Name: Live session: Is your CRM ready for Renters’ Rights?
Uploaded: 2026-03-27T12:51:04.520Z
Duration: 25 min 16 s
Description: Live session: Is your CRM ready for Renters’ Rights?

Transcript for "Live session: Is your CRM ready for Renters’ Rights?": Good afternoon, and welcome to another one of our our demos. And today's demo is all about ensuring that your software, your current software that you're using at the moment, is it ready for renters' rights? What I'm gonna do today is I'm looking at our software, Alto software, to show you how you using Alto can make sure that you are staying compliant and everything how it's set up. As you know, last week, we did actually host another webinar with some legal specialists as well. So if you joined that, thank you very much. And obviously lots of questions came through from that as well. But today we're gonna focus on the practical side. And, of course, just wanna say thank you so much everybody for joining us on your lunch break, if it is your lunch break at the moment. It is just a relaxed session, so please don't worry too much. If you do have questions, you can pop them in the q and a as well because we do have some experts backstage. However, I'll be bringing one on at the end as well just in case you have any questions. Obviously, we can answer them live. Another reminder, £250 Amazon voucher giveaway for one lucky person who's joined this webinar today. And just to kind of encourage you as well, within the documents section, there is also some documents that you can pick up and you can download on the renter's rights and everything as well just for your reference. So I'm just gonna start to share my screen, and I'll be able to run you through the Alto side of it and how Alto can really help you stay compliant for the renter's right, which we all know is is very slowly creeping up now. So to start sharing my screen, so how I'm gonna start this is I'm gonna show you how property records are set to be compliant, ready for the renter's rights. So I'm taking just a quick overview of some properties. I'm gonna show you, like, the marketing side of it as well. Also, like, the management dates that you're able to track for your compliance. Also looking at a brief look at our lettings progression, letting centers documents, and then just showing you how everything is recorded on a timeline as well. So I'm taking the first property from appraisal, and what I'm gonna do from here is just show you how this is set ready for renters' rights. What you'll see in the market and ownership in here is the tenancy type. So this is now gonna be set that you can have this as just an assured periodic tenancy or an APT as we are calling it. Or you can select other, which will take you over to your commercials or anything that any other tenancies tenancy types, sorry, that are exempt from the renter's rights. So that's kind of the first part in it. When you're going through and you're putting your properties on as well, when you go to instruct it, you're not gonna have any of the term end dates on there anymore or the term length or anything like that. It will just be a very simple overview of your rental amount, your rental frequency, which will be set to weekly, monthly, daily, all of these different options, all compiled together to just be no more than a month as well. You've got your price qualifier. The only options that you'll have on here is per week and per month, so there's no worry about doing all the different ones and doing one by mistake. And then when I click on okay on that, it would just take us through to the next stage. Also, in regards to the marketing side of it, so as we know, with the marketing now for the renter's rights, you're not allowed to market that you don't the landlord doesn't take pets or they don't allow children in the property as well. So within the property and in the marketing side of it, we do have here where it says acceptable for children and pets. When you untick this, it will then provide a box that they have to give a reason why. So we'll take pets as an example. So pets, we might say, for example, is allergies. So it's prompting you to actually give that reason why the, they don't take pets within the property. And children, they've forgotten to do the children. I'm just gonna say they do take children as an example just to get rid of that. Okay? So it does with the marketing side of it as well. When it comes to, obviously, setting up the tenancies as well, we've also got here a great overview of the legal requirements that there are as well. Your appraisal and pre appraisal tabs is the term length is removed. There's pets and children. You've got your post appraisal tab, which is your price qualifiers as well, and then your marketing side. So lots of things have been removed, and they're not available there for you. When a property is available, and you are going to start a tenancy as well within it will stop you from putting anything higher than what is the property is advertised for. So if I go into here and I do a let agreed as an example, we can see that the rent is 3,500 for this particular property. I'm just gonna put in a tenant or a proposed tenant, and I'm gonna slightly up the offer. So I'm gonna say she wants to offer 3,600. Okay? So I've just put my information in there. When I do this, you'll see it's gonna automatically prompt you as well to say that the proposed rent cannot exceed the property rental price as per price per week. So it's actually prompting and stopping you from going any further within that as well. You can't take any rent that is actually higher as well. Within your tenancy side of it as well, obviously, with Alter, you can keep all your compliance dates up to date in here as well. So within your record of your property, you can come in here, and you can ensure that all of your compliance dates are all kept up to date as well. So you've got the ability to add any compliance dates in, for example, just to ensure everything stays in line. I'm gonna drop into the tenancies now as well just to show you the change on here. So within a tenancy record, we've got here our brand new one, which is a periodic term. And within the date