Every tenant record answers the same question over and over across its lifetime: who is living here, under what terms, and how did they get here? The answer changes at each stage — application, screening, move-in, active tenancy, move-out, and sometimes move-back-in — but the record itself should not fragment every time the status changes.
Stage 1: Application and screening
The lifecycle begins before anyone signs a lease. An applicant works through Tenantivo’s application wizard — personal details, emergency contact, rental history, employment, insurance, references, and screening questions — and, importantly, three sections that carry forward for the life of the tenancy:
- Occupants — everyone who will live in the unit, with name, relationship to the applicant, and date of birth, so you know at a glance who is an adult on the lease versus a minor occupant.
- Pets — a description of each pet and whether it is kept indoors, tracked as active for as long as the pet is part of the household.
- Vehicles — make, model, year, color, and plate and registration details for anything parked on your property.
On the manager side, applications run through Checkr for FCRA-compliant background, credit, and eviction screening, with results attached to the application record. If you want the full path from “first listing view” through screening, the move-in checklist for a first rental walks through each step in order.
Stage 2: Approval and move-in
Once you approve an application, the data captured during that intake does not get re-typed — it carries straight onto the tenant record. The path from approval to occupancy typically includes:
- Sending the lease for e-signature through the Firma integration.
- Collecting an application or security deposit.
- Running Move In, which converts the approved application into an active tenant record on the rental.
From this point forward, the occupants, pets, and vehicles you collected during the application are the same records you can view and edit on the tenant’s account — not a second copy that has to be kept in sync by hand.
Stage 3: Active tenancy
While a tenant’s Status reads Active, the tenant record is the single place your team and the tenant’s own portal both point to. Manager-side, the record is organized into focused tabs so nothing is buried:
- Details — core tenant and lease information, plus editable occupants, pets, and vehicles.
- Account — login and portal access for the tenant.
- Lease terms — the active lease and its dates and terms.
- Inspections — move-in, periodic, and move-out inspection records.
- Payments and Transactions — every charge, payment, and ledger entry tied to the tenancy.
- Lease violations — documented issues and notices over the course of the lease.
- Deposits — the security deposit history collected at move-in.
- To-Do — internal follow-up items tied to this specific tenant.
Because occupants, pets, and vehicles stay editable in place, a tenant adding a pet mid-lease or swapping vehicles does not require a new application — you update the same record.
Stage 4: Move-out and deposit disposition
When a lease ends, running Move Out on the tenant record updates the tenancy in a few coordinated ways: status moves to MovedOut, the record locks against further edits from the tenant side, the move-out date is captured, any active auto-pay is cancelled, and the rental’s availability updates so it can be marketed again.
Deposit disposition — deciding how much of the security deposit to return versus withhold for damage or unpaid charges — draws on the same record: the Deposits tab shows what was collected at move-in, the Transactions tab shows any move-out charges, and Tenantivo’s letter templates include move-out instructions and deposit-related language you can send to the former tenant. This is a documented, record-anchored process rather than a separate spreadsheet you have to reconcile against the lease after the fact.
A tenant marked Evicted follows the same underlying move-out mechanics, with the status reflecting how the tenancy actually ended for your own reporting and history.
Stage 5: When a tenant comes back
A moved-out tenant record does not disappear — it moves to your Moved-Out Tenants list, still attached to its full history of leases, payments, and inspections. That matters the day a former tenant asks to come back, whether to the same unit or a different one in your portfolio.
Move Back In reactivates that record with new lease terms instead of forcing the person through a brand-new application from scratch. Their prior payment history, past lease violations (or lack of them), and screening outcome stay attached to the same tenant — useful context you would otherwise have to remember or dig up manually.
Why one record beats five documents
The practical payoff of keeping the whole lifecycle on one record shows up at the moments that matter most: a lease violation dispute where you need the original application answers, a deposit question where you need the move-in and move-out inspection side by side, or a returning tenant where re-screening from zero would waste everyone’s time.
Tenantivo is built so the application, the active tenancy, and the move-out history are stages of the same record rather than three separate systems you have to cross-reference. For the click-by-click walkthrough of intake and screening, see Workspace → Applications training ; for the active tenant record, tabs, and Move Back In, see Workspace → Tenants training .