How to Onboard a Tenant in 60 Seconds With a Lease PDF
Most property management tools make you type in tenant details, property info, lease dates, and payment terms by hand. Keywise reads your lease document and does it all for you — building, unit, tenant, and payment schedule created in a single flow.
The data entry problem
You already have a signed lease. It contains the tenant's name, the property address, the unit number, the rent amount, the security deposit, the lease start and end dates, and the late fee terms. All of that information is sitting in a PDF on your computer or in your email.
So why should you have to type it all in again? With most property management software, you do — field by field, screen by screen. It takes 5–10 minutes per tenant, and if you're onboarding multiple units at once, you're looking at an afternoon of data entry.
How lease-to-tenant onboarding works
Keywise's “Onboard a Unit” wizard now supports a single upload-to-done flow:
- Upload your lease PDF (or a photo of a paper lease). Keywise's AI reads the document and extracts tenant name, address, unit number, rent, deposit, dates, and late fee terms.
- Confirm the extracted data. The wizard shows you what it found — each field is editable if the AI got something wrong or the lease was ambiguous.
- Building and unit are matched or created automatically. If your building already exists in Keywise, the wizard matches it. If the unit doesn't exist yet, you can create it inline without leaving the wizard.
- Payment schedule is generated. Based on the rent amount, due day, and lease end date, Keywise creates pending payment records from today forward.
- Invite your tenant. Send an email or SMS invitation so they can view their lease, pay rent, and message you through Keywise.
What gets created automatically
After you click “Complete Setup,” Keywise creates all of the following in one step:
- Building record — if this is a new property, the building is created with address, type, and any mortgage/insurance costs you entered.
- Unit record — the unit is created under the building with beds, baths, sqft, and rent. If the building already exists, only the unit is added.
- Lease record — all extracted terms are saved, including the verbatim late fee clause from your lease.
- Lease document — the original PDF is stored in your document vault, linked to the tenant and lease for later retrieval.
- Payment schedule — pending payment records are generated from today through the lease end date.
Multi-unit buildings and new properties
The wizard handles every combination:
- New building + new unit: Both are created. The AI extracts the address and unit number from the lease so you don't have to type them.
- Existing building + new unit: The wizard recognizes your building and shows an inline form to create the unit — pre-filled with the extracted unit number, beds, and baths.
- Existing building + existing unit: The wizard matches both and pre-selects them in the dropdowns. You just click Continue.
- Single-family home (no unit number): The unit number field is optional. The building and unit are still created, just without a unit designator.
Duplicate prevention is built in — if you try to create a unit that already exists at that building, the wizard warns you and lets you select the existing one instead.
Try it now
Log in to Keywise and click “Onboard a Unit” in the sidebar. Drop your lease PDF and watch the wizard do the rest.