Deposits, Deadlines and Disputes: Keeping Tenancy Records That Hold Up
When a deposit dispute goes to adjudication, the side with the better records usually wins. Here is what "better" means in practice.
Deposit disputes are decided on paper. Not on who is right, not on who is more reasonable — on who can show what the property looked like, what was agreed, and when. Adjudicators say so openly: in the absence of evidence, the deposit goes back to the tenant.
The four records that decide most disputes
- The inventory and check-in report, dated and ideally acknowledged by the tenant.
- Dated photographs at check-in, at each inspection and at check-out — the same rooms, the same angles.
- Correspondence about the condition of the property during the tenancy: the report of the leak, your reply, the contractor's visit.
- The check-out report, compared against the check-in one, with quotes or invoices for any deductions.
None of this is exotic. The failure mode is not that landlords don't have it; it is that it is spread across a phone's camera roll, two email accounts and a folder called "Flat 3 stuff".
One case per tenancy
A tenancy case in Herarx holds all four in one place. Pictures upload straight into the case's Files tab (from a phone, on site, on the day). Inspection rows sit in a dated table with the photos attached to the row. Emails about the property are filed into the case from Mail — including the ones the tenant sent, with their original headers and timestamps intact.
Why timestamps matter more than you think
An adjudicator is not just asking what the evidence shows but when it was created. A photo taken on check-out day carries weight; a photo you cannot date carries little. Every file in a case keeps its upload date and the case timeline records who added it. Files are encrypted at rest, and the audit trail cannot be edited by the person it is auditing.
The deductions conversation
Generate the check-out statement as a document from the case: the template pulls the deposit held, the itemised deductions from the table, the balance to return, and the tenant's details from their contact role. Send it from the case so the reply files itself. If it is disputed, everything the adjudicator will ask for is already in one place, in order.
And when it goes well
Most tenancies end without incident. The records still matter — the next tenant's check-in is this tenant's check-out, and a clean handover is only possible if the case for the last one is complete. Close the case with the deposit return recorded, and the property's history stays with the property.
