The tenancy lifecycle
Booking to settlement, and which record owns each stage.
Everything in OmniPM hangs off a reservation. It is created when someone books, and it stays the spine of the tenancy until the deposit is settled long after they have gone.
The reservation holds the agreement. The ledger holds the money. Almost every confusing situation resolves once you know which of the two you should be reading — see The ledger.
1. Booking
A reservation is created with a unit, dates and a resident. At this moment the price is frozen onto it — see Pricing snapshots. A later change to your fee catalogue will not alter what this resident was quoted, which is what makes an old invoice still reconcile.
A booking fee may be collected here, and it is credited back on the move-in invoice rather than kept separately.
2. The move-in invoice
Before arrival, one invoice collects everything due up front: the first period's rent, the deposit, and the one-off fees your catalogue defines.
It is not always one month. A resident moving in after the 15th gets the partial move-in month and the whole month after it on the same invoice, with ordinary monthly rent starting a month later than you might expect. See Contract dates — this is the single most common reason a resident's early months look under-billed when they are not.
3. The contract
The contract is generated from the frozen pricing and sent for signature. Two dates start diverging here and should not be confused:
- The contract start drives billing and occupancy.
- The arrival date, when the resident physically turns up, drives the condition-report window and nothing financial.
4. Living there
Month by month, rent is generated per reservation. Alongside it:
- Charges are raised for one-offs — see The ledger.
- The current price is a timeline, so a rent step-up or a co-occupant arriving adds a new period rather than editing the old one.
- Room and occupant changes create an amendment, and the deposit transfers across on paper without cash moving.
5. Notice
A move-out notice fixes the departure date. From that moment:
- The final month is prorated to it — see Proration.
- Availability updates on its own; nothing is flipped by hand.
- Any penalty is calculated — as a charge, never as a deduction from the deposit.
A resident who merely mentions they are leaving has not filed a notice. That is recorded as an expected departure and does nothing financial. See Availability.
A contract reaching its end with no notice does not end the tenancy — it rolls into month to month.
6. Move-out and the room check
The room is inspected and the condition recorded against the report from move-in. Legitimate deductions are established here.
7. Settlement
The deposit is settled: deductions applied, anything still owed netted off, the remainder established as the refund. The move-out report is where that calculation is shown and agreed.
8. Refund — its own step
Settlement and refund are separate stages, and conflating them misstates whether a resident has been paid.
| Status | Meaning |
|---|---|
| Pending | Not settled yet. |
| Partial | Some of the deposit resolved, some still held. |
| No refund due | Fully resolved, and the amount sent was zero. |
| Refunded | Money was actually sent. |
Only refunded means a payment went out. No refund due is a legitimate, complete outcome — the deposit was consumed by deductions or arrears — but it is not a refund, and describing it as one to a resident invites a dispute about money that was never owed to them.
What outlives the tenancy
The reservation, its ledger entries, its invoices and its pricing snapshots are all kept. That is what allows a question about a tenancy that ended two years ago to be answered with the numbers that were actually true at the time, rather than reconstructed from today's configuration.