Software for UK property-maintenance decorators
Eight HMOs from one agent in Bury. Painted one in March. The other seven? Same agent. Never quoted.
Property-maintenance decoration is a different business again. The customer isn’t a homeowner with a Pinterest mood-board - it’s a letting agent or a private landlord with a portfolio of HMOs, AST rentals and the occasional commercial unit. The conversation is between-tenancy refresh and 24-month common-parts re-paint and what’s the lead-time, how many days, when can you fit it in. The cash cycle is the agent’s payment date - typically 14 to 30 days - and the volume is in the batch: one agent with forty properties is forty conversations in one inbox, forty invoices in one batch, forty anniversary dates spread across the year. Three audiences talk to you about the same property - the tenant texts the leak-stained ceiling, the agent emails the same ticket the next morning, the landlord rings Tuesday wanting to know why you used Crown Trade rather than the cheaper Wickes own-label - and none of them know what the others know. The under-monetised pain is the round you forgot to nudge: you painted a HMO common-parts in June 2024 and the 24-month re-paint window is closing in August 2026; if you don’t ring the landlord in May, somebody else will, cheaper.
This page is for decorators whose week is mostly landlord / HMO property-maintenance. If you do the occasional landlord job alongside domestic interior / exterior, the main decorators page is the better fit. Property-maintenance is its own business because the buyer is the agent or the multi-property landlord, the cadence is the anniversary, and the build is shaped around making the recurring round inevitable rather than optional - same three-way-comms shape the plumbers/lettings spoke carries on the plumbing side, tuned for the decorator’s per-room colour log and 24-month anniversary.
What your week actually looks like
- Eight HMOs from one Suffolk letting agent - common parts every two years, between-tenancy on six of them this year, and the landlord-flooring contractor scheduling around you.
- A 22-month repaint anniversary on the common-parts of a 4-bed HMO you did in June 2024 - should you nudge the landlord now or wait for the official 24-month tick?
- The monthly invoice batch for the agent - twelve property lines, all the photo evidence, the cost-coding the agent’s bookkeeper wants, on the 1st.
- A between-tenancy refresh on an AST rental - the agent wants you in for three days starting Monday week 3, but the tenant doesn’t move out until Friday week 2.
- The EHO came round to one of the HMOs in March and wanted the maintenance trail alongside the safety certificates - you had the paint records, just not in one place.
- A private landlord with eleven AST rentals across the catchment - three rentals turn over per quarter, all need a one-day refresh, all want a different paint brand.
- A Crown / Dulux / Brewers Trade Centre supplier-credit-limit notification on the back of three quick batches.
- A “can you do the woodwork two-coat Crown rather than one-coat Wickes-own” conversation with a landlord who’s also haggling on the per-room price.
- The 36-month re-quote on a landlord’s flagship Victorian terrace - last did it as the same scope; this time he wants the front bedroom in a different colour.
- Year-end-of-fiscal-year batching for a corporate-landlord client - twenty properties, the painting spend they’re allocating to next year’s budget.
- The tenant at 14 Coppice Road texting you direct at 9pm about a chipped skirting; the agent’s helpdesk sending the same ticket the next morning; the landlord ringing Tuesday wanting to know why you used Crown Trade rather than Wickes own-label.
- A TDS / DPS deposit-deduction dispute where the tenant says the wall mark was there at move-in and the agent’s lost the inventory photo - you remember painting that wall but the colour code is on the back of a tin in the lock-up.
This isn’t a job-management software problem. It’s a three-audiences-one-record problem with a 28th-of-the-month cash cycle and a 24-month anniversary stapled to it.
Example problems we could solve
1. The Property Maintenance Round Manager - the anniversary that rings the landlord for you
The “never quoted” moment: “Eight HMOs from the same agent. Painted one in March 2024. The other seven? Same agent. Never quoted. The 24-month anniversary on the first one rolled round and I hadn’t nudged him.”
