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Introduction

As some of you may know, we have built a new version of Landlord Vision. We released this in September 2023 and it has been the main product for sale on the website since then.

Over the last year and a half or so, we’ve been working hard to add more features that we didn’t have at launch. We built a migration tool that copied some of the data over to the new version so that early adopters and people that needed new functionality could move across. Now, we’ve built the second part of the migration tool that also brings over the accounting data, meaning everyone can move over to the new product and enjoy it’s benefits.

This is not just a new front end. It’s a full rewrite from the ground up. So, while you will recognise the main features from before (income and expense tracking, compliance, tasks, documents and e-signing), not everything is the same as it was. This post discusses why we did it, how we did it and just what actually is different.

Why we made a New Version of Landlord Vision

The architecture on which the legacy version of Landlord Vision is based is approaching the end of its life and soon will no longer be supported. We will still continue to support the existing version and provide bug fixes and other tweaks including keeping the tax report up to date, but we are approaching the limit of what new features we can put into it. And the mobile app reached that point some time ago. Landlord Vision has been serving us well for the last 10 years in its current format, but it is time to move on.

How we made the New Version of Landlord Vision

There were three basic principles we used for designing the new version. It had to have a modern look and feel, be mobile friendly and overall be easy to use.

We found a new framework that we could build the software on that supported more modern features and was going to be around for a while. Then we set to work redesigning the software and the workflows based on what we (and you) did and didn’t like about the current software. We have had a lot of feedback about Landlord Vision over the years and we’ve put as much of that feedback as we possibly could into the new software so that it would work better for you, the end user. There were meetings. There were arguments. There were agonising decisions. There was blood (OK, I cut my finger). But ultimately, we’ve come up with something completely new and something that works differently to what we had before while still retaining the same core functionality. And more importantly, it works better.

First off, we rebuilt the accounting engine with an emphasis on making it more user friendly for those on the cash based system. This includes the properties, tenancies, incomes and expenses, bank accounts, P&L and the tax report. This took by far the most time, but once it was done, we were then able to move on to other things like mail merge, safety certificates and documents and suddenly the software started to take shape quite quickly. With accruals support added as well, we then started adding the remaining sections one at a time, including the integrations for things like legal documents and e-signatures, ensuring each section was complete and fully usable before moving on to the next one. We put it live at that point and then carried on adding more features.

So, What’s Different in the New Version of Landlord Vision?

As I said, we have been listening to feedback and monitoring the feature request section and we have made some major changes. I will break these down into three sections covering what’s been removed, what’s been changed and what has been added, starting with:

Agent Statements

These were a great idea at the time, but real-world agent statements were just too complicated and they became very support intensive. Adding floats, credits, payments to the agent and tracking all of those statements, not to mention unpicking them if you made a mistake made the software appear ‘labyrinthine’ when really that wasn’t the plan.

So, we’ve stripped them out and now you just write the payments and expenses to a dedicated agent account instead, thus allowing you to keep a running total of how much your agent owes you at any given time and simplifying many of the processes. And yes, the software still generates the monthly fees.

Payment Schedules

Payment schedules were used in tenancies and mortgages to show when payments were due and when they were paid. You set up rules and the software builds the schedule and all you need to do is reconcile it with the bank account. However, many users struggled to get them to do what they wanted and they were quite unforgiving if you made a mistake. So now, we have dropped them and replaced them with repeating incomes and expenses. This also adds extra versatility allowing you to easily add extra invoices, have overlaps and also gaps if you need to as well as change individual invoices.

Credit Notes

You no longer need to raise a credit note and add a refund to it. Simply raise a negative income or expense instead.

Deposit Scheme

The Deposit Scheme section has gone. It simply wasn’t flexible enough, so we have a different method instead. Raise an invoice for the deposit received and a negative income for the deposit return. And you can receive from and return to as many tenants as you need.

Invoice Types

Landlord Vision now raises invoices. Not deposit invoices, charge invoices, rental invoices and other income invoices, but invoices. That’s it. Any money you receive is recorded as an invoice.

The Early Warnings Section

Now, before you get worried, we haven’t stripped out Early Warnings completely. You can still get the software to notify you when things are due to expire, it is just that there is no longer a dedicated Early Warnings area in the left pane of the software anymore. This means that when you click on something on the dashboard, you are taken straight to that section, where you can make your updates rather than to the Early Warnings page.

Some Reports

When you reach the Reports section, the first thing you will notice is that there are significantly fewer reports in there, and there are various reasons for this. The main one is that by simplifying the software, you can now get most of the information that you need from the data entry screen itself. For example, there is a dedicated section for Safety Certificates, and you can extract a report of everything that is due for expiry from there. Also, the Rental Income Payments and Expenses Payments reports have been replaced by the new cash-based Profit and Loss report. More on that later.

What has Changed in Landlord Vision?

Allocate Payments

The allocate payments page has undergone a complete overhaul and now looks like the Reconcile page, meaning you have fewer features to learn, as the two of them are the same.

