Property maintenance software for letting agents
You are instructed by someone who has never seen the property, let in by someone who did not book you, and paid by someone you have never met.
Last updated: August 2026
It is ten past eight and the first work order of the day is one line long: no heating, 14 Beech Road, tenant’s mobile below, please attend. It does not tell you that the tenant works shifts, that somebody else looked at the same boiler twice last winter, or that the property manager can commit around £250 before she has to reach a landlord who is not answering. You will find out all three today, roughly in that order. None of those is a property of the fault. They are properties of the relationship, and almost nothing sold under this heading is built for your side of it.
Who instructs, who pays, and who has to let you in
The chain is fixed and you sit near the end of it. A tenant reports a fault, usually through the agent’s repair portal rather than by ringing. A property manager triages it: is it landlord-liable, is it urgent, does it fall inside the spend they are allowed to commit? A work order goes to a contractor on the panel, and you arrange access with the tenant, attend, photograph, and invoice the agent, often monthly.
A fully managed property is one where the agent handles maintenance; on a let-only property the agent found the tenant then withdrew, so the landlord instructs repairs directly. Agent work is by definition on managed stock, and the person issuing your work orders is the property manager, not “the letting agent”, which is the firm.
Four kinds of work arrive: reactive repairs, which dominate; compliance visits, batched and chased hardest because a missed one is a legal exposure; void works between tenancies; and check-out remedials, charged against a deposit and needing an invoice that survives adjudication.
The paperwork is heavier than a private customer’s for a reason: the agent is a regulated counterparty, required to belong to a government-approved redress scheme since 1 October 2014 and, where it holds client money, to a protection scheme since 1 April 2019. What it asks you to document is what it may have to produce.
Three neighbouring situations are covered elsewhere: commercial sites under an FM provider in facilities management subcontractors, social landlord in-house teams in repairs software for small housing associations, and private domestic work in handyman job management software.
Access is the biggest cost in the job, and you carry all of it
You negotiate entry with a person who did not book you, is not paying you, and has no duty to fit around your van. The lawful route is section 11(6) of the Landlord and Tenant Act 1985: the landlord, “or any person authorised by him in writing”, may enter to view the condition and state of repair on 24 hours’ notice in writing to the occupier, at reasonable times of the day.
Two things follow that the trade gets wrong. That is a right to view, not to carry out works, and not a licence to let yourself in; where a tenant refuses, the answer is documented attempts and legal advice, never entry. And “any person authorised by him in writing” is what makes your attendance lawful, which in practice means the work order, so keep it.
A no access visit costs a slot, the travel and the goodwill, and is often unpaid, because the agent’s position is that you should have confirmed. Agree what happens on an abortive visit when you join a panel, then evidence every attempt: the slot offered, when and how the tenant was told, the time you arrived, a photograph proving you were there.
This matters because where statutory repair clocks run, they run from the moment the landlord became aware of the hazard, not from the date the tenant was available. A tenant who cannot offer a slot for a fortnight does not stop the clock, and the record that you tried is the landlord’s defence.
Awaab’s Law does not yet apply to private landlords
Awaab’s Law applies to the social rented sector in England only. It sets statutory maximum timescales for investigating and acting on serious housing hazards, implied as a term into the tenancy agreement, so a breach is a breach of contract the tenant can take to court. Sections 10A and 10B of the Landlord and Tenant Act 1985 reach only leases where the lessor is a registered provider of social housing.
The Renters’ Rights Act 2025 contains the power to extend it: section 60 substitutes section 10A(1) so that it covers leases of English dwelling-houses for a term of less than seven years, which takes in ordinary private tenancies. Those amendments are not in force. legislation.gov.uk still records those amendments as pending, and the government’s implementation roadmap places the extension in a phase whose dates are to be confirmed, subject to a consultation that has not concluded. No start date exists. Anyone quoting you one is guessing.
It is coming, and the social-sector timescales are the template the trade already works to. Under the Awaab’s Law guidance for social landlords, an emergency hazard must be investigated and safety work begun within 24 hours of the landlord becoming aware. A significant hazard must be investigated within 10 working days, a written summary given to the tenant within 3 working days of the investigation concluding, and safety work begun within 5 working days of it concluding.
Phase 1 ran from 27 October 2025, covering emergency hazards plus damp and mould, and Phase 2 from 30 November 2026 adds excess cold and heat, falls, structural collapse, fire and electrical hazards. Mind the vocabulary: “emergency hazard” and “significant hazard” are not HHSRS Category 1 and 2. And hazards are judged against the actual household, so the same patch of mould is a different clock in a flat with an infant.
The compliance calendar you sit inside
You are usually not the duty-holder; the landlord is, and the agent acts for them. But every duty is discharged through your visit and your document, and the contractor who understands the calendar stays on the panel.
Gas is annual. Under regulation 36 of the Gas Safety (Installation and Use) Regulations 1998, each appliance and flue is checked at intervals of not more than 12 months, and the record goes to an existing tenant within 28 days or to a new tenant before they move in. The document is a Landlord Gas Safety Record; “CP12” is the older informal name, still in daily use. More on that round in gas safety certificate software.
