Organize Leases by Property, Unit and Tenancy
A tenant asks whether they are allowed a second cat. The answer is in an addendum signed eleven months ago, attached to a renewal that replaced the original lease, in a folder holding four documents all called "lease signed".
The short answer
Leases organize by property, then unit, then tenancy — a tenancy being one tenant's occupancy, holding the original lease, every renewal and every addendum together. A workflow uses the Read Details from File step to pull the address, unit, tenant name and lease dates off each document, the Rename step to name it by its start date and type, and the Move step to file it under that unit. Naming by the date the document takes effect is what makes a folder answer the question of which terms applied when.
Steps this uses
Before and after
What actually changes
As they arrive
- lease signed.pdf
- renewal.pdf
- pet addendum.pdf
- Scan_0155.pdf
After the workflow
- Maple Grove/12B/Okafor 2024-2026/2024-06-01-lease.pdf
- Maple Grove/12B/Okafor 2024-2026/2025-06-01-renewal.pdf
- Maple Grove/12B/Okafor 2024-2026/2025-07-14-addendum-pet.pdf
- Maple Grove/12B/Reyes 2026-/2026-07-01-lease.pdf
Two tenancies in one unit, each holding its own lease, renewal and addenda in the order they took effect.
Setting it up
Described once, then it runs
This is the sentence. Send it to the builder and the steps below appear on a canvas, wired and named, for you to change before anything runs.
When a lease, renewal or addendum arrives, read the property, the unit, the tenant and the start date off it, name it by the date it takes effect, and file it under that property, unit and tenancy.
Property, unit, tenancy
Three levels, and the third is the one people skip. A unit outlives its tenants, so grouping by tenancy keeps one occupancy's lease, renewals and addenda together instead of interleaving two tenants' paperwork in one folder.
Name by effective date
The Rename step writes the date the document takes effect, not the date it was signed or scanned. A renewal effective in June belongs in June, which is what makes the folder readable as a sequence of terms.
Read the dates off the lease
The Read Details from File step takes the start and end dates from the document itself, so the list of tenancies expiring in the next sixty days comes from the leases rather than from a spreadsheet somebody maintains.
Check expiries on a schedule
The On a Schedule trigger runs over the portfolio and Send a Message reports which tenancies end soon — before the renewal window rather than after a tenant has already gone month to month.
Why tenancy is worth a level of its own
A unit is permanent and a tenancy is not. Filing everything under the unit means that in five years the folder holds four tenants' leases, and "the lease" becomes an ambiguous phrase. Grouping by tenancy — the tenant and the years — answers the two questions people actually ask: what does the current tenant's agreement say, and what did the previous one's say when the dispute happened.
An addendum is not a replacement
Most changes to a tenancy are additive: a pet addendum, a parking addendum, a rent increase attached to a renewal. The original lease keeps applying except where something later overrides it, which means the whole sequence has to stay readable rather than being replaced by the newest document. Dates in the filenames do that work; a folder sorted by name sorts itself into the order the terms took effect.
What it does not do
It organizes the documents and reads the dates off them. It does not calculate rent, track arrears, serve notice, or tell you a renewal was never returned. Those live in a property management system. This is what makes the underlying document findable when the system says something and a tenant disagrees.
FAQ
Common questions
How should lease documents be organized?
Property, then unit, then tenancy, with each document named by the date it takes effect. Keeping a tenancy as its own level means one tenant's lease, renewals and addenda stay together instead of mixing with the previous tenant's paperwork in the same unit folder.
Where do addenda and renewals go?
In the same tenancy folder as the original lease, named by their effective dates. An addendum modifies the lease rather than replacing it, so the sequence has to be readable from the folder — which it is when every filename starts with the date its terms began.
How do you find which lease terms applied on a date?
Sort the tenancy folder by name. With every document named by effective date, the terms in force on any date are the original lease as modified by every document dated on or before it. This only works when superseded versions are kept rather than overwritten.
Can lease expiry dates be tracked automatically?
Yes. The start and end dates are printed in the lease, so they are read off the document rather than typed into a spreadsheet. A scheduled check across the portfolio then reports which tenancies end in the next sixty days, from the leases themselves.
Which lease was in force?
Answered by sorting a folder, because every document is named by the date it took effect.
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