When has a missing record actually cost you money?

Question

A record doesn't actually get tested on a normal Tuesday.

It gets tested during a security deposit dispute, an eviction, an insurance claim, or when you're handing the portfolio to someone else. Every one of those moments asks the same question. Show me everything that happened at this unit. And it usually asks months or years after the fact, not while anything's still fresh in memory.

Most tracking systems are built for the day to day. Few are built for the day someone actually challenges you on it.

Curious if anyone's had a record gap actually cost them in one of those moments. A deposit case you couldn't fully support, a claim that got denied because the documentation wasn't there. What happened.

Jim Johnson · Answer

I don’t have a specific case where I can say one missing record cost me $X, but security deposits are probably where I’d be most concerned about it. If you can’t produce the move-in condition, move-out photos, invoice, or work order supporting a charge, you may know exactly what happened and still have a hard time proving it. That’s usually when a small documentation gap suddenly has a dollar amount attached to it.

G. Brian Davis · Answer

Most of the time, nobody cares how well you documented a repair or tenant issue. Then a dispute or insurance claim comes up months later and you need to show exactly what happened.

I’d rather keep more records than I think I need. Photos, invoices, inspection reports and tenant communication are pretty easy to save as you go. Trying to piece everything together after the fact is a lot harder.

George Punnen · Answer

The one that stung for me was a deposit dispute early on. Tenant moved out, left real damage to a floor, I went to withhold it from the deposit and they pushed back..said it was already like that when they moved in. And I couldn't prove otherwise. I had a move-in checklist we'd both signed, but no photos and definitely no video. I gave most of the deposit back, because a checklist without images isn't evidence.

So now we video every turnover, our maintenance guy walks the whole unit narrating the date, and do the same at move-in before keys change hands. Timestamped, stored against that specific unit and lease. Since we started that we recover basically everything recoverable at turnover, because the chargeback shows up with a video attached and the tenant just doesn't argue.