Electrical is five-yearly, and this is where the home nations part company. Under England’s electrical safety guidance the report goes to existing tenants within 28 days, and remedial work must be completed within 28 days with written confirmation from a qualified person. Scotland’s Repairing Standard guidance also requires in-service testing of landlord-supplied appliances, which England does not. Wales runs on the Renting Homes (Fitness for Human Habitation) (Wales) Regulations 2022, where the occupier is a contract-holder and smoke alarms must be mains-connected and interlinked on every storey. England’s need not be, so a battery alarm lawful in Salford is not lawful in Swansea; Northern Ireland’s 2024 rules require heat alarms and full interlinking.
Two details mark out someone who knows the ground. An EICR is a report, satisfactory or unsatisfactory rather than pass or fail, and a C3 does not make it unsatisfactory. And HSE says plainly that the law does not require a landlord to obtain a legionella test certificate, so selling one marks you as somebody who has not read the guidance.
The spend limit, the commission and sixty days
Here is the fact nobody puts in the work order. The agent does not have unlimited authority to spend the landlord’s money: the management agreement sets a delegated authority, above which the property manager must go back to the landlord before instructing. A figure commonly reported by landlords is around £250 plus VAT per job. In Scotland the statutory Letting Agent Code of Practice requires the agreement to state those thresholds; in England and Wales it is contractual, so ask.
That threshold is where most of the delay comes from, and it is invisible to you. You attend, diagnose, find the fix costs more than the limit, and stop, holding a part-dismantled boiler while the property manager chases a landlord who may be abroad. Ask a new agent for the limit, and for whoever can authorise above it.
Then the deductions. Agents commonly charge a project management fee on works above a stated value, and contractors report paying a commission simply to sit on the panel. That is a pricing fact rather than a moral one: your quote carries it and still has to look reasonable.
Agent work is business to business, so the Late Payment of Commercial Debts regime applies: absent an agreed date, payment is late 30 days after the invoice is received or the work is done, whichever is later, and statutory interest is 8 per cent above base. You are financing labour and materials for the better part of two months. Two tax points sit alongside that: repair and maintenance counts as construction work for CIS, so a large agent or build-to-rent operator can become a deemed contractor by spending over £3 million on construction in 12 months and start deducting from your labour; and whether the reverse charge applies turns on your customer’s end user status, so read HMRC’s guidance on the domestic reverse charge and settle it with your accountant.
How Dispatch helps
Dispatch is built for work you have to prove to somebody who will never stand in the room.
A completion report requires a written write up and up to twelve photographs before a job can be marked Completed, on by default. That is the deliverable for agent work, produced on the day by the person who was there, rather than a request to an engineer’s camera roll a week later. Completion history for a customer is grouped by site address, so a landlord’s properties read separately and a recurring damp complaint shows as five visits to one flat rather than five entries in a list.
Certificates and compliance documents attach to the job as PDFs, images or Word files up to 25 MB and are kept for the life of the job. Job chat is a two way thread with photographs, opened by a link sent by WhatsApp or text with no account for the other person to create, which is what makes it usable with a tenant rather than the payer. Cancelling forces a written reason with a timestamp, which is the no access record that protects the landlord’s position.
Then invoice the agent and take card payment into your own Stripe account, with overdue invoices chasing themselves at 3, 10 and 21 days.
Every feature is on every plan, everything runs in the UK, and there is a free plan.
Questions
Letting agent contractor questions
Does Awaab’s Law apply to private landlords?
Not yet. As things stand it applies to the social rented sector in England only. The Renters’ Rights Act 2025 contains the power to extend it to private tenancies, but legislation.gov.uk still records those amendments as pending and not in force, and the government’s implementation roadmap puts the extension in a phase whose dates are to be confirmed subject to consultation. No commencement date has been set, so treat any article giving you one as guesswork.
How much notice do I need to enter a tenanted property for repairs?
The landlord, or any person authorised by the landlord in writing, may enter to view the condition and state of repair on 24 hours notice in writing to the occupier, at reasonable times of the day, under section 11(6) of the Landlord and Tenant Act 1985. That is a right to view rather than a right to let yourself in and carry out works, and it is not a route past a tenant who refuses. In Scotland the letting agent code also requires the tenant to be present when the property is entered. Your work order is usually the written authorisation, which is one more reason to keep it.
Can I charge a letting agent for a no access visit?
Only if your terms with that agent say so, because nothing in law gives you an abortive visit fee. Agree it in writing when you join the panel, along with what counts as sufficient notice from you. Then evidence it every time: the appointment offered, when and how the tenant was told, the time you arrived and a photograph showing you were there. Call it a no access or abortive visit rather than a no show, which agents read as blaming the tenant.
Do I use the VAT domestic reverse charge on letting agent work?
It depends on whether your customer is an end user, and that is the part most trade content gets wrong. The charge applies to construction services between VAT registered businesses where the payment is reported under CIS, but it does not apply to supplies to an end user. Read HMRC’s guidance on the domestic reverse charge and confirm your own position with your accountant rather than relying on a general answer.
The agent has not paid my invoice. What can I do?
Agent work is business to business, so the Late Payment of Commercial Debts regime applies. Where no payment date was agreed, payment is late 30 days after the customer receives the invoice or the service is performed, whichever is later, and agreed terms should usually sit within 60 days. Statutory interest is 8 per cent above the Bank of England base rate. Check the position on GOV.UK before you write, because a clear reference to it often moves an invoice on its own.
Keep reading
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One record per job, with the photographs attached to it
Raise the job against the site address, book the visit, capture the write up and the photographs on site, then invoice from the same record. Dispatch has a free plan and every feature is on every plan.