Tenant Management: Every Tenant on One Screen

The fields asked for when adding a tenant are limited to what a landlord genuinely needs. Rather than a long form, we collect the minimum that makes tracking possible.

Name and phone number are used when you decide to send a reminder. Monthly rent and payment day let the app work out whether a tenant is late. Lease start and end dates feed both the expected rent calculation and the renewal warnings. If you want, you can also record an occupation and free-form notes of your own.

• Payment day

  The day of the month you expect rent. Overdue calculation follows it; a tenant whose day has not arrived is never shown as a debtor.

• Lease dates

  No rent is expected before the start date, and the end date triggers the renewal warning.

• Property link

  Every tenant is attached to a property or to a unit inside a building. Vacant units stay visible in your list.

The tenant list is not just a list of names. Each row carries the address, the monthly rent and the payment day. Active tenants and former ones are shown separately, so past tenants never clutter today's picture.

You can sort by name, by rent or by payment day. Sorting by payment day is particularly useful at the start of the month: you see, in order, which tenants you are expecting money from that week.

Typing part of a name or an address into the search box is enough. Even with thirty tenants you find the one you want in two seconds.

Tapping a tenant opens their profile. Contact details, lease dates, monthly rent and payment day sit in an information grid.

The same page lists every payment that tenant has made: which month it covered, when it arrived, how much it was and any note attached. A chart shows how those payments are spread across the months, so you can tell at a glance whether someone pays reliably.

You can also upload the lease document here. A photo or a PDF of the contract stays attached to the tenant, so you never have to go looking for it.

Deleting a tenant when they leave is the wrong move: their past payments are what make up your income for that period. Kira Kontrol therefore asks you to move a tenant out of the property rather than remove them.

When you enter the exit date, that month's rent is prorated by the number of days lived there. A tenant leaving on the 10th is not expected to pay for all thirty days. No rent is expected for later months and they disappear from the overdue list.

The tenant moves to the archive. Past payments, the old address and the lease details are kept, and you can look back whenever you need to. If the same tenant returns later you can reactivate them from the archive.

• Payments are kept

  Moving out does not touch payment records. Previous years' income stays intact.

• Prorated exit month

  Expected rent becomes rent x days lived / days in the month.

The end date is the most frequently forgotten part of a lease. The agreement quietly rolls on, the increase is never discussed at the right time, and before you know it you are renting below market.

The contract expiry list on the dashboard shows tenants whose lease ends within the next three months, nearest first. Leases that have already expired while the tenant is still in the property stay on the list too; seeing them is enough of a prompt to start the renewal conversation.

Tenants who have moved out do not appear here. The list only shows leases that need a decision from you.

You can define properties as standalone flats, or organise them as units inside a building. The building structure earns its keep when you own several flats in the same block: you see both the history of a single unit and the income and expense picture for the whole building.

Each unit has its own tenant, its own rent and its own expense records. Work done in one flat does not distort the profit of another, so you can tell which unit is actually earning you money.

When assigning a tenant only vacant properties are listed. Accidentally putting a second tenant into an occupied flat is not possible.

A spreadsheet is flexible and works perfectly well for the first few months. The problems start as data accumulates. Every month needs a new row or a new sheet, and remembering which cell belongs to which tenant gets harder over time. Delete a formula by accident and the sheet quietly starts producing wrong totals, which you discover months later.

The file itself is a risk too. Changing computers, wanting to check something from your phone, or working out which copy is the current one costs more energy than the collection itself. When a tenant calls to ask about last month's payment, you need to be at a desk to answer.

Kira Kontrol turns the job into structured data. Monthly records are created for you, partial payments and overdue balances are calculated, and the same data is on your phone and in your browser. Nothing breaks, nothing goes missing, and there is only ever one current version.

Kira Kontrol does not message your tenants by itself. That is deliberate: you are the one managing the relationship, and an automatic message is no substitute for one written at the right moment in the right tone.

Instead the app reminds you. When a payment day arrives you get a notification. Tenants who have not paid appear together on the dashboard and in the monthly view. When you want to follow up, you tap the button next to the tenant: WhatsApp opens with a ready message carrying their name, the month and the outstanding amount.

You see the message before it goes and can change it however you like. A landlord on good terms with a tenant softens the wording; when lateness has become a pattern, a firmer message is appropriate. Automation cannot make that judgement.

The first is not recording the payment day. If the day is unknown, when lateness begins is unknown too, and a list that treats everyone as a debtor on the 1st is useless. Writing the payment day when you add a tenant is the most valuable thirty seconds in the whole process.

The second is rounding partial payments. Marking a month fully paid when only half arrived means losing track of the rest. Enter what you actually collected; the month is marked partial and the remainder keeps showing up in your overdue total and in the reminder text.

The third is deleting a departing tenant. Deletion takes the payment history with it and leaves an unexplained gap in that year's income. Moving the tenant out preserves the record and prorates the exit month for you.

• Record the payment day

  The whole overdue calculation rests on this one field.

• Enter partial payments as they are

  The remaining balance keeps being tracked.

• Move out instead of deleting

  Income history is preserved and the tenant is archived.