Tenvale sets up your organization, properties, tenants, and leases through a single onboarding wizard. This article walks through each step and what happens after you finish.
Sign up
Go to tenvale.com and start a free trial. The trial runs 30 days, does not require a credit card, and allows up to 100 units while it's active. See pricing for current plans.
After you create your account, you land directly in the onboarding wizard. There's no empty dashboard to poke around first.
The onboarding wizard
The wizard has seven steps.
- Organization. Enter your organization name and accept the terms of service. Your 30-day trial starts here. If you'd rather explore before entering real data, click "Try Tenvale with sample data." This seeds your account with 3 properties, 5 units, 3 tenants, and 3 leases, plus 2 sample work orders, and takes you straight to the dashboard.
- First property. Enter the property address, type, and number of units. State defaults to Massachusetts; change it if your property is elsewhere.
- Units. For each unit, enter the unit number, bedroom count, and monthly rent.
- Tenants. Add each tenant's name (required) and email (optional).
- Leases. Link a tenant to a unit, set the monthly rent, and set the start and end dates