Bringing an existing portfolio across

Taking over a portfolio is not the same as starting one. The leases are already running, often mid-term, with balances you did not create and history you never billed.

The mistake to avoid is trying to recreate that history. You do not need to, and doing it produces invoices that were never sent to anybody.

The shape of it

1. Set up the company, schemes, units and owners exactly as in your first week.
2. Bring the people across in bulk.
3. Record each lease from an accrual start date, carrying its balance in as one figure.
4. Reconcile, then run your first month.

Bring the people across

Bulk-import owners and tenants from a spreadsheet. You choose which columns to include, and nothing is written until you have seen what the validation found.

Guarantors are not covered by the import — add them individually and attach each to its lease. If the previous agent held sureties, this is the moment to check they were documented.

Record each lease

For every lease already running, onboard it:

• the real contractual term, as the signed agreement says;
• an accrual start date — the date you take over billing, usually the first of the month you start managing;
• the opening balance at that date.

Interest accrues from the accrual start date and never before it. Arrears carried in as an opening balance do not retroactively grow interest for months you were not managing — which is correct, and which the previous agent’s records already account for.

Get the opening balances right

This is the part worth slowing down for, because everything downstream inherits it.

Take the balance as at the accrual date, not as at today. If payments have arrived since, record them as payments so the account shows the movement rather than a netted figure.

A wrong opening balance is not a display problem. It changes what every future statement says the tenant owes, and it changes the interest. Reconcile each one against the outgoing agent’s final statement before you move on.

Check the deposits

Deposits usually transfer separately from the ledger, and they are easy to lose in a handover. For each lease, confirm what is held and record it — see deposits.

Then run a month

Your first cycle is the real test: generate, review carefully, and compare a few invoices against what those tenants paid last month under the previous agent. A difference is either an escalation you knew about, or a charge that came across wrong.

After that, you are on the monthly cycle like any other portfolio.