The Dashboard

The dashboard is now a dashboard, not just a list of things. Immediately see how many safety certificates are due to expire in the next 30 days, how much rent is owed, or if the fixed rate period on any of your mortgages is about to end. Press on a dashboard item to go and see what is outstanding and make the required updates. You can even track your portfolio’s performance. All in a quick glance at the dashboard.

We have had so much positive feedback about the dashboard already as it just tells you everything you need to know at a glance. You can even move the dashboard items around and hide the ones you don’t need.

Legal Documents

We have changed our legal document supplier to ‘Legislate’ and now we can offer more versatile tenancy agreements. Want to add a break clause? Need to add some sections about pets? Is there no outside space? Well, now you can configure your agreement to cover all of the relevant information and leave out what you don’t need while still having correct clauses written by legal experts and not something you found on an internet forum somewhere. And not only that, but you can also save the settings in case you need them later. Also, the tenancy agreement supports sole occupancy, HMO as well as bedsits.

One Income Section

So long multiple income screens, now everything is on one page. Scroll down the list to see all of the payments made to you or the agent and all of your tenant and non-tenant income all together in one place. You can then use the filters to run a report of what you need without having to go to the Reports section.

One Contacts Section

There is a section called Contacts and no longer a separate tenants area. Manage all of your contacts and their details in one place. Also, contacts work per portfolio rather than being spread across your account so you no longer need to scroll through irrelevant suppliers and tenants.

Easier Navigation

The whole left pane has been simplified. Expenses now have their own dedicated section rather than being hidden in Property Manager and we now have a new Communications area where you can find all of the Mail Merge, e-signatures and other options for communicating with your tenants and anyone else. There are no more sub-pages, so things are easier to find as everything has its own page. Bank transfers now have their own page too, so they are easier to find if you use them. Also, by breaking down the sections, it is much easier to control what your users have access to as each section is more targeted in what it contains.

The View/Edit Tenancy page is back to one page again, although some of the information is now stored in the repeating income, rather than the tenancy.

Some features have also been renamed to aid the navigation flow. For example, we have Bills and Events rather than Expenses and the Calendar. Also, the Tenant Journals are now called Diaries to differentiate them from the Accounting Journals

The Reconcile Page

One of the goals of the new version was for the Reconcile page to become the heart of the software. We have noticed that many users spend most of their time here so we are driving more functionality in its direction. So far, as well as all the usual things you could do on this page, you can now add transfers, overpayments, and refunds without leaving the Reconcile page and there will be more functionality to come in the future. And you can sort the reconciliation list as well.

Document Management

We now have a more intuitive document area for storing your files. It now works more like you would expect a folder system to work. The legal and mail merge documents also save to the Files area. Also, assign one or more documents to a property and share them with any active tenancies in that property.

Tenant Portal

To go with the shiny new landlord interface, we now have a shiny new tenant portal as well. Also known as Landlord Vision Tenant, tenants can log in and view details about their property, tenancy, download invoices and documents, view their payments and statement of account and of course access the Tenant Service Desk which is integrated within the Portal now rather than a separate application. Like the legacy solution, it is just a web portal at the minute, but an app for the Tenant Portal will appear later in 2025.

Tenant Service Desk

Completely rebuilt and greatly simplified. The Tenant Service Desk sits in the Communications area and can be accessed from the dashboard where you can see what is new and updated. Also, you can have a separate service desk for each portfolio and assign tickets to properties to make it easier to track what’s going on.

Mortgages

The mortgages section is now radically different. The payment schedule has gone, and they are simpler to manage. Record an expense or a repeating expense and assign it to the mortgage. You can even do this from the Reconcile page.

Also in mortgages, you can tell the software when the fixed rate period ends and get a notification ahead of time.

Portfolio Settings

Each portfolio has its own settings area, to make updating the settings for any portfolio much easier.

Deleting Invoices and Expenses

It is now possible to delete invoices and expenses without having to delete the payments first. And you can still delete them in bulk.

Live Bank Feeds

We have teamed up with ‘Nordigen’ to bring the live bank feeds this time, rather than doing them directly ourselves. What this means is that it is now substantially quicker for us to add a provider, so we won’t need as much demand to add one. As such, we now have many more available providers than we did before, allowing us to bring this part of the service to more customers. Sadly, this does not include Metro Bank. This is a Metro Bank issue, not a Landlord Vision issue.

Revamped Help Section

Visit the Learning Lounge and view a full range of Knowledge Base articles, help videos, chat to the chat bot and also communicate with the help desk. We’re still here and available during UK office hours.

Billing

We have completely overhauled the billing section. Can’t or don’t want to pay by direct debit? You can set up card payments instead. And we no longer charge from the beginning of the month to the end of the month, so no more confusing pro-rata payments at the start of your plan. Also, we charge by unarchived tenancies, not just ones that haven’t reached their Expiry Date yet. Otherwise, the Ts and Cs are the same.

