: review the overdue list weekly — the earlier the conversation, the easier the collection; confirm payments promptly, because your confirmation is what makes the tenant's record official too; and watch the chronic late payers, because they show up here long before they show up as a problem — the history is right there at renewal time.
One honest wrinkle to know upfront: confirming a payment here keeps the rent record straight, but it doesn't write to your books. The income figures in Ledger & Revenue come from the entries you log there — so the working habit is confirm the payment, then record the income in the Ledger, and the two records stay consistent.
Step 7 — the books behind every decision above. If Rent Collection is the pulse, Ledger &
Revenue (/dashboard/landlord/financials) is the memory.
Three summary figures greet you — Income, Expenses, and Net position — over the full transaction history, filterable by all, income, or expense, and searchable by category.
Of the three, net position is the number that matters. Income means nothing until expenses are subtracted, and this is the figure that tells you whether the property is actually working. A few things keep the picture honest. Overdue rent flagged in Rent Collection is your prompt to act — arrears compound silently. Keep transactions properly categorized; the ledger is only as clean as its entries. And remember the link back to your dashboard: the 30-day revenue figure is computed from this ledger, so a payment you collected but never recorded distorts two screens at once.
When the numbers here look right, they feed real decisions — pricing, whether to refinance, whether a property is worth keeping.
Step 8 — keeping the property standing, and the page where tenant retention is quietly won
or lost. Operations & Repairs in the sidebar (/dashboard/landlord/maintenance, badge
shows outstanding requests) collects every maintenance request across your properties in
two tabs: Work Orders for repairs, and Admin Terminal for administrative requests.
A repair moves through four states — pending, in progress, completed, and cancelled — and the status filter labels them as All Operations, Pending Dispatch, In Execution, and Resolved.
Dispatch Task on a request opens a Dispatch Work Order dialog, and this is where two things are worth getting right the first time.
You dispatch to your own staff — not to an external provider. This is the single most common misread of the page. For professional services — a plumber, an electrician, a valuer — the route is Quotes, not dispatch. The other thing the dialog does for you: it surfaces the renter's stated availability slots, so you schedule against what the tenant actually said works instead of guessing and bouncing a visit off a locked gate.
Tenants aren't the only ones who can raise a request — Issue Work Order lets you open one yourself when you spot something on an inspection.
Response speed is the single biggest driver of tenant retention, so treat the sidebar badge as a to-do list, not decoration. Two more habits pay off: when the same property keeps generating the same issue, that's usually a systemic problem rather than bad luck — check the repair history before you approve the third patch. And keep statuses current, because tenants can see them; silence reads as indifference.
Repair costs belong in the Ledger once the work is done — that's how net position stays honest.
Alongside the loop rather than on it — the cost line, where you engage a professional. Set
your expectations before you open it: this workspace (/dashboard/landlord/quotes, badge
shows pending) currently covers notary engagements. Quotes for other professional
services are arranged from the directories or a provider's profile — they just don't land
here.
What does land here organizes itself into three tabs:
You can accept or decline from this screen, or from the invoice that follows — and an accepted quote opens a payment workflow. The related invoice appears in your billing records, and the engagement's session or report follows the standard professional chain.
To find a professional in the first place, browse the notary directory — for valuations, the valuation directory. Both are open to any signed-in account, and you request a quote from a provider's profile; the public professionals directory lists them too.
The other alongside-track: capital — funding the portfolio rather than running it.
Financing in the sidebar (/dashboard/landlord/financing) builds financing
assessments for two purposes:
Each assessment carries a score, a document vault, and its own detail view, with Corrections and Log sub-pages for working through it. Start a new one from the same surface.
This is the place to start when you're weighing a refinance or funding works — it's the cost side of the occupancy decision, and it pairs naturally with the picture your Ledger gives you.
Boundary: an assessment records what you have told the platform about your situation. It is not a lending decision and does not indicate any lender's approval.
The record — everything you'd need to prove later, hopefully before you need it.
Documents (/dashboard/landlord/documents) holds your lease agreements, titles,
insurance policies, inspection reports and property certifications, organized by property
and typed on upload — fixed-term lease, month-to-month agreement, rental application,
inspection report, maintenance contract, insurance, and other. Filter by type, search by
text.
Here's the honest framing: when a dispute or an audit happens, this folder is your defence. The day it earns its keep is not the day you feel like maintaining it — so keep it complete and current as you go.
One interaction worth knowing: a lease's documents come from two sources — files you uploaded, and files estateTT generated from the lease record itself. Don't be surprised to find documents you never uploaded; the platform wrote them.
