Leases & Contracts

What a lease is

A lease (used interchangeably with contract in the app) represents one rental agreement. It ties together three things you've already set up:

• A unit — the space being rented.
• One or more tenants — the people responsible for it.
• The financial terms — rent, schedule, fees, deposits, and taxes.

Once a lease exists, TenantBuddy uses it to generate invoices, track the deposit, calculate what's owed, and populate your rent roll. Get the lease right and the rest largely takes care of itself.

Creating a lease

Go to Rentals → Leases and choose Create Lease. The form walks you through everything on a single page:

1. Select the unit. Choose the property and the specific unit this lease covers.
2. Add tenant(s). Attach one tenant, or several if the unit is shared (see below).
3. Set the term. Enter the start and end dates. Month-to-month and fixed-term leases are both supported.
4. Define the rent & charges. Set the base rent, the due date, and any recurring line items such as parking or utilities.
5. Record the deposit. Enter the security/last-month deposit so it's tracked against the lease.
6. Save. The lease is created and ready to bill.

Screenshot coming soon

The single-page lease form showing unit selection, tenants, term dates, rent, recurring charges, and deposit fields.

Multiple tenants on one lease

A lease can hold more than one tenant, useful for roommates, couples, or co-signers. All attached tenants share the same agreement and the same invoices. You can adjust who's on a lease at any time from the lease's Tenants section without recreating the whole agreement.

Leases and unit vacancy

You never mark a unit occupied or vacant by hand. TenantBuddy works it out from your leases: a unit is occupied whenever it has an active lease, and vacant whenever it doesn't.

A lease counts as active for occupancy once it has been approved and today falls within its term. That timing matters in two everyday cases:

• A lease that starts in the future — the unit stays vacant until the start date arrives, even though the lease already exists.
• A lease that has ended — once the end date passes, or you close the lease early, the unit becomes vacant again from that date.

Because a unit holds only one active lease at a time, its availability is always unambiguous. That single derived status is what fills the Unit Occupancy widget on your dashboard , flags vacant units on your rent roll, and determines which units show as available to list to prospective tenants. TenantBuddy also tracks how long each unit has been vacant, so your vacancy reporting stays accurate over time.

Recurring charges, fees, deposits & taxes

Beyond base rent, a lease can carry recurring line items that appear on every invoice: parking, storage, pet rent, or a utility flat fee. Add them once on the lease and they're billed automatically each cycle.

• Fees — recurring or one-time charges layered on top of rent.
• Deposits — tracked separately from rent so you always know the balance you're holding.
• Taxes — applied per line item where applicable, so commercial and tax-inclusive leases bill correctly.

Lease statuses

A lease moves through a handful of statuses, shown as a colored badge on the lease and in your Leases list. The status controls whether the lease bills and whether its unit counts as occupied:

• Draft — a lease you're still setting up. It isn't live, doesn't bill, and can be edited or deleted freely.
• Pending — saved and awaiting approval, but not yet live or billing. Still safe to delete.
• Approved — the live, in-force lease. It bills on schedule, occupies its unit, and drives invoices.
• Closed — a lease you ended through the closing flow. Billing stops and the unit frees up, with any final balances settled on the way out.
• Expired — a fixed-term lease whose end date has passed on its own. Like a closed lease, it no longer bills and its unit is vacant.
• Archived — a closed or expired lease tucked away for record-keeping. A lease can only be archived once its balance and deposit are both $0.

Change a lease's status from the lease page. Ending an approved lease walks you through closing it cleanly, including any final charges, the deposit, and an optional move-out work order. A closed, expired, or archived lease can be re-opened back to Approved if you need to.

Closing a lease & applying the deposit

When a tenancy ends you close the lease. Closing is really about settling up, and the deposit is the part that trips people up, especially the positive and negative numbers. Here's exactly what happens, how to do it, and how to read the result.

Before you close

Get the final money in first, because closing settles whatever balance exists at that moment:

• Enter any final charges (last month's rent, cleaning, damages, unpaid utilities) as invoices on the lease so they become part of the balance.
• Record any final payments the tenant has already made.
• Decide how to handle the deposit: apply it to what's owed during closing, or hold it and refund it separately.
• Glance at the lease balance so you know where you stand going in.

How closing works

From the lease, choose to end it and TenantBuddy walks you through:

1. End date — the day the tenancy actually ends. The unit becomes vacant from this date and starts showing as available.
2. Apply deposits? — whether to apply the held deposit to the tenant's balance now (see below).
3. Forwarding address — update each tenant's contact address for the final statement or refund.
4. Move-out work order (optional) — spin up an inspection or cleaning job at the same time.

On close, the lease moves to Ended, recurring rent invoices stop, and auto-pay is switched off. Any unpaid invoices stay on the books until they're settled.

Applying the deposit

While the tenancy is active, a deposit you're holding shows as a positive deposit balance, positive because it's money you have on hand for the tenant. When you apply it at close, TenantBuddy:

• Turns the held deposit into a credit on the tenant's account and resets the deposit balance to $0.
• Uses that credit to pay down outstanding invoices, oldest first (rent, fees, the damages you invoiced).
• Leaves any remainder as a credit on the account. That's a refund you owe the tenant.

If the deposit doesn't cover everything owed, the leftover is still owed by the tenant. If the deposit is larger than what's owed, the difference becomes a refund due.

What closing affects

• The unit — becomes vacant from the end date and is available to lease again; it shows as vacant on your rent roll.
• Billing — recurring rent invoices stop and auto-pay is disabled.
• Outstanding invoices — remain until paid or covered by the deposit credit.
• The deposit — the held balance goes to $0 and is reflected as a credit applied to the account.
• Reports — the lease drops out of active billing, but any remaining balance (owed or refund) keeps showing in Accounts Receivable until it's settled.

After you close: settling up

Closing doesn't make a leftover balance vanish; you still settle it:

• If the account is positive (tenant owes), collect the remaining amount and record the payment under Invoice Payments.
• If the account is negative (refund due), pay the tenant that credit amount.

Lease documents & e-signing

From the lease you can generate the actual agreement document and have it signed online:

1. Create a document from one of your PDF templates (such as a province-specific lease form).
2. TenantBuddy fills in placeholders (tenant names, address, rent, dates) automatically.
3. Send the secure signing link to each tenant.
4. Tenants sign in their browser; the completed copy is stored on the lease.

Uploaded PDF templates support signature fields, so you can use your own standard forms. See the Contract Documents & E-Signing guide for templates, placeholders, and signing in detail.

Renewals & notices

When a fixed term nears its end, create a renewal from the lease to carry it forward with new terms, generating updated documents for signature. You can also issue lease notices (such as rent-increase notices), including in bulk across many leases at once. A full Renewals & Notices guide is on the way.

How leases drive invoicing

This is the payoff. Because the lease already knows the rent, schedule, charges, and tenants, it generates invoices for you — no re-keying each month. Adjust the lease and future invoices follow. Continue to the Invoices guide to see how that billing works day to day.