What We’ve Added to New Landlord Vision

The Add Button

Need to add something? Simply press the Add Button in the top left corner and select it from the menu. No need to go hunting through the software for it, the Add button can be used from almost any screen without navigating away from what you are working on.

Block Management Support

We no longer have rooms, we now have units. A unit can be any rentable space that sits within a master building, whether it is a room, a flat, a garage or whatever. Add all of your units in to one single property and run a P&L for the whole building. More importantly, all incomes, expenses, certificates and everything else can be assigned to a unit.

Right to Rent Tracking

Now you can track the right-to-rent status of each of your tenants within Landlord Vision and upload the appropriate documentation. You can also get notifications when the right to rent is due to expire.

Email Multiple People at Once

Our most requested feature finally makes it into the software. Build a message template, send an individualised message to lots of people at once. Relax.

It’s Mobile Friendly

I know many of you have been reading this this thinking ‘yeah, but what about a mobile version?’ Well, it’s here. There is no app on an app store, simply head to https://www.landlordvision.co.uk on your mobile device, download the app from the site and continue from there. In fact, that app can even sit on the taskbar of your laptop or computer. All of the features you know and love from the desktop version are available in the palm of your hand. And you can even take photos of your receipts straight from the software and convert them to expenses, which is what a mobile version is for, right?

Mark as Paid

Tick all of the rents that you know have been paid and select Mark as Paid. And now you are up to date. Easy.

Work Orders

Request quotes from third parties and instruct them to do work, all within the Maintenance module of Landlord Vision. Once the work is done, the contractor can upload their invoice straight to the Scanned Receipts area of your software.

Activity Log

Got staff? Keep a track of who changed what and when.

Accounting Data Lock

Once you have completed an accounting period, be it a week, a month or a year, set an accounting lock date before which transactions cannot be edited without permissions. Invoices, bills, payments and reconciliations are no longer able to be edited before the lock date.

Cash Based Profit and Loss Reporting

The Expenses Payments report has gone and now you can produce a cash-based profit and loss report straight from the Reports section without having to adapt the accruals-based P&L or cobble it together from three other reports. One click does it all.

Editable Rental Income Invoices

With the abolition of the payment schedule, you now have more versatility with your rental invoices. Charge for utilities as well as the rent? Now you can set all of that up on one invoice and reconcile it much more easily.

Light / Dark Mode

Light mode too bright? Switch to dark mode.

An Even More Simplified Bottom Plan

We built the bottom plan before we started adding the other features, rather than trying to strip down the existing software. Now the Starter plan is a very slick, streamlined system for recording your incomes and expenses and producing your cash-based tax report. In fact, that’s all this plan is for.

While I’m here I might as well talk about the other plans. Standard contains pretty much all of the features that you will be used to in the existing software. Premium is exactly that and is aimed at our higher-end landlords with lots of extra features to help with managing all of those properties. And as of March 2025 there is also the Enterprise plan which contains completely new features, including, but not limited to the ones mentioned below.

VAT Support (from March 2025)

Add VAT to your invoices and bills with ease and even get the software to raise them with VAT already on. There is no VAT reporting just yet, only the functionality.

Tenant Referencing (from March 2025)

Request references for your tenants from Landlord Vision. Please note that this is a pay as you go service charged on top of your subscription in the same way the e-signatures are.

Xero Integration (from March 2025)

You don’t need Xero to run Landlord Vision, and in most cases Landlord Vision is all you need for accounting purposes. But if you can’t get out of Xero to run your businesses, you can now feed your LV data into it. This is a one-way feed from Landlord Vision to Xero only that updates once a day.

What is Still to Come for Landlord Vision

We haven’t finished yet. There are still a handful of minor legacy features as well at the DD service to add to the new software. There will also be some more shiny new features, mostly taken from our Feature Request area. We haven’t forgotten about it, and we are working our way through the list. And of course MTD for Income Tax functionality is on it’s way too.

And don’t forget, you can still add users, set up 2FA authentication, portfolios, landlord ownership percentages add all the property details and many more features that you are already used to.

How to move over to the new version

As it is a new product, new Landlord Vision has it’s own price plans and you will need to sign up to one of them. As briefly discussed earlier, please review these plans carefully as they are different from the ones we had before and there is now more functionality in the second and third plan, as well as there being a fourth plan. Some people may be able to get away with a lower plan, some may prefer a higher plan, depending on what you actually need. You can get to the Pricing page and see the new ones here.

When you sign up you will need to give payment details. Don’t worry, you wont be charged until day 14 so you have some time to get the data moved across and try the software out for yourself. In this time, contact us with the log on address of your legacy account and your new account (both can be the same, but just to make sure) and we can copy data from the old account to the new one. Before the two week trial period ends, cancel your subscription on the legacy account. This is not done automatically and you will need to do this to prevent being charged twice. If you still need access to the old account, let us know and we will extend the renewal date. Be aware that once the renewal date goes past, the account will lock up and then be deleted six months later, so make use of this time to make sure you have everything you need.

A new version of Landlord Vision