Coordination — viewings, property access visits, and professional sessions all land in
Calendar (/dashboard/landlord/calendar), and it's a fuller workspace than the name
suggests. Flip between Month, Week, Day, and Agenda views depending on whether you're
planning the season or surviving the week; Today snaps you back when you've wandered.
Search and filters let you narrow by event type or status once the calendar gets crowded —
and it will.
Appointments aren't static entries. Click an open slot to create one; open any appointment to see its details and each participant's response. When something moves, rescheduling sends the other party a reconfirmation rather than silently shifting their day — and an attention queue flags the bookings still waiting on an answer so nothing hangs unconfirmed.
The thing that keeps it honest: an appointment isn't agreed until the people on it have answered. Each booking goes out to its participants for confirmation, and until everyone responds it sits as pending — which is what the attention queue above is watching for you. Answering promptly is the calendar version of showing up on time.
Somewhere underneath every tenancy is a hundred small conversations — the viewing time
that moved twice, "while you're here, the tap drips," the renewal that started as a casual
question. Messages (/dashboard/landlord/messages) is where all of it lives — and it's
built to be the tenancy's memory, not a chat window.
The list on the left is every thread you have — tenants, applicants, providers — each with its own unread count, and the sidebar badge totals them for you. New messages arrive without refreshing; open a thread and it's marked read. New Engagement starts a thread from here when you need to reach someone new.
Inside a thread, the tools earn their keep:
Two honest behaviours worth knowing before you need them. Delete conversation removes
your copy — the other side keeps theirs, so don't treat delete as erasure. And if you
paste a phone number or email into a message, the platform replaces the whole message with
[REDACTED] — sharing contact details is against the Terms of Service, and the filter is
automatic, not a warning. Reword it without the contact details and send again.
All of which is why keeping tenancy talk on-platform isn't just tidiness: both sides see the same record, and on the day "the landlord never told me" meets "I did, on the 4th," the thread settles it without a raised voice. Messages is also the escalation route when a maintenance request isn't moving, and where a rent dispute gets talked out once it's been formally recorded — which is exactly where you want the conversation, right next to the facts.
Underneath everything else, because it controls whether the platform taps you on the
shoulder at the right moments. Settings (/dashboard/landlord/settings) has four tabs:
Profile, Notifications, Security, and Subscription.
The one that affects your day-to-day is Notifications, and it carries exactly four toggles: New Applications, Rent Payments, Maintenance Requests, and Marketing Emails. Worth an honest absence while you're here: there is no lease-expiry alert. Expiries are something you watch in Leases & Occupancy — the end date on the lease is right there — not something the platform pushes to you. If a renewal date matters, it lives in your routine, not in a notification.
Subscription shows your plan and any promotional pricing you qualify for; the public pricing page lists what each plan includes if you're weighing a change.
The whole guide in one list — the version to keep in your head:
Two links in that chain are where landlords actually get stuck, so they're worth keeping in your head: step 4 — an approved applicant is not yet in Leases & Occupancy, and won't be until move-in is confirmed; and steps 6–7 — confirming a rent payment updates the rent record, but your revenue figure only moves when you log the income in the Ledger. Most "the platform isn't working" complaints trace back to one of those two.
And if you only have time for one thing on day one, do step 2 properly — a complete listing with real photos is what makes steps 3 through 6 work at all.
No rental applications? Check the listing itself first — photos, price against comparable rentals, complete description. An empty listing is usually a marketing problem, not a demand problem.
An approved applicant isn't in Leases & Occupancy. The occupancy registry lists leases that are already in force, and a lease only comes into force once the tenant's move-in payment is confirmed. An applicant sitting at Lease in setup is waiting on that payment — open the application and follow its lease link to see where it stands.
A tenant says they paid and I don't see it. Check for a disputed record with a written reason. That is what a disagreement leaves behind, and it is the place to pick the conversation back up.
My dashboard shows no revenue. Revenue comes from income entries in your Ledger — confirming a rent payment doesn't create one. If you collected rent but never logged the income in Ledger & Revenue, the figure stays at zero.
Maintenance request not getting picked up? Dispatch a work order from Operations & Repairs. Remember that dispatch assigns to your own staff — for an external professional, use Quotes.
Rent payment not received? estateTT doesn't collect rent — contact the tenant directly. When it arrives, confirm it in Rent Collection so both records match.
Use the Help & Support icon in the top header — it opens the support workspace at
/dashboard/support. Ask AI in the sidebar gives in-app guidance. For anything attached
to a specific tenant or property, message the person directly — the record stays
on-platform. Not signed in? The contact page reaches the same team.