Add a new landlord client and add a property to their account

This article explains how to add a new landlord client to your Practice Dashboard as part of the onboarding process. It also explains how to add a property to your client’s account.

From the Clients area of your Practice Dashboard, select 'Add client' in the top-right corner and choose 'Create new licence' from the drop-down menu.

Client details

Now you're ready to enter the following details for the client.

Business name and subdomain

Enter the client's business name and the subdomain you'd like them to use as the URL (the web address) for their account. A subdomain should be all lowercase and contain only numbers or letters.

Some accounting and bookkeeper practices use their client reference number as their subdomain. Alternatively, you can use something derived from the business's name. For example, a business called John Smith Rentals might be given ‘johnsmithrentals’ as its subdomain.

Client type

Next, choose the ‘UK Unincorporated Landlord’ account type for this client. Please note that once the client type is set, it can't be changed later.

Client status

Next, choose the client’s status: active or inactive.

What does the client status mean?

An active client will have access to their FreeAgent account and will be able to upload bank transactions. Clients who are inactive won’t have any access to FreeAgent.

Please note that a client can only be active once. If you change their status from ‘Active’ to ‘Closed’, it cannot be changed back to ‘Active’ again. Find out more about client account statuses and how and when to change them.

You can then complete the rest of the client setup process in the usual way. Find out more about how to add a new client.

Add a property to your client’s account

Once you’ve added the client to your Practice Dashboard, select the ‘Switch to’ button to the right-hand side of the relevant client.

Navigate to the ‘Property’ tab at the top of the screen.

Select ‘Add new property’ in the top-right.

Enter the property address in the ‘Address’ field. Please note that the first line of the address will be used as the property’s name in FreeAgent. You can also enter the town, region and postcode if you wish.

Select 'Create New Property' at the bottom of the screen to complete the process.

If you need to, you can split the ownership of the property between multiple individuals in FreeAgent. If any of the owners are not clients of your practice, they can be added as users with level 0 access to prevent them accessing the accounting information.

If the property has been purchased with a mortgage in place, and you wish to include the mortgage for the property in your client’s accounts, you can either create a new liability category or add a dummy bank account to achieve this in FreeAgent.

Find out how to manage the property and record income and costs to it on our Knowledge Base.