Activate a lease
Start billing on a draft lease and send the tenant their first invoice.
Before you start
Activating a lease binds it and starts billing. Owners, Administrators and Managers can do it.
- The lease is a draft with Starts on and the monthly rent filled in. Nothing else is required, not even a document.
- Your organization is live. In setup mode nothing is billed, and the lease page says "Signing and activation unlock when your organization goes live. Nothing is billed in setup mode."
- Activation does not wait for the tenant to pay. The advance rent and caution go on the first invoice, and the tenant pays it afterwards.
If the tenant signs online, you do not activate by hand. The lease activates itself when both sides have signed (see Send a lease for signature). Use this guide for a lease signed on paper, or one you want to start without a signature.
1. Check the lease details
Activation locks the rent, the dates and the document, so check them first. Open the lease from the tenant's page with Manage and look at the Lease details card: Monthly Rent, Advance rent (months), Caution (refundable) and the dates. If the start date is in the past, rent and the other recurring charges for the periods that have already begun are billed too.
2. Activate
In the Signing card, select Activate lease. OneView asks "Activate this lease now? This starts billing and can only be reversed by terminating." Confirm, and you see "Lease activated, the tenant has been notified." The status becomes Active.
Activate several leases at once
After an import, or when you prepared many drafts, Owners and Administrators can activate them together. On the tenants page, the banner about leases ready to activate has a Review and activate button. The page lists each draft with the first invoice it will issue. Untick any lease you want to leave as a draft, then select Activate selected leases. Nothing is written until you confirm.
What happens next
Activation issues one first invoice to the tenant. It holds everything due so far:
- the advance rent: monthly rent multiplied by the number of advance months, due on the start date;
- the refundable caution, if there is one;
- rent, and any other recurring charge you set up on the draft, for every period that has already begun, when the start date is in the past. On a lease you imported, rent is billed from the period after the paid_through month you gave, less anything already paid toward that period.
The regular rent invoices start after the advance months. If nothing is due yet, for example a future start date with no advance rent, no invoice is issued and billing starts with the first period. The tenant is notified, and sees the lease and the invoice in their portal. You record or approve payments as usual, see Record a payment.
A tenant who never opened their account, for example one added by an import, gets an invitation when you activate leases in bulk. When you activate a single lease, open the tenant's page and select Send access link if you see it. Owners and Administrators can send it.
Common problems
I don't see the activate button
It shows only on a draft lease, to an Owner, Administrator or Manager, once the start date and the rent are filled in and the organization is live. If a signature request is already out, the lease is Pending signature and has no activate button. Record the signatures instead, see Upload a signed lease, or withdraw the request.
Nothing happened when I confirmed
The lease must still be a draft with a start date and a rent. If someone else activated it a moment earlier, reload the page. A Caretaker can't activate leases.
I activated too early or with a wrong figure
An active lease is locked (Fields locked, active lease). The only way back is to terminate it, see End a lease early. Check the details before you confirm.
An older lease shows Awaiting initial deposit
Leases created before activation stopped depending on payment can carry this status. They become active once their advance-rent invoice is paid. New leases never use it.
The tenant can't see their lease
Tenants see their leases only once your organization is live. Check that too, and that the tenant opened the account you know them by, with the same email or WhatsApp number.