Importing existing tenants

Bring a whole portfolio in at once with a CSV: the columns you need, the dry run that catches problems before any invite goes out, and how open balances carry over.

The bulk tenant import is for moving an existing portfolio into Aptoria in one pass rather than inviting renters one unit at a time. It is a landlord-only tool: you paste a CSV, validate it, and import, and it creates each tenant's account and lease for you.

For a single new tenant, the ordinary invite flow is simpler. This bulk setup writes tenant, lease, deposit, and opening-charge data after its dry run; it is not the guarded PMS staging workflow and it does not prove source-ledger fidelity. Before using it for a switch, reconcile Active lease terms, opening receivables, payments, credits, and unapplied cash; Security deposits tied to tenant detail and held as trust-liability evidence; Source closing totals bridged to target opening totals and external bank evidence.

Three columns are required for every row: email, property_name, and unit_label. Optional columns carry the lease and any money already owed — monthly_rent, start_date, lease_end, security_deposit, opening_balance, and balance_as_of — so a tenant who is mid-lease and behind comes in with the right terms and the unpaid amount already showing. An "Insert sample" button drops in a correctly formatted example you can edit.

Always run the dry run before importing. It validates every row and flags anything that would be skipped or error — a misspelled property name, a bad email, a unit that does not exist — before a single invite goes out. Fix what it flags, re-run until it is clean, then import.

Imported tenants get an account tied to their unit. A supplied opening balance becomes one carried-forward charge; it does not recreate the source posting history, credits, reversals, or unapplied cash. A supplied security deposit becomes a lease amount that still needs tenant-level trust-liability and bank reconciliation before you rely on it.

From there, each tenant can claim their account and link a bank to pay or turn on autopay. Rent collection, reminders, and late fees then run on the same rules as any tenant you invited by hand.