How Do Landlords Track Lease Start and End Dates?
The end date is the one that actually matters day to day.
Direct answer: Landlords track lease dates by recording the start and end date for each tenant in one place they can scan across their whole portfolio, rather than remembering individual dates or checking each paper agreement. The date that matters most day to day is the end date, since that's what determines when a lease needs renewing - a reliable system flags it in advance, commonly 30 and 7 days out, instead of requiring the landlord to check manually and risk missing it.
Why This Is Easy to Lose Track Of
A lease's start date is memorable - it's when a tenant moved in, usually alongside a payment and some paperwork. The end date is different: it can be eight, twelve, or twenty-four months away, and nothing about daily life reminds you it's approaching until it's suddenly close. With one tenant this is manageable by memory. With ten tenants across different move-in dates, the end dates are scattered unpredictably through the calendar, and there's no natural moment that prompts you to check any specific one.
What to Track for Each Lease
Beyond the obvious start and end date: the rent amount tied to that specific lease term (since it may change at renewal), the tenant and unit it belongs to, and whether it's been renewed before. A system that only stores the CURRENT end date loses the history the moment a lease renews - worth keeping a record that a renewal happened, not just overwriting the old date with the new one.
What About Leases Without a Fixed End Date
Some tenancies run month-to-month rather than on a fixed term - either by design, or because a fixed-term lease was never renewed with a new end date and quietly became an ongoing arrangement by default. These still need tracking, just differently: instead of one expiry date, the thing worth recording is the notice period either side needs to give to end it, and the date of the last rent period, so "are they still current" has a clear answer even without a fixed term hanging over it.
Tracking Renewals Over Time
Once a lease has been renewed once or twice, the useful record isn't just "the current end date" - it's the history of when it was renewed and what the rent was at each point. That history is what tells you, at a glance, whether a tenant has been with you two years or ten, and what their rent has actually done over that time, which matters for your own planning even when it isn't strictly needed day to day.
How Domby Helps
Every tenant's lease dates are stored against their record, and Domby checks them daily against today's date - not something you have to remember to do. At 30 days and again at 7 days before a lease ends, it raises an alert automatically (in-app, and by email and push on the Pro plan), and again if a lease actually passes its end date without being renewed or ended. Your Tenants view can also filter straight to "expiring soon" or "expired" leases across every property at once, so the answer to "which of my leases need attention this month" doesn't require checking each tenant individually.
FAQ
30 days gives enough time to have the renewal conversation and get paperwork sorted; 7 days is a last check before the date actually passes. Domby raises both automatically.
Nothing happens automatically to the tenancy itself, but you lose the advance-notice window to renew cleanly or plan for the unit to turn over. If it's already passed, Domby marks it as expired and keeps alerting until you renew or end it.
Yes - lease dates are something you record as the landlord regardless of whether the tenant ever logs in. A tenant's own account, if they have one, is a separate, optional layer on top of that.
One filtered view of your whole portfolio, rather than opening each property separately - that's the specific gap a shared spreadsheet or notebook usually can't close, since it has no concept of "today" until you look at it.
Related guides
See how landlords renew a lease, how landlords end a lease agreement, and the full landlord rent collection guide for the process this fits into. See also how landlords create a tenancy agreement, how much notice a landlord must give in Nigeria, and how landlords manage multiple rental properties. Browse all landlord guides.
Never miss a lease expiry date again. Create a free account and add your first property in minutes.