Demo Skyline Estates: property-management operations day

Demo Skyline Estates manages 26 residential towers, three office parks, and retail units across Dubai and Riyadh. It leases apartments and commercial space, collects rent and deposits, allocates service charges, pays facility suppliers, manages vacancies and repairs, and reports owner statements in AED and SAR. OSERP connects property, unit, tenant, lease, recurring billing, deposits, work orders, utilities, collections, owner distributions, and finance.

1. Set up properties, units, and ownership

The property master records legal owner, municipality, address, plot, building class, management agreement, currency, tax registration, service-charge regime, and effective dates. Unit records store tower, floor, unit number, type, area, parking, furnishing, meter, rent band, occupancy status, and owner share. Ownership versions preserve historic owner allocations after a sale.

Field	Demo value	Impact
Property	Skyline Marina Tower A	Owner and P&L scope
Unit	A-1804	Lease and meter key
Area	1,245 sq ft	Rent and service-charge basis
Owner share	0.41%	Distribution allocation
Currency	AED	Contract and receipts
Meter	DEWA-A1804	Utility recovery
Status	Vacant-ready	Leasing availability
Service charge	AED 18/sq ft/year	Community budget

A unit cannot be leased while marked under repair, legally blocked, or already occupied. A vacancy record stores available date, asking rent, broker, marketing channel, and reason.

2. Create a tenant and lease

Open Property → Lease → New. The header records tenant, legal entity, unit, landlord, branch, lease number, start/end dates, rent currency, payment frequency, escalation, deposit, grace period, tax, broker, renewal option, and approval status. Lines record base rent, parking, storage, utilities, service charges, discounts, and billing periods.

Demo Horizon Consulting leases Unit A-1804 for AED 150,000 annually, paid in four cheques, with a 5% increase on renewal and AED 12,500 deposit. The schedule shows four AED 37,500 instalments, service charge recovery, tax, due dates, and receipt references. Deposit posts to a liability, not revenue. A signed lease reserves the unit and creates move-in tasks.

The approval policy checks tenant KYC, credit, broker commission, rent below floor, owner authority, document expiry, and conflict with existing leases. Amendments retain old terms, new effective date, and approval.

3. Bill rent, service charges, and utilities

Recurring billing records lease, unit, period, charge type, basis, quantity, rate, discount, tax, currency, and run ID. Service-charge budgets store year, community, cost categories, reserve fund, approved amount, unit allocation method, and owner approval. Utility recovery lines reference meter, read dates, consumption, tariff, and supplier bill.

Unit A-1804 consumes 1,450 kWh in August. The utility bill shows opening/closing read, tariff, fixed charge, recovery percentage, and tax. A late meter read may be estimated with an explicit flag and true-up. Billing is idempotent by lease and period; rerunning a batch cannot duplicate invoices.

4. Manage deposits, collections, and disputes

Receipts record tenant, lease, cheque or bank reference, value date, currency, amount, fees, allocation, and status. A receipt for AED 37,500 allocates to the oldest rent instalment before optional charges. Cheque instruments store number, bank, maturity, deposit date, clearance, bounce reason, and replacement.

A bounced cheque reverses allocation, creates bank charges, and triggers dunning. A tenant dispute stores invoice, reason, amount, evidence, owner, SLA, and collection hold. Only the disputed amount is paused. Deposit deductions at move-out reference inspection, invoice, repair evidence, tenant notice, approval, and refund balance.

5. Run facilities and maintenance

Work-order headers record property, unit or common area, request type, priority, SLA, technician, contractor, appointment, and status. Lines record part, labour, quantity, tax, cause, before/after photos, tenant signature, and chargeability. Emergency work requires emergency code and retrospective approval.

Common-area contracts store elevator, cleaning, security, landscaping, pest control, and HVAC supplier, scope, frequency, rate, currency, service level, insurance, and renewal. Supplier invoices match contract, service log, work order, and accepted result. Preventive maintenance due dates create work queues before failure.

6. Renew, vacate, and hand over

Renewal tasks show lease expiry, rent index, market comparison, tenant payment history, maintenance history, proposed escalation, owner decision, and notice deadline. Move-out records notice date, final meter reads, inspection, keys, parking, damage, deposit deductions, final invoice, and possession date.

The unit status changes from occupied to inspection to repair or vacant-ready. A new lease cannot start before possession and safety checks are complete. A broker commission records agency, basis, percentage, tax, approval, and payment schedule.

7. Owner statements and multi-currency close

Owner statements show rent collected, vacancies, service charges, utilities, maintenance, management fee, tax, deposits, reserve fund, owner share, and distribution. Riyadh properties bill SAR while the group reports AED; each invoice, receipt, supplier bill, and distribution stores transaction rate, source, timestamp, realised FX, and revaluation status.

Month-end close reconciles leases to units, schedules to invoices, receipts to bank, deposits to liabilities, meters to utility bills, work orders to supplier invoices, service-charge budgets to actuals, owner statements to distributions, tax, FX, and GL. A close gate blocks completion while a unit has an open deposit dispute or an expired supplier insurance certificate.

KPI	Before OSERP discipline	After OSERP discipline	Improvement
Rent schedule accuracy	95.6%	99.8%	+4.2 points
Deposit refund cycle	18 days	6 days	67% faster
Maintenance SLA compliance	76%	94%	+18 points
Owner statement cycle	12 days	3 days	75% faster
Vacancy turnaround	31 days	18 days	42% faster

Practice challenge

Create a property and unit, onboard a tenant, approve a lease, generate instalments, collect a cheque, reverse a bounce, import a utility read, issue a service-charge invoice, raise a maintenance work order, deduct an evidenced deposit amount, renew a lease, distribute owner funds, revalue SAR balances, and close the property month. Explain every field, status, formula, permission, journal, tax result, API identifier, exception, and audit event.

Related: AR Invoice field guide, Payment Receipt field guide, Fixed Asset field guide, Workflows, and API cookbook.