Renew a lease into a new term

Renewing records a new term for a tenant who is staying, carrying the deposit, rent due day, late fee, and grace period across from the current lease.

This is the direct way to record a renewal you have already agreed. If you want the tenant to accept or decline first, use Offer a lease renewal instead.

Before you start

• Renewals are available on all plans.
• Renewing keeps both terms. The current lease is not deleted, and its charges, payments, and documents stay exactly where they are.

Steps

1. Open the lease from Leases and go to the Money tab.
2. Find Renew lease.
3. Set the new end date. Leave it blank for a month-to-month term.
4. Change the monthly rent if it is going up or down. Leave it as-is to carry the current rent. If you raise it, the province guideline is checked as you type.
5. Select Renew. You land on the new lease.

The new term starts where the current one ends, and the form says which date that is. If the current lease has no end date, the new term starts today.

What happens to the original lease

It moves to the renewal stage and stays in your records as the history of that term. Its Renew lease section changes to a link to the new lease, because a term is only renewed once.

Rent keeps being charged on whichever term covers the month, never on both. See How rent charges are created each month.

Autopay comes with the tenant. If they pay by pre-authorized debit, the new term keeps collecting on the same bank details, so a renewal never quietly stops the rent coming in.

If Renew is not offered

The section explains which of these applies:

• "This term has already been renewed." Use the link to open the renewed lease. If that renewal was a mistake, correct it on the new lease rather than renewing again.
• "This lease cannot be renewed from its current stage." Only a live tenancy can be renewed. A lease that is still being set up, has moved out, or has ended cannot be. Move the lease to the right stage first, or create a new lease if this is a different tenancy.

If the renewal is refused

• "Rent change rejected." Raising the rent on a renewal follows the same province rules as any other increase, and the message says which rule it failed.
  • Above the guideline. Your province caps the yearly increase. Lower the rent to the cap, or use Rent increase on the same tab, which can serve the notice and record an above-guideline increase you have grounds for.
  • Inside the notice period. The tenant is owed notice before a higher rent starts. Either start the new term later, or renew at the current rent and raise it separately with Rent increase.
  • Lowering the rent, or keeping it the same, is never refused for either reason.
• "The lease end date must be on or after the start date." The end date you entered falls before the new term starts. Remember the new term starts when the current one ends, not today.
• "This lease changed while it was being renewed." Someone else renewed it at the same moment. Reload the lease. You will see the renewal that landed, and nothing was saved twice.

Good to know

• Renewing twice by accident is not possible. A repeated select is refused, so you never end up with two live leases on one unit.
• This is tooling to help you keep the books, not tax or legal advice.