Add a property and say who it's for

You can add an address on its own, before you know whose it is — a survey, a job someone has only rung about, a rental a landlord is about to buy. But most of the time you do know, and now you can say so as you add it.

Add one

1. Go to Properties and tap New Property.
2. Find the address. Type the postcode and pick the right line, or type it out by hand if it is not on the list.
3. Give it a label if it helps — "Flat 2", "The Old Mill", "Manchester Branch". Optional.
4. Who pays the bill. Pick the customer. Optional, but worth doing.
5. Say what they are to the place: Owner, Landlord, Tenant, Agent or Contact. It starts on Owner.
6. Who lets you in. Leave it if that's the same person. On a rental it usually isn't — tap Add tenant.
7. Tap Add property.

Why it is worth picking the customer

An address with nobody on it is an address you cannot invoice and cannot ring about access. The property page will tell you so, but only after you have driven there. Picking the customer at the point you add it is ten seconds now instead of a puzzle in three months.

It shows you what they already have

The moment you pick a customer, Mucka lists the properties already on them — "Gary Thompson has 3 properties", with the addresses under it. Tap one to go straight there.

That is there to stop you adding the same address twice. It matters most when you have typed an address by hand without a postcode, because that is exactly the case where Mucka cannot check for a duplicate itself. Two copies of one address means the job history splits down the middle, and neither half tells you the whole story.

Who pays the bill, and who lets you in

Two different questions, and on a rental they have two different answers. The landlord pays you; the tenant is the one who has to be in when you turn up.

Tap Add tenant and you get three choices:

• Same as who pays the bill — the ordinary job at somebody's own home. Nothing else to record.
• New person — the tenant. Their name, and their phone number if you have it. They're kept on the property and never appear in your customer list, because they're not somebody you invoice.
• One of your customers — for when the person at the property is also somebody you bill, which usually means a managing agent.

Why the tenant's number is worth typing

If you turn on Text the tenant, not the landlord (Settings → Customer messages), the "on my way" and appointment texts go to whoever is actually at the address. That only works if there's a tenant with a phone number recorded against the property. No tenant on file and the text goes to the person paying the bill, which on a rental is somebody sat at work who cannot let your engineer in.

The tenant can also be added later from the property page, under Who's here now.

Landlords are ordinary customers

You do not have to mark somebody as a business to give them several properties. A landlord with three rentals is usually just a bloke you invoice by name, and that is fine — residential customers get the same properties list on their record as a company does.

Whether somebody is residential or commercial is about how you bill and name them, not how many addresses they have. What says "this is their rental rather than their house" is the relationship you pick on each property.

Their main property

If the customer has no properties yet, the one you are adding becomes their main one — the address their bills go to.

If they already have some, you get a Make this their main property tick box, off by default. Ticking it moves the flag off whichever one holds it now.

Several people at one address

A property can have more than one customer on it at once, and often should: the landlord who pays you, the letting agent who books you in, the tenant who lets you in. Add the ones who are your customers here, and add anyone who is not a customer as a person on the property instead — see Add tenants and people to a property.

Ask Mucka instead

You can just say it:

• "Add 14 Oak Drive, M6 5FW for Gary Thompson"
• "Put 12 Wilbraham Road onto Brookfield Lettings as the landlord" — if the address is already on the books, Mucka attaches it to them rather than making a second copy
• "Take Brookfield off 56 Palatine Road" — if more than one customer is on that address, Mucka will ask which one you mean rather than guessing

A whole site at once

New-build work arrives as a run of plot numbers, and adding them one at a time is an afternoon. Say it as a list and Mucka does the lot:

• "Create plot 73 to plot 139 as site addresses on Ludlow under Pickstock Homes"

Up to 50 in one go. Ask for more and Mucka will tell you how it is splitting them and carry on until they are all in. Give it the site postcode if you have one — that is what lets Mucka tell a plot you already have from one you don't, so re-running the same list attaches to what is there rather than doubling the site up.

Managing them from the customer's record

With the Multi-site clients skill switched on, a customer's record grows a Properties section where you can add and edit them without going via the Properties page. If it is off, everything above still works — you just do it from Properties, and the customer's page lists what they have without letting you edit it there.