sections on this, you've also got here all we've got is a rent increase review, so you're able to stay compliant with your rent increase reviews. You've got your APT rent review as well, and obviously your property inspection date that can also go in there as well. Showing that on the property side, you're right. There's areas within the property now, so the marketing side of it, and also how you're setting up your property make sure it stays in line with the new assured periodic tenancy setup. Alto also allows you to track those management dates as an overall, as a a view, by having a very well equipped property management dashboard as well. On this property management dashboard, you'll see here we have event dates. This is where you're easily able to track all of those compliance dates that are coming up to be due or overdue as well. You've got the ability to be able to quickly email all them out in mass. So by going into one of these, you can go in, and you've got the ability to email all of them with our lovely email template designer. So you can keep on top of all of these compliance dates and get those works booked in, property inspections booked in, get your APT rent reviews booked in, any kind of documentation that you need to send out for this as well. So I said all of it is tracked within here. You've also got the opportunity as well within your progressions. So under lettings progression so if we come into here, and I'm just gonna take this one as an example, You can see on this management progression, on this lettings progression, you've got a complete audit log of everything that you are running through as well. So you can see audit log. So everything is keeping compliant. You've got everything tracked on here as well. So we can see from the point of tenancy agreements has been created, tenancy agreement has been sent, who it's been sent to, holding deposit, right the way through to your referencing side of it as well. So here, right the way through to the contract, generating those documents. You've also got here, for example, payments and the move ins. So there is a full complete audit log of everything on here. You've also got that they've got here on here the documents that have all been included as well. So every single agreement and every, certificate that might have been sent out and also, some tenancy information in there as well. So within here, this completely tracks it. There's a full audit log, and you're able to see everything as it runs through. Okay? So first of all, we looked at the properties. So properties with how they're set up for the correct tenancy for APTs. So that's removing anything along the line of having more than a month being able to take a month's rent, setting that up, any end dates on the tenancies as well so there's no end dates or vacate dates or notice to quit dates. Also, the marketing side of it as well. So showing that you are compliant that when it comes to saying about not allowed to take pets or children, making sure that you are logging a reason why. And also in regards to when you're putting through a tenancy, it will not allow you to put any more higher than what the property is actually advertised at. And, of course, what we said on our tenancies as well, ensuring that you've it shows all the compliance dates in your data section as well. So you're able to easily track these. And then this all reverts back to the property management dashboard where you can track all of these on here as well. And, of course, that's I just went over is the lettings progression as well, the full audit trail of everything that is happening. Another thing that you do also have as well is we have something called the letting center, which is all of the agreements that are compliant and in line with everything in regards to lettings as well. And when any time a type of legislation changes, we go in and these are updated for you. These can easily be accessed within your templates in admin. And I'll just go into the letters and stationery templates. And we can go down on these, and we'll see here all of these agreements are available in here for you. So there will be ones in there that are in line for the renter's rights. They will be coming in shortly as well. So you have access to all of those, and they're easily, populated within a tenancy. You can come into a tenancy, and you can easily populate the document that you want by going into ad hoc and then picking those that document that you need to send out. Okay? So picking from one of these agreement documents as well, and you can issue that out. Everything that you do on Alto as well is tracked. So everything that is either done within a tenancy record or within a property record or in a individual contact record is all tracked. So you've got a full audit of everything that's happened. We go into an overview. We can see the recent activity, but you've got a full timeline of any communication on a tenancy, for example, any management things that have happened, any notes, any account documents. And these can all easily be filtered down. You've got exactly the same on a property as well. So, again, on your timeline on the property as well. And you can see also here, just another little good thing that this is just highlighting here that critical dates are not set. It's alerting me that critical dates aren't set. That was good timing. So on here as well, you've got the timeline on the property. So again, everything is audited throughout the timeline, so you're able to see everything. So especially if there's any complaints or anything like that, they're easily trackable by being able to add that specific complaint onto the onto your record as well, and it's all tracked on here. And the same exactly the same with any contact records under your timeline. Everything can easily be tracked on here. From taking from example, a really good example here as well, we've got a, tenancy agreement that was issued out on today, and we can see that it's actually been finalized. And, again, you're able to see this in here. Highlighting that one actually on audit trails, just going into a little bit more, you've also got on your main dashboard that you get on with Alto