Hollybrook Lettings

Buildings, units, tenants, leases, rent invoices, deposits, repairs, safety checks and the accounts for a landlord.

Download 110 KB13 tables, 20 queries, 10 reports, 7 print templates and 2,638 invented records, dated back from 2026-10-22.

Rutba Data Files with Hollybrook Lettings, the property rentals sample, open at its print template Rent invoice: a page laid out with the business's own name and address at the head and one of its records filled in, beside the list of the database's tables and how many records each holds — Hollybrook Lettings in Rutba Data Files, made with its invented records and open at its print template Rent invoice.

Overview

Hollybrook Lettings is an invented letting business in Leeds that owns and manages twelve buildings: six houses, two blocks of flats, two houses split into flats, a parade of three shops with two flats above, and a yard of two workshops bought about a year ago and refitted. Between them they hold thirty-eight units let to tenants on residential and commercial leases.

The sample holds eighteen months of letting. Each unit has its run of leases: tenants who renewed, tenants who left, and the weeks a unit stood empty between them. A rent invoice goes out two weeks before each rent day, numbered RENT-2026-0042. Most tenants pay on the day by standing order, some pay late, and a few have fallen behind and pay part of what is due; a reminder letter goes to anyone a week behind, and every fortnight after while the rent is still unpaid. Things break and are reported, more of them in winter, and a contractor is booked to mend each one. Homes are inspected twice a year and shops and workshops once a year, gas appliances are checked every year and the wiring every five years, and the tenant gets a written notice before each visit. Insurance, loan interest, cleaning of shared areas, letting costs and the bills for empty units are paid out of each building's account.

Rent on a home carries no VAT. The workshop yard is a building the landlord has opted to tax, so its rent invoices add VAT at twenty percent, and the VAT collected is paid over to the tax office each quarter.

Money for each building goes through one Transactions table, rent in and costs out, so income and expenditure, net income and the month-by-month accounts come from one place. A rent payment also points at the rent invoice it pays, and the invoice keeps the total paid against it, which is how arrears are found. Seven print templates make the papers a landlord sends: the rent invoice, the rent statement, the tenancy agreement for a home, the summary of a commercial lease, the deposit receipt, the arrears letter and the notice of an inspection.

In Rutba Data Files, choose Property rentals on the start screen, then With sample records to look around, or Empty for the same design with nothing in it.

It suits, with small changes

A private landlord with a few houses or flats
A small letting agent managing homes for owners
Holiday lets, with weekly lets in place of leases
Student houses let by the room
Storage units or lock-up garages
Allotments or moorings let by the year
A small commercial landlord with shops and workshops

Read on

Tutorial: the everyday tasks: 8 everyday tasks, step by step, each naming what to open.
Tables, fields and relationships: every field of 13 tables, and how they are related.
Queries, forms, reports and print templates: what each one shows, its criteria and calculated columns, and when to print it.

Things you should know

Everything in a sample's records is invented: the business, the people, their addresses, e-mail addresses on example domains that reach nobody, and phone numbers from the ranges kept for drama and fiction. Tax, company and bank numbers are placeholders of zeros.
The dates count back from the day the file was made, and some run on into the weeks after it, as real bookings and due dates do. Made from the Data Files start screen, a sample is dated from that day. Queries that compare with today (overdue, due this week) show more as a downloaded file gets older.
To start empty, choose the same business on the start screen and then Empty: the same tables, queries, forms, reports and print templates, with nothing in them but the Start Here guide.
Your records live in one file on your computer. Keep copies: File, Save As makes one, and a copy on another drive or in your own cloud storage keeps it safe if this computer is lost. Close the database before copying the file by hand.
Every change to the design (a new field, a renamed table) is a numbered step that Data Files keeps, so you can see what was changed and when.
A rent payment is recorded twice on purpose: once in Transactions, where the money is, and once in the invoice's Amount Paid, which is how arrears are found. When you enter one, change the other.
Monthly Rent on a lease is the rent before VAT. A rent invoice's Amount is the rent and VAT together, and that is what Amount Paid is measured against.
Only the workshop yard is opted to tax, so only its two workshops have a Tax Rate of 0.2. The shops in Market Parade are commercial lets without VAT, which is how a building is until its landlord opts to tax it.
The Status of units and leases (Let, Vacant, Upcoming, Active, Ended) is as it stood on the day the sample was made. Change it by hand when a tenancy starts or ends; the queries for current tenants and the rent roll read it.
A print template prints a document for every record of its table: every rent invoice, every lease, every inspection. Choose the records you want before you print, or print the one on screen from its form. The Tenancy agreement is worded for a home and the Commercial lease summary for a shop or workshop, so choose a lease of the right Type.
An arrears letter keeps the amount owed on the day it was written. It is a record of what the tenant was told, so it does not change when they pay.
A renewal is a new lease for the same tenant and unit. It keeps the deposit and its protection reference from the lease before, so it has no Deposits record of its own.
Tenants keep a correspondence address. For a tenant living in one of your units it is that unit; when they leave, change it to their forwarding address so the final statement and the deposit letter reach them.