Solved looks like: every landlord / HMO / agent-portfolio repaint enters the system with a recurring-round anniversary. Default rules tuned per property type - 24-month for HMO common parts, 36-month for AST rental interior, 60-month for AST rental exterior, between-tenancy on demand. Twelve weeks before the next anniversary, the engine fires an SMS / email in your voice to the landlord or agent - “the common parts at 14 Coppice Road are coming up to the 24-month re-paint window in August; I can pop in for a 30-minute walk-through Saturday with a re-quote already drafted off last year’s scope plus the inflation update.” The re-quote auto-drafts from the previous job’s scope; the new bits (paint brand change, colour change, additional rooms) get captured in the walk-through and the quote re-prices on the tablet. Multi-property landlords + agents get a portfolio dashboard - every property, every paint state, every next-due date, every previous spend, in one view the agent can also access through a portal. The property-maintenance-specific moment: the round is the entire business in volume, and the anniversary is what makes it inevitable rather than optional. The longer version lives at Recurring Service Recall; the decorator version’s distinct features are the 24-month HMO / 36-month AST / 60-month exterior defaults and the multi-property portfolio dashboard exposed to the agent.
2. Three-way comms thread - tenant, agent, landlord, one record
The “why didn’t you tell me” moment: tenant at 14 Coppice Road texts you direct at 9pm about a chipped skirting; agent’s helpdesk emails the same issue the next morning; landlord rings Tuesday wanting to know why you used Crown Trade rather than Wickes own-label. Each of them thinks they’re the only one who told you; none of them know what the others know.
Solved looks like: one ticket, three audiences, three voices. The tenant’s inbound (SMS, WhatsApp, or a tenant-side portal) creates a ticket; the agent’s helpdesk email goes to the same ticket; the landlord’s question gets answered from the same record. Each audience gets the status update they actually want - the tenant gets a tradesman-voice SMS (“booked in for Tuesday between 9 and 11, will text on the way”), the agent gets a structured portal update (“P3 chipped skirting, attended Tuesday 09:42, touch-up Crown Trade Magnolia drum batch 4471 - deduct from monthly retainer or per-job invoice, your choice”), the landlord gets a Tuesday-evening digest with the photo-evidence and the next-action recommendation. The “why didn’t you tell me” loop is the source of half the agent-and-landlord friction, and the friction is what breaks contract renewals in November. The build makes all three look at the same record while reading it in their own voice. Same three-way-comms shape the plumbers/lettings spoke runs on the plumbing side, tuned for the decorator’s per-room colour log.
3. Agent-portfolio batch invoicing + agent-side portal
The Friday-afternoon-copy-paste moment: Friday afternoon, copy-paste twelve property lines into Xero for one agent’s batch; bookkeeper queries one line; the whole batch holds; you don’t get paid on the 28th and the next month’s payroll run drops you off the panel.
Solved looks like: invoices go out as a single per-agent batch on the 1st with the cost-coding the bookkeeper recognises, the per-property breakdown the property manager expects, the per-room paint-spec notes alongside the cost lines, and a one-line query workflow that resolves the “this line doesn’t look right” moment as a five-minute self-service exchange instead of a Tuesday morning lost on the phone. The decorator-distinct piece is per-room line items with paint-spec notes and variance-against-last-visit captures - the agent’s bookkeeper can see at a glance why the woodwork was two coats this visit and one last time. The chase clock starts from the agent’s stated payment date, not the invoice date - day 14 after the agent’s payment date is the first chase; day 30 escalates with the statutory-interest line citing the Late Payment of Commercial Debts (Interest) Act 1998. The longer version lives at Invoice & Dunning Ladder; same engine pattern as the plumbers/lettings spoke, tuned for the decorator’s per-room paint-spec line items.
4. Between-tenancy scheduling + the agent’s turnover calendar
The “tenant moves out Friday, you start Monday” moment: “Agent wants me in Monday week 3 for a three-day refresh on the AST that’s vacant. Tenant doesn’t move out until Friday week 2. The cleaner needs Saturday, the inventory clerk needs the following Monday. By the time I’m in, my whole week shifts.”
Solved looks like: between-tenancy scheduling as a shared timeline between the agent and you. The agent updates the move-out date on their portal - the engine recalculates your start date with the agent’s required cleaner / inventory-clerk / EICR / Gas Safe sequencing built in. Slips on the tenant’s end auto-cascade - your three-day refresh moves to Tuesday-Thursday, the agent’s downstream sequencing updates, the new tenant’s move-in date stays on plan. SMS confirmations to all parties on each change. The decorator-side diary fills around the cascade; you’re not the bottleneck, you’re the scheduled trade. The property-maintenance-specific moment: between-tenancy is the agent’s schedule, not yours, and the build is shaped around making the agent’s move dictate your slot rather than your slot dictate theirs.
5. The HMO + AST maintenance trail + colour-code log that’s still there in two years
The EHO-came-round moment: “EHO came round to one of the HMOs in March. Wanted the maintenance trail - last paint date, last electrical, last gas. I’ve got the paint dates on my phone, the agent’s got the others. Five emails later, the EHO leaves. And then the tenant marked the lounge wall in October and rang for a touch-up - Crown Trade what? - couldn’t remember and had to pop round to the agent’s office to check the inventory photo.”
Solved looks like: the maintenance trail per property as a structured object - last paint date + scope + paint brand + colour code + drum batch + sheen; the agent-side certificates (EICR, CP12, Legionella ACoP L8) cross-referenced where the agent grants access; HMO licensing dates where applicable. EHO audit-view exposes the relevant trail with one URL the agent shares; the landlord gets a quieter version for his own portfolio records. The colour-code log feeds “touch-up later” references - when a tenant marks the wall in October, you don’t need to remember whether it was Crown Trade Magnolia or Dulux Almond White from 22 months ago; one tap and the right tin’s already on the van. Per-room paint code + brand + sheen + drum batch where available, kept against the property record indefinitely. The property-maintenance-specific moment: the HMO licensing regime treats the maintenance trail as compliance evidence, and the build is shaped around making the trail available to the right audience without sharing what doesn’t need to be shared - and around making the per-room colour code one tap two years later when the tenant chips the skirting.
Closest builds we’ve shipped
- HC Electricaldifferent trade, same Suffolk trade-chassis with the EICR-and-letting-agent flow on the electrical side. The reference for how the agent-portfolio + batch-invoice + maintenance-trail pattern runs in a Suffolk trade business. (Pull-quote held behind the permission checklist; see Hc Electrical.)
- mendbuddythe multi-channel AI agent platform behind the three-way comms triage in problem 2 and the tenant-side scheduling triage. Voice + SMS + WhatsApp + web chat, three different audiences, one record. See Mendbuddy.
- PlanPostour social-media scheduling SaaS, the platform behind the Before / After Engine on the main decorators page. On the landlord-portfolio side, the per-property colour-log + photo-set ports straight onto PlanPost as the canonical asset store, even when nothing is being posted publicly. See Planpost.
A named property-maintenance-decorator case study isn’t yet in the portfolio. When one lands and clears permission, it’ll appear here.
FAQ
Will the round manager spam my landlords with reminders?
No. One nudge per property per anniversary, in your voice. Landlords with multiple properties get a single quarterly digest covering all upcoming repaint windows, not per-property pings.
Will the agent’s existing helpdesk (Fixflo / Propertyfile / ARPM) integrate?
Fixflo and Propertyfile both expose a feed; we read incoming tickets and write status updates back so the agent’s portal stays the system of record on their side. Where the agent runs a closed system, the integration is one-way (ticket in, batch invoice out) and the comms loop on the tenant and landlord side runs on our chassis alongside.
Can the colour-code log handle Pantone / RAL / brand-specific codes for re-touch later?
Yes. Per-room paint code + brand + sheen + drum batch where available, kept against the property record indefinitely. Two years later when a tenant marks the wall, the code is one tap and the right tin is on the van.
My agent pays on the 28th. Will the chase respect that?
Yes. The chase clock starts from the agent’s stated payment date, not the invoice date. Day 14 after the agent’s payment date is the first chase; day 30 escalates with the statutory-interest line citing the Late Payment of Commercial Debts (Interest) Act 1998.
Can the maintenance trail share with the agent’s portal without exposing my other clients’ data?
Yes. Per-agent access is scoped to that agent’s properties - the portal shows nothing else. Same posture per landlord on the landlord-side portal.
Will you handle the EHO audit pack on the HMO licensing side?
We build the trail, the photo evidence and the cross-reference to the EICR / CP12 / Legionella records the agent grants access to. The audit pack assembles on demand for the EHO visit. The HMO licensing responsibility itself stays with the landlord and the agent - we make the evidence accessible at the right moment.
Will you handle the TDS / DPS deposit-deduction dispute paperwork?
The colour-log + photo-set + inventory-cross-reference gives the agent the evidence to argue the dispute; the dispute itself runs through the TDS / DPS scheme on the agent’s side, not on yours.
What does it cost?
Every build is scoped per firm - depends on agent count, property count, whether the between-tenancy scheduling and the round manager are both in scope. We talk it through, agree price in writing. See pricing.
Up to the hub
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Tell us about the portfolio
What agents you cover, what property count, what mix (HMO common-parts / AST refresh / commercial), where the anniversary nudge is breaking, where the three-way comms is dropping the ball. Send an enquiry - we’ll sketch what we’d build.