as well. You've also got an esignatures widget where you can manage the audit trails on esignatures and manage them once that have been signed as well or once that you were waiting on. So if I take one of these, for example, we can see here that this form here, this agreement was sent out on the March 20. And we can see by clicking on here on this little paper clip, the full full tenancy agreement. Okay? And then right at the bottom of it, we do have access to the audit trail of this particular agreement as well. So, again, it's more tracking that you do have within the software. Another way, and just to sort of highlight one last thing, because lots and lots to cut. There's lots and lots available within Alto that you can easily stay compliant. You're able to track everything, and it's really gonna have you set up and ready for success within the renter's right act. You've also got access to analytical reports as well. So under the analytical reports, you're able to track things like, for example, your maintenance as well, or, obviously, your compliance dates. So you've got access to all of these different reports, which you can easily go into if I go into my compliance one, And I can track all of my overdue gas safety certificates, all of my electrical all of my gas safety certificates, all of my electrical certificates as well, and show the underlying data and kind of really work on it. And it shows you what's coming up in the next twelve months, what sort of gas supply status is as well. Just as an example, there's there's so much. There's so much involved in this, and you can see completed and canceled. And you can get exactly the same with electrical. But then you've also got your maintenance report on here as well where you can go in and you can track all of that maintenance. Just wait for that to load up. So on the maintenance side of it, we can see here all of our work open works orders as well. Just waiting for this to load up. Okay. So you can see everything that you're able to track. So you've got a really nice visual in your analytical reports. So I think that's kind of like a nice quick sort of lunchtime overview just to show you exactly how, obviously, Alto could make sure ensure that you are compliant for renters right just by simple little things like your property records, the tenancy, all the audit trails that can be done within a tenancy progression, management dates, being able to track those for the compliance side of it, all the letting centers documents as well that you have access to. And then, of course, everything being able to audit it and track within a timeline. So I'm going to stop sharing now, and I believe we probably had some questions that did come in previously. So what I'm gonna do is I'm gonna bring my colleague onto stage now who's gonna answer these questions live for us. Let me just bring bring pre questions. Okay. So we've had a few questions that have come in before this session. Hi, John. This is John, by the way. We've had a few questions come in before the session began today. And the first one that we had was, will the rent increase review automatically populate as twelve months from the start date of the tenancy once the tenancy is agreed? Yes. It will, to put that to put that really simply. So the APT rent review dates, will remind you when your rent increase windows are coming up, when you rent review windows rather coming up, That will be based on, the start date of the tenancy or the last time that the tenancy price increased. So you will get a date, for twelve months, in the future of that, which you can set, a kind of reminder time before that twelve months is up. So we default in that to ninety days before, before the twelve months. So you've got three months to go through and do your market appraisals, talk to the landlord, make sure everybody's happy with the with the proposed price that you're going forward with. But if you need longer or you need a shorter time and that you'd rather do that, that's configurable within Alto as well. Brilliant. Thank you. I realized that question actually came in from Michael. It wasn't a brief one. And then we've got one from Nicole saying, does the audit log log work if your systems are not integrated with other suppliers? Can these events be manually updated to reflect actions taken outside of Alto? It can. Yes. So all of the timelines in Altos, so we've got ones per contact, tenancy, property, and we have, audit logs within the different progressions as well. So things like, your initial tenancy progressions, your rent review progressions, your vacate progressions, whether it's a whether it's a landlord possession or whether it's tenants giving notice. In each of those areas, you can add manual and timeline entries. So you can effectively add notes. So anything that you need to keep track of, need to keep record of, you can do that at that point. For the progressions and themselves as well, you also have something called custom milestones. So you can set everything that you need to do on those progressions, and you can add custom tasks for each of for each of those progressions if there's something that needs to be done differently. And you can leave notes on those as well. So you've got you've got access to all of that kind of audit history of everything that you do in Alta. Okay. We've had another one saying, have commercial properties. Does Alto support non APT tenancies? It does. Yes. So we have we have built in, like, a a new a new kind of profile for APT tenancies where some of the defaults are different, and, obviously, things are created as periodic. There's no fixed term. We we all know this stuff by now. But we still maintain support for commercial tenancies, for tenancies which are in Wales, Scotland, wherever wherever else that the APT doesn't fit, you you can do both. So you can still have both different types of tendency. Okay. I've got a couple more. I'm I'm gonna ask I'm gonna answer Eloise's one at the end. But another one is, will current ASTs be converted to APTs, or is this going to be a manual task? No. It won't be a manual task. So we've built a conversion tool so you can convert and or you can convert two things. So