Welcome & First Steps

TenantBuddy is organized around a simple chain that mirrors how renting actually works:

Property → Unit → Tenant → Lease → Invoice → Payment

Each link in that chain is a page in the app. Set them up in order the first time, and everything downstream (invoicing, reporting, the tenant portal) fills itself in automatically.

Step 1: Create your account & review your system preferences

When you first sign up you'll create a management account, your company's workspace, and everything you add lives inside it.

Before you add anything else, open Settings → Preferences and walk through the system defaults. TenantBuddy ships with sensible defaults so you can start fast, but they quietly shape everything you create afterwards: new properties, leases, and invoices all inherit from them. Reviewing them now saves you from correcting the same setting on record after record later. Pay particular attention to:

• Company identity — your business name, contact details, and logo. These appear on every invoice, receipt, and document your tenants receive.
• Currency, date format & time zone — set these once so amounts and dates display consistently everywhere in the app.
• Accounting defaults — the default income and expense categories, tax rates, and ledger accounts that new records fall back to. Confirm the default tax matches your province before you start billing.
• Invoice & late-fee defaults — your invoice numbering, payment terms, and the late-fee policy that leases inherit unless you override them.
• Notification preferences — which events email you and your tenants, so nothing important slips by.

If you work with a team, this is also where you'll invite colleagues from Settings → Team and control what each person can access.

Step 2: Add your first property and its units

A property is the building or address you manage. Inside each property you create units, the individual rentable spaces. Even a single-family home is modeled as one property with one unit, so the same workflow scales from one door to hundreds.

1. Go to Rentals → Properties and choose Add Property.
2. Enter the address and property details, then save.
3. From the property page, add units one at a time, or use Bulk Create to add many at once (ideal for apartment buildings).

Screenshot coming soon

The Properties list in TenantBuddy showing properties with unit counts, occupancy, and status.

Learn more in the Properties & Units guide.

Step 3: Add a tenant

A tenant is a person (or business) who rents from you. Add them under Rentals → Tenants . At minimum you need a name and an email: the email is how they'll receive invoices and access their portal later. You can also record emergency contacts, vehicles, pets, references, and employment history, but none of that is required to get started. See the Tenants guide for the full picture.

Step 4: Create a lease

The lease (also called a contract) is where it all comes together. It connects a unit to one or more tenants and defines the money: the rent amount, the billing schedule, any recurring fees, deposits, and taxes.

1. Go to Rentals → Leases and choose Create Lease.
2. Pick the property, unit, and tenant(s).
3. Set the start and end dates, the rent, the due date, and any additional charges.
4. Save. The lease is now active and ready to generate invoices.

This is the most important page to understand well. Read the full Leases & Contracts guide for everything it can do, including e-signing the lease document and handling renewals.

Step 5: Send the lease for e-signature (optional)

From the lease page you can generate a contract document from a template and send it to your tenant to sign online. They receive a secure link, sign in their browser, and the signed copy is stored against the lease automatically — no printing or scanning required. Full details live in the Documents & E-Signing guide.

Step 6: Generate and send your first invoice

Once a lease is active, TenantBuddy can produce invoices from it automatically on the schedule you set, or you can create one manually any time. An invoice itemizes what the tenant owes (rent, parking, utilities, late fees) and can be emailed as a professional PDF with one click.

See the Invoices guide for how billing, statuses, and sending work.

Step 7: Record a payment

When a tenant pays, record it under Accounting → Invoice Payments . The payment is applied to the open invoice, the balance updates, and the invoice is marked paid. If you've connected online payments, tenants can pay through their portal and these records are created for you.

Step 8: Read your first report

With one lease, one invoice, and one payment in place, your reports already work. Head to Reports and try the Rent Roll (who lives where and what they pay) or Accounts Receivable (who owes you money). Learn more in the Reports guide.