How do tenants report maintenance without calling the office?
Give them a way in that needs no password and no app. At handover, hand each resident a printed QR card: scanning it logs them straight into their own portal, where they raise the issue with a photo and a description, it routes to the trade, and they watch the status move to closed. Residents who arrive later scan the location code on site and fill in a short form, which creates a pending request a manager approves before anything is live. Either way the office is told, with a photo and a location, rather than phoned with a description.
The phone call is the worst possible format
“Something’s wrong with the tap” from a number you do not recognise, at 8:10, while you are in the car. No photo, no unit number until you ask, no record unless you write one, and a second call on Thursday asking whether anyone is coming. The tenant is not being difficult; they have no other way in. Every option that is not a phone call has to clear the same bar: easier for the resident than dialling, and safe enough that a stranger cannot let themselves into your building’s records from the lobby. Three routes clear it.
A card, a code, or you
- 1A printed QR card at handoverPrint tenant QR cards from Reports and hand one to each resident at settlement or move-in. Scanning the card logs them straight into their own portal: no password to set, no app to install, nothing to remember. The card is durable and keeps working for years, and it dies the moment you deactivate that tenant.
- 2The location code on the doorA resident who scans a location code on site without an account is offered a short form: name, email, phone. That creates a pending request. The account exists but the login does nothing until someone on your side approves it, and you can correct the name, the email or the apartment before you do, because these were typed by a resident on a phone.
- 3Set up directly by youLike any other user, from the admin side. The right route for the tenant who emailed you their details, or the commercial tenant contact who will report on behalf of a whole floor.
What a tenant sees, and what they cannot
An outside user does not get a reduced copy of your workspace. They get their own surface, built for the one thing they are there to do, which is what makes it safe to hand access out freely.
Nothing is live until you say so
A stranger scanning a code in the lobby cannot get themselves in. What they get is a read-only view or the short request form, and a request does nothing until a manager approves it. Pending requests land on one screen; approving one activates the account and emails a set-password link valid for seven days; denying one deactivates it, ends any session, and kills any printed card that person holds.
The same applies in reverse. When a resident moves out, deactivate them and the card in their kitchen drawer stops working. A code that has been stuck in a public corridor for two years can be revoked or rotated without changing what people scan toward. Every scan is logged with the time, the location, and the user if there was one.
If what you wanted was anonymous reporting, where anyone with a phone can file anything without a name, this is not that, and we would rather say so here. A request from a person you can reach is the one you can act on; the record insists on contact details for tenant reporters for exactly that reason.
Asked alongside this one
Where this answer comes from
The full model, including trades and clients, is in trades, tenants and clients; printing and scoping codes is in QR codes; the cards themselves come from reports. The pages written for the people who answer the phone are property managers, real estate agencies, strata and owners corporations and, for commercial tenants, facilities management. What the portal shows today and what is still on the roadmap is stamped item by item on the portals page.