Your first week with Domi Vera

This is the order to do things in. It matters, because each step depends on the one before it — build a lease before the unit has its charges and you will be entering the same amounts twice.

Budget an afternoon for a small portfolio. If you are bringing across leases that are already running, read bringing an existing portfolio across instead — the path is different.

Day 1 — your company

Start with the things that appear on every document you will ever send.

1. Set your company details and invoice branding. The banking details here are what tenants pay into, so check them character by character.
2. Set interest defaults to match what your lease agreements actually say. Grace days are the setting most often wrong.

Do these before anything else. Branding and banking apply to documents issued after you save them, so an invoice sent this morning keeps this morning’s details for ever.

Day 1 — the properties

Work top-down, because a unit needs its scheme and its owner to exist first.

3. Create a scheme for each sectional-title development. Skip this for freehold houses.
4. Add an owner for each person or organisation whose property you manage. Where a trust or company holds the title, also attach an owning entity.
5. Add a unit for every property, assigning its owner.

Day 2 — the charges

This is the step people skip, and the one that pays for itself immediately.

6. For each unit, create its charge templates — rent, utilities, the levy contribution, your management fee. These are defaults, copied onto each new lease.

Units in one scheme usually carry the same shape of charges. Set one up properly, then use Copy charges from… and adjust the amounts.

Getting templates right now means every lease you create afterwards starts correct. Getting them wrong means editing every lease by hand later, because a template change never touches an existing lease.

Day 3 — the people and the leases

7. Add a tenant for each person renting. For a shared house, they all go on one lease.
8. Create a draft lease per unit: term, rent, charges, deposit.
9. Start each lease, recording the real occupation date.

Day 4 — the first invoice run

10. Generate the month’s invoices, per lease.
11. Review and approve each one. Read the first few carefully — this is where a wrong charge template shows itself.
12. Send them.

Approving is irreversible. An issued invoice cannot be edited, only corrected with a credit note. On your first run, check the totals against what you expect each tenant to pay before you approve anything.

Day 5 — access

13. Invite your owners and tenants to their portals.

This is the cheapest thing you will do all week. Every tenant who can see their own invoices is a tenant who does not email you asking for one.

What next month looks like

Much shorter. See the monthly cycle.