Starting with your own records

Start with Business, your own name, address, VAT number and bank details, which every invoice, statement and letter prints. Then enter Properties, then the Units in each one (with the Postal Address and what the rent includes), then Contractors. Enter each Tenant with their rent account, their Lease, and the Deposit taken, and for every unit the next inspection and safety checks due. Two weeks before each rent day, add a Rent Charge for each running lease; when rent comes in, enter it in Transactions pointing at the charge, and add it to the charge's Amount Paid. Enter repairs in Maintenance Requests as they are reported, reminder letters in Rent Reminders as you send them, and every bill you pay in Transactions with its building.

Making it yours

Every change to the design is a numbered step in Data Files, so a change can be seen and undone.

Manage for owners: add an Owners table with their management fee, point Properties at it, and add a query that takes your fee off each owner's rent to show what you pay them.
Let holiday homes: use a weekly Rent Charge in place of a monthly one, rename Leases to Bookings with arrival and departure dates, and add a cleaning cost to each booking.
Let rooms in shared houses: make each room a unit, and add a field to Units for the shared bathroom and kitchen it uses.
Let storage units or garages: drop Bedrooms and Has Gas from Units, add a Size field, and keep the rest as it is.
Keep the energy rating: add an Energy Rating and an Energy Certificate Expires field to Units, and a query for certificates running out.
List rent reviews coming up: add a query on Leases with a calculated Days to Review column, DateDiff("d", Date(), [Rent Review]), and the criteria Between 0 And 90.
Recharge damage to tenants: add a Recharge field to Maintenance Requests, and take it from the deposit when the lease ends.
Charge a service charge on the shops: add a Service Charge line to Rent Charges as a second amount, and print it on the Rent invoice as its own total row.

Questions people ask

How do I print one tenant's rent invoice?: Open the Rent Charges form, find the invoice by its Number, and print the template Rent invoice from there. Or open Print templates, choose Rent invoice, pick the invoice from the list and press Print.
How do I see who owes rent?: Open the query Rent arrears by tenant for a line a tenant with what they owe and how late the oldest month is, or the report Arrears letters for every unpaid month. The query Unpaid rent lists each unpaid invoice.
Why do the workshop invoices have VAT and the others not?: Rent on a home never carries VAT. A commercial landlord adds VAT only after opting to tax the building, and here only Riverside Yard is opted (its VAT on Rent is ticked), so its leases have a Tax Rate of 0.2 and its invoices add VAT. The VAT collected is paid over each quarter and shows in Transactions as VAT.
How do I renew a tenancy?: Open the Leases form, press New, and enter the same Unit and Tenant with the new Start, End and rent, tick Renewal and copy the Deposit and Deposit Ref from the old lease. Set the old lease's Status to Ended on its last day. Print a new Tenancy agreement for the new lease.
What happens to the deposit at the end?: Agree any deductions with the tenant against the inventory, then return the rest. Open the Deposits form, find the deposit and type Returned On, Amount Returned and, in Notes, what was kept back and why.
How do I print older documents, or many at once?: Every record of a print template's table can print. Open Print templates, choose the template, and choose the records you want in its list; for a month's rent invoices, choose those whose Invoice Date falls in that month. The query Rent invoices raised lists the last month's.
Can I use this for flats I manage for other owners?: Yes, with an Owners table: see the first idea under adapting it. The Properties, Units, Leases and rent invoices stay as they are.

Data Files is free

It comes with Rutba Office, with no account and no trial.

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