What your tenant sees and can do in their portal, and what reaches you when they report a repair, message you, view a document or say they have paid rent.
The tenant portal is the part of Abodient your tenant signs in to. This article shows what they see and do there, and what reaches you when they do it.
You invite them. Nobody can sign up to the portal on their own, and each invite is for one tenancy.
Open the property's Tenancy tab. A tenant who has accepted shows On the portal on their card. On a phone the card shows Manage and a Right to Rent reminder, and On the portal appears inside Manage. Inviting a tenant covers adding the tenant, sending the invite by email, and the WhatsApp route for tenants who would rather not sign in.
Your tenant opens the link in the email. A Set up your account screen shows your name and their address, so they can check it is the right tenancy. They choose a password of at least eight characters and select Create my account. They land on their Home page.
The portal has up to five places in its menu: Home, Issues, Messages, Documents and Rent. On a computer the menu runs down the left. On a phone it runs along the bottom.
Home shows their address and your name as the person who manages it. Below are the monthly rent, the start date, and the term. A tenancy with no end date reads "Rolling — no fixed end".
The page also lists their active issues and their safety documents. If you have served a notice that is still in force, a banner for it sits on Home too.
They see their own tenancy and nothing wider. Your other properties, your finances and your notes are never shown. Nothing about another tenant is shown either.
A shop or office occupier signs in to the same portal, labelled Occupier portal. Their wording is for a business let.
The Issues page lists their open and resolved issues. Opening one shows its conversation beside the list. Sarah, the tenant in these pictures, reported a boiler fault on 12 October. It is open and Alfred is handling it, and her six earlier issues are resolved.
To report a problem, your tenant selects Report an issue. Here Sarah starts a second report, about the bathroom extractor fan. A small window asks What's the problem?. They type it and select Report it. Nothing is created until they do, so cancelling leaves no empty issue.
What they typed becomes the issue's title and its first message. They can add photos and videos in the conversation.
Emergency? in the conversation's header opens a reminder to ring you, or 0800 111 999 for a gas smell. It records nothing and tells nobody.
The property's Alfred switch decides who answers. With Alfred on, Alfred talks to your tenant and asks you before anyone outside is contacted. With Alfred off, the report comes straight to you. How repairs work explains both.
Either way the issue appears on the property's Maintenance tab, and a New issue row appears in your Inbox, as it did for Sarah's boiler fault. An issue Alfred runs carries an Alfred tag. When Alfred is off, you also get a New tenant issue alert on your usual channel. You can switch it off in Settings → Notifications.
The issue then sits on the property's Maintenance tab.
When your tenant selects Mark as resolved on an issue you handle, we ask you to confirm first. The issue stays open until you do, and its button reads Check and resolve. See Raising and running an issue yourself.
Messages is your tenant's general conversation with you. It sits apart from repairs, which live on the issue. A line at the top points them to Report an issue for anything broken.
You read and answer from the Tenant chat button on the property's Maintenance tab, or on the portfolio Maintenance page. The button carries a count of unread messages.
You are not alerted the second a tenant writes. If a message has had no reply from you for two hours, you get an alert on your usual channel and a row in your Inbox. You get at most one alert for the same unanswered message.
When you write, your tenant gets an email, at most once in three hours for the tenancy. Whole house sends no email. If a message is drafted for you, it waits in the box until you select Send.
The Documents page holds only what you have shared. Nothing is visible because it exists. It is visible because you shared it.
Your tenant sees Notices, My tenancy and Safety certificates, and Other documents if there are any. They open one to read it on the page. They cannot upload anything.
To share a document, open the property's Documents tab and select My documents. Each file has a Share with tenant switch. Switching it on opens a Share with list of the tenants with a portal account. Tick who should see it and select Share with tenant.
Sending a document for signature shares it too. See Getting a document signed. A safety certificate is shared as a separate step, so uploading one does not send it. See Safety and energy certificates.
A notice does not change the rent. If you serve a rent increase, record the new rent on the tenancy yourself. The tenant's Rent page follows the tenancy, not the notice.
A notice you serve appears at the top of your tenant's Documents page, with its served date and a short plain summary. An unread notice puts a dot on Documents in their menu.
On your side, notices are listed under Notices on the property's Documents tab. A served one reads Served with the date and "in tenant's portal", and has a Withdraw button. A draft has Review & serve. Creating a document or notice covers writing one.
The Rent page opens on Next payment, with the amount and due date. An In arrears label and the amount overdue show when they are behind. The Statement below lists each month as Paid, Part paid or Not yet paid.
A month turns to paid when you record the money as received. Nothing the tenant does changes a figure.
On a month that has fallen due and is unpaid or part paid, your tenant can select I've paid. A window titled Tell your landlord you've paid opens with the amount still owed and today's date filled in. They check Amount you paid and Paid on, then select Send to landlord.
Once sent, the month reads "You said paid 16 Oct · waiting for your landlord to confirm", with an Undo link. The amount owed does not change.
You get an email, or your usual channel, headed "Sarah says October's rent is paid". The message says Sarah marked £450.00 as paid on 16 Oct. A matching row appears in your Inbox with a Confirm button. The email also has an It hasn't arrived link.
A report is not a payment. Arrears, your ledger, your tax figures and rent reminders do not move until you record the payment. Check your bank first, then choose one of two things.
The window above opens from Confirm. It starts with a line saying what your tenant reported. Your tenant can Undo a report before you answer it. Recording a payment any other way, from the Finance tab for example, closes the report as well. See Recording and chasing rent.
