How to Document Repairs for Commercial Tenants

A repair in an occupied commercial unit involves at least three parties with different memories:
you, the tenant, and whoever did the work. Each has a partial view, and each will remember it
slightly differently within a few months.

The moments when this matters are predictable. Dilapidations at the end of a term. A recurrence
of the same fault. A disagreement about who paid for what. An insurance question. In all of
them, the deciding factor is what was written down at the time.

Record five things per repair

• What the problem was — as reported, in the reporter's words, with a photograph where
  possible
• What was done — specifically enough that a stranger could understand it
• Who did it — the contractor or individual, not just the trade
• When — the dates of attendance and completion
• Who paid — and under what reasoning, where responsibility was not obvious

The fifth is the one most often omitted and the one most often needed. A repair with no record
of who paid becomes, at dilapidations, an argument in which both parties are sincerely
convinced.

Photograph before and after, in occupied space especially

The presence of a tenant's belongings, stock and fittings makes condition disputes more likely,
not less. Work in an occupied unit can be blamed for marks and damage that were already there.

Photographs of the working area before the contractor starts protect everyone — you, the
contractor, and the tenant. Take them from far enough back that the location is unambiguous.

Send the record to the tenant

This is the step that converts a private record into a shared one.

After a repair, send the tenant a short note: what was reported, what was done, when, by whom.
Two or three lines.

It takes a minute and it does two things. The tenant knows the matter is closed, which prevents
the follow-up chase. And if they disagree with any part, they say so now — while it can be
resolved — rather than in two years when neither of you can check.

Silence following that note is itself a useful record.

Keep the contractor's own paperwork

Invoices, job sheets, any report from the contractor. File them with your record rather than
separately in accounts.

Contractors sometimes note things you would not have thought to record: a component that will
need attention soon, a cause they suspect, an access problem. Those observations are often the
most valuable part of the file, and they are lost when the invoice is filed as a financial
document only.

File by unit, not by date

Filing by date answers what happened last March. Filing by unit answers what has ever happened
in unit three, which is the question you will have at renewal, at dilapidations, and when the
same fault reappears.

With a small portfolio this is a folder per unit and nothing more sophisticated.

Record the near-misses and the refusals

Two categories that are routinely left out and are disproportionately useful later:

Work you declined, and why. A tenant request refused as their responsibility, recorded with
the reasoning, prevents the same request arriving again in a different form.

Work that could not proceed — no access, tenant declined the appointment, stock in the way.
Without a record, a delay caused by access sits on your file as an unexplained gap and looks
like inaction.

Keep it long enough to cover the term

Retention should outlast the tenancy by a comfortable margin. The questions that need these
records cluster at the end of a term and shortly after, sometimes considerably after.

Decide a period and write it down. Storage is cheap; reconstructing a repair history is not
possible at all.

Use the file before renewal

Read the unit's file before negotiating a renewal or setting a rent. A unit that has been
expensive to maintain is a different commercial proposition from one that has not, and that is
information you already own but will not have in mind unless you look.

The same file also tells you which recurring problem is worth fixing properly rather than
patching again, which is usually the single best maintenance decision available in a small
portfolio.