you can convert to your properties. So your properties can move over to that new APT profile that I mentioned, and it can set the defaults that Mads Mads went through at the beginning so that you can set your pets are allowed, children are allowed, your price qualifies, everything everything is compliant. That's that's one stage of it, which you can do in bulk. And you can also bulk convert tenancies, so you'll be able to swap them over from AST to APT. It will create them as periodic, remove all of those term term dates. It will add in your rent review dates, which you'll calculate back, as I mentioned, from either the start of the tenancy or the last time that the rent increased on that tenancy. It will do all of that automatically for you. And what we need to do is tell us which ones you want us to do it for. Also, with that tool, we well, you will have the ability to send out the information sheet to all the tenants and guarantors. So, again, you just say which tenant which tendencies you want to send those out for. We pick the email template that you want to use so you can set up an email template so you can you can brand it. You can use whatever language you want to use on the email. We will send that out to all of the tenants and guarantors, and we will keep a a record of delivery. So you can see that it was delivered to who it needed to be delivered to, and it was opened when it was opened, etcetera. We'll highlight those where deliveries failed so we can resend it or do it in a different way if you need to do that in person or whatever. Okay. Eloise has asked, we don't do esign. All our tenants have present at the office to sign a tenancy. Can we manually up to load the APT and track within audit facility? You can manually update that APT in, and it will I'm not sure if I'm just not sure if it does show on the audit that you've uploaded it in as well, but there's probably something that you could add in regards to, a file note to say that it's been uploaded in as well. So if you've got anything more on that, John. I'm just thinking from. my point of view. it's it's an interesting one, like, because we we've got our our kind of current way that you create tendencies in Alto, in in which case, what Matt said is exactly right. So you can upload that assigned contract to the tendency. So you've got that record even if it's in in in person and scanned in, uploaded, whatever. And but also our newer kind of next generation and lessons progression functionality, which we're currently in the process of rolling out. And that gives you the ability to upload any kind of signed documents that have happened outside of of our resign as well, and that will automatically be added to audit trails and and and stuff like that as well. So, yeah, regardless of which process you use it, you can do. Yeah. And I think the final question we have this is definitely one for you because you're the one oh, and we've got some more. Current active are these current active features, are they due to go live from the May 1? And this is over to you because you're the one who's behind all of this. Yeah. So this we're we're currently kind of in final testing stages with with this work. We're expecting this to go ahead of the just another another plug because you need some more people on this webinar, Matt, ahead of our next bite size, which is on the April 9, where we're going through all of these changes. We expect to have everything now ahead of ahead of that April 9. Apart from the possession workforce, that'll come a little bit later. That'll be before the May 1, but not before the April 9. I think and with Nicole, I think she's talking about most of you using Alto, actually, because it says where can guarantors be added in Alto? I can quickly share my screen again and show this one because this is a a meeting because I've not been able to work out where to put the guarantor's record in there. So as long as you can see my screen, I'll just go back to this. So under your contacts, and if I go with Petra's already got one and into the let me try Ethan. So under the record here, under the contact record, you've got other addresses. So this is where you can add in the details of your guarantor. You've got a few a few options in here. So you've got tenant guarantor. You've got next of kin. You've got executors. So there's a couple of things you can put in there. So you can select your tenant guarantor, and you would just simply fill in the details in here, their name, address, mobile number, email, any notes about them, their address there, and, of course, their email. And that's how you put the guarantor. Once the guarantor is saved onto their record, you will note be able to see that they do have a guarantor because they'll have a pound sign against their name as well. So that highlights and you can track all that. You can see all that within, like, when you're doing the rent the receipts of rents and everything as well. It will show on the batch receipt screen that this particular tenants do have guarantors. So that one was one for me that I could answer. Okay. Perfect. Okay. So we don't have any more questions come in. So just to kind of finish it up, just to advise everybody, the Renters Right Act obviously introduces more accountability across the whole sector now. And you're right as an agency, your systems, you know, need to support this new structure coming in as well, and we're ensuring within Alto that we are making that available for agencies to be able to support all of this. If you want to see how this is gonna work for your agency, at the top in the right hand corner, you'll see get your tailored demo. If you click on that, you're able to get a a tailored demo, get my words out, a tailored demo with one of the specialist sales team as well who would take you through from start to finish and showing you how how this will work for your agency. But thank you everybody for joining today, especially on your lunch break as well, if it is your lunch break or it might be a bit early. If not, go and enjoy your lunch, and hopefully look forward to speaking to some of you soon. Have a great day, everyone, and thanks, John. Yes. Thanks, brother. Thank. you. Bye.