Rent statements and payment history
A running statement drawn from the tenancy ledger, showing rent due, rent received and any outstanding balance, with historical statements available for download as PDF for tenants who need evidence of payment.
Real estate
Tenant portal development
Most tenant contact with a letting agency still happens by phone or email — a rent query, a leaking tap, a lost copy of the tenancy agreement — and each of those contacts costs a property manager time that a self-service portal would remove entirely if it actually held the information a tenant needs. We build tenant portals that surface rent statements, accept maintenance reports with photos, show a document vault for the tenancy agreement and compliance certificates, and carry renewal offers through to a decision, all reading from the agency's own tenancy and property data rather than a separate system a tenant has to be taught to trust.
The portal is built to reduce the volume and repetitiveness of inbound contact, not to replace the property manager's judgement on anything that actually needs it — a disputed charge, a genuinely urgent repair, a tenant in financial difficulty — all of which route to a person, with the portal's job being to handle everything routine well enough that those conversations get the attention they need.
The workflow this replaces
How a tenant contacts the agency today, and what it costs
Before a portal exists, a tenant's routine contact with an agency typically runs through the same channel as an emergency, with no way to tell the two apart until someone answers the phone.
Step 01
The tenant calls or emails with a query
A rent balance question, a request for a copy of the tenancy agreement, or a maintenance issue all arrive through the same general enquiries line or inbox, with no triage before a member of staff reads or answers the call.
Step 02
Staff look up the tenancy across two or three systems
Rent status sits in the management system's ledger, the tenancy agreement sits in a document store or filing cabinet, and any open maintenance job sits in a separate spreadsheet or the contractor's own system, so answering even a simple question means checking more than one place.
Step 03
A maintenance issue is described verbally, not shown
The tenant describes the problem over the phone, the property manager takes notes, and the severity and likely cause are guessed at until a contractor attends and sees it directly, by which point a part that could have been ordered in advance has to be sourced on the day.
Step 04
The tenant chases for an update because none is sent proactively
Once a works order is raised, the tenant has no visibility into whether a contractor has been assigned, when they are coming, or whether the job is complete, so the tenant calls back to ask, generating a second contact for the same issue.
Step 05
Renewal is offered by letter or email with no tracked response
A renewal offer is sent as a static document, and the agency finds out whether the tenant has accepted only when they reply, sign and return it, or fail to respond at all, with no visibility into whether the tenant even opened it.
Step 06
Documents are requested individually as they are needed
A tenant applying for a new bank account or a benefit claim needs a copy of their tenancy agreement or a rent statement, requests it by email, and waits for someone to locate and send it, repeating a task that a portal would make instant.
None of this reflects poor service from agency staff — it reflects the absence of a channel where a tenant can find things out and report things without needing a person to relay them. The portal we build is that channel, connected to the same tenancy data the property manager already works from.
What we build
Modules in a typical tenant portal build
Maintenance reporting with photo upload
A categorised issue form — plumbing, electrical, appliance, structural, other — with photo upload, a description field and tenant availability windows, submitted directly into the works order queue rather than as a free-text email.
Contractor dispatch visibility
Status of an open works order — reported, assigned, scheduled, completed — visible to the tenant as it changes, sourced from the contractor dispatch system the agency already uses, so the tenant is not the one chasing for an update.
Document vault
Tenancy agreement, deposit protection certificate and prescribed information, gas safety certificate, EPC and any Right to Rent evidence relevant to the tenancy, available for the tenant to view and download at any time.
Renewal offer workflow
A renewal offer presented with the new rent and term, an accept, decline or request-a-call response, and a record of when the offer was viewed, so the property manager can follow up on unopened or undecided offers before the tenancy lapses.
Secure messaging
A message thread tied to the tenancy record, so a query raised through the portal is visible to whichever property manager picks it up next, rather than sitting in one staff member's personal inbox.
Integrations
Named systems and interfaces
Management platforms
ReapitAltoJupixDezrezQubeMRI
Payments
Open Banking payment initiationdirect debit providers
Compliance schemes
TDSDPSMyDepositsGas Safe register
Contractor and communication
contractor dispatch toolsSMS gatewaysemail service providers
Where the agency's management platform exposes an API, the portal reads and writes to it directly so the ledger, the works order and the tenancy record never fall out of sync. Where it does not, we build a synchronisation layer against scheduled exports and flag any field the platform simply does not expose.
Data and compliance
Requirements written into the build
- Deposit protection reference
- Scheme name (TDS, DPS or MyDeposits), certificate reference and protection date, displayed to the tenant and checked against the tenancy start date.
- Compliance certificate visibility
- Gas safety certificate and EPC surfaced with their expiry dates, so a tenant can see the property is currently compliant rather than assuming it.
- Right to Rent evidence
- Where the agency has captured it, evidence and any follow-up check date held in the vault, visible to the tenant it belongs to and to authorised staff only.
- Access logging
- Every document view and download in the vault is logged against the tenant's account and timestamped, supporting a later query about whether a document was made available.
- Data retention
- Portal access and documents remain available for a defined period after a tenancy ends, aligned with the agency's own record retention policy, then archived or removed on schedule.
Architecture note
How the system is put together
The portal is built as a layer that reads from the agency's tenancy, ledger and works order data rather than duplicating it, so rent statements and maintenance status are always consistent with what a property manager sees on their own screen.
Photo uploads from maintenance reports are stored in object storage with signed, time-limited access URLs, keeping large binary files out of the operational database while still linking them reliably to the works order they belong to.
The document vault stores references to documents held in the agency's existing document management system where one exists, rather than duplicating storage, with access control enforced at the portal layer per tenancy.
Authentication is scoped per tenancy, not per person, so a household with joint tenants can each have their own login against the same tenancy record, and access is revoked automatically once a tenancy ends and any handover period expires.
Timeline
Build phases in weeks
Discovery
Weeks 1-2
Mapping of the current management platform's API or export capability, review of existing contractor dispatch tooling, and a portal scope agreed against real tenant contact volumes.
Core portal and rent statements
Weeks 3-6
Authentication, tenancy dashboard and rent statement view built against the ledger integration.
Maintenance and document vault
Weeks 7-10
Maintenance reporting with photo upload, works order status sync, and the document vault with access logging.
Renewal workflow and messaging
Weeks 11-13
Renewal offer presentation and response tracking, and secure messaging tied to the tenancy record.
Pilot and rollout
Weeks 14-16
Pilot with a subset of tenancies, feedback-driven adjustment, then rollout across the full portfolio with tenant onboarding communication.
Indicative cost
Budget bands, not quotes
- Discovery and scoping
- £12,000 to £25,000, credited against the build.
- Tenant portal built against an existing management platform
- £250,000 to £350,000.
- Portal with renewal workflow, document vault and contractor dispatch integration
- £350,000 to £480,000.
- Managed run
- Monthly retainer against an agreed service level, priced after go-live scope is confirmed.
Bands assume integration against an existing management platform rather than a full ledger replacement. A portal built as part of a wider property management platform replacement is priced as part of that programme, not separately.
Where this sits
Related pages
Questions
Frequently asked
Can the tenant portal pull rent statements from Reapit, Alto or Jupix?
Yes, where the incumbent system exposes an API or a reliable export. We build a synchronisation layer that reads the ledger for each tenancy and presents it to the tenant as a running statement, rather than duplicating rent accounting inside the portal. Where a platform has no usable API, we work from scheduled exports or, in a full replacement build, hold the ledger directly.
How does maintenance reporting with photo upload actually reduce contractor callouts?
A tenant describing a leak in a phone call gives a property manager almost nothing to work with; a tenant uploading two photos and a short description against a categorised issue type gives the property manager and the contractor enough information to triage severity, order the right part in advance, and in some cases resolve the issue with guidance rather than a visit at all. The portal captures the photos, the category, and the tenant's availability windows at the point of reporting, before anyone picks up a phone.
Does the portal replace our contractor management system or dispatch tool?
It sits alongside it. We integrate with existing contractor dispatch tools so a works order raised from a tenant's maintenance report appears in the contractor's own job list, and status updates — accepted, scheduled, completed — flow back to the tenant portal, rather than rebuilding contractor scheduling infrastructure that already works.
What goes in the document vault, and who can see what?
The tenancy agreement, the deposit protection certificate and prescribed information, the gas safety certificate, the EPC, and any Right to Rent evidence relevant to the tenant are held in the vault, scoped so a tenant sees only documents relating to their own tenancy and a landlord sees documents relating to their own property, with access logged so the agency can evidence who viewed what and when.
How does the renewal offer workflow handle a tenant who wants to negotiate rent?
The portal presents the offer — new rent, new term length, any changed terms — with an accept, decline or request-a-call option rather than a binary accept-or-leave. A decline or a call request routes to the property manager's queue with the tenant's stated reason, so a negotiation happens through the agency's normal channel rather than being lost as an unread portal notification.
Is the portal built as a native app or a web app?
Most tenant portals we build are responsive web applications accessed via a link from an email or SMS, because tenants use them intermittently and a mandatory app download depresses adoption. Where an agency's volume and brand justify it, we build a companion native app on top of the same API, but we do not default to one because most tenant portal usage does not need it.
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