Landlord and vendor reporting automation

Landlord and vendor reporting automation drafts monthly owner updates, end of financial year summaries and weekly campaign reports from read-only exports of your CRM and trust accounting system. A property manager or agent checks each draft and sends it. The automation never writes to trust records, which Victorian agents must reconcile monthly and keep for 7 years.

Owners judge an agency partly by how well it keeps them informed. The reports they want are mostly assembled from data the agency already holds: the rent statement, the maintenance log, inspection notes, lease dates and, for sellers, the campaign numbers. The work is in pulling it together and writing it up for each owner. That is the part this service automates.

What gets drafted

How a report is drafted

1. Read the data. The automation reads an export or an API feed from your property management software, trust accounting and CRM. Its access is read-only.
2. Check the numbers. Totals in the draft are compared with the totals in the source statement. If they disagree, the draft is held and the property manager is told which line is different.
3. Write the draft. It writes a plain, short update for each owner in your agency’s style: what was received, what was paid, what work was done, what is coming up.
4. Copy figures, do not calculate them. Money figures are copied from the statement, not worked out again. Where a figure is missing, the draft says so instead of estimating it.
5. Flag changes. It highlights anything unusual against the previous period, such as a missed rent payment, a large repair or a lease ending within your notice window.
6. Review queue. Drafts appear in a queue for the property manager or agent, who approves, edits or rejects each one.
7. Send and log. Approved reports go from the property manager’s own email in Microsoft 365 or Google Workspace, and a copy is logged against the owner in your CRM.

Trust money: what the automation never touches

Trust accounting is the most regulated part of an agency. Consumer Affairs Victoria’s guidance on accounting for trust money says agents must balance their trust accounts and prepare reconciliation statements each month, the principal agent must verify them within 14 days of month end, transactions must be recorded by the end of the next business day, and records must be kept for at least 7 years with electronic records backed up monthly. These obligations come from the Estate Agents Act 1980 and its regulations.

The reporting automation sits outside all of that. It has no write access to the trust ledger, it cannot receipt or disburse money, and it cannot change a statement. A report that does not match the ledger is held for a person. If you use Xero for the agency’s own business accounts (separate from trust), the automation can read it for internal management reports, but that is a different job from owner reporting.

End of financial year summaries for landlords

Landlords need their agent’s annual statement for their tax return. The ATO’s page on records for rental properties lists a statement from the property or managing agent as a record of rental income, lists property agent fees and repairs among expense records, and says records must be kept for 5 years.

The EOFY summary groups the year’s income and expenses using the same categories as your official annual statement, attaches that statement, and lists the maintenance invoices behind the repair total. It does not give tax advice or suggest what is deductible. That stays with the landlord’s accountant.

Vendor campaign reports

During a sales campaign, sellers want to know how many people enquired, how many inspected, what buyers said and how that compares with the price guide. The weekly draft pulls enquiry counts from your CRM, attendance from the inspection register, and feedback captured by your agents or by the AI handling sales enquiries.

In Victoria, Consumer Affairs Victoria says that if the estimated selling price stops being reasonable, the agent must tell the seller in writing and update the sales authority and advertising. When buyer feedback and offers sit well above the current estimate, the draft flags it for the agent. The agent decides whether the estimate needs revising; the report does not change it.

What you configure

• Which reports each owner or vendor receives, and how often.
• The data sources and export schedule for each report.
• Your agency’s tone, logo placement and sign-off for each property manager.
• Triggers for arrears, vacancy and lease expiry notices.
• Who approves each report type before it is sent.

What it does not do

• It does not alter, reconcile or approve anything in the trust account.
• It does not send a report without a person’s approval.
• It does not give tax, legal or investment advice.
• It does not invent market commentary. Market notes come from your property manager or agent.
• It does not replace the statements your trust accounting software issues; it explains them.

Cost and related pages

Reporting automation is scoped against your software and quoted separately from the answering plans, because the work depends on which exports and APIs your systems offer. The cost guide covers the answering plans, and the 90-day automation guide puts reporting last in a rollout, after the calls and inspections are settled. For the email side of reporting across other industries, see ai-email.au.

Inspection notes are one of the main inputs, so many agencies pair this with routine inspection scheduling. Send one de-identified owner statement through the quote form and we will return the draft update it would produce.