Leases

A lease ties a tenant to a unit for a period, at a rent. Everything that gets billed is billed because a lease says so.

The three states

Draft — prepared but not running. Nothing is billed. You can set the rent, attach charges and record the deposit while the current tenant is still in place.

Active — running. This is what the invoice engine reads each month.

Ended — finished. The unit is free, the final statement is out, and the deposit has been settled.

A unit can have one active lease at a time, and the system enforces it. Drafts are exempt, which is what lets you line up the next tenant before the current one leaves.

Two kinds of date

This trips people up, so it is worth stating plainly.

The contractual term is what the agreement says: start date to end date.

The occupation and vacation dates are what physically happened: when they actually got the keys, and when they actually moved out.

They are usually the same and sometimes not. A tenant given the keys three days early, or who stays a week past the end date, is an ordinary event — and the billing should follow the days they had, not the days the contract predicted.

This is what makes pro-rata correct. A tenant who occupies from the 20th is billed for eleven days, not a full month — provided the charge is marked pro-ratable. See charges and templates.

Rent that changes mid-lease

Rent can be set to change from a future date — an annual escalation, say. The lease keeps both figures with the date the new one takes effect, so invoices before that date use the old rent and invoices after it use the new one. You do not have to remember to change it on the day.

Ending a lease

Ending is a workflow, not a status change. It walks through the final invoice, any final meter readings, the deposit settlement, and a final move-out statement — then frees the unit.

Interest is crystallised to the move-out date as part of it, so the final figure is the final figure. See interest.

Taking on a lease that already exists

When you take over a portfolio, the leases are already running — often mid-year, with history you did not bill. Domi Vera has a dedicated path for that: you record the lease from an accrual start date with an opening balance, rather than reconstructing months of invoices you never issued.

Interest accrues only from that accrual start date, never before it. Arrears carried in as an opening balance do not retroactively grow interest for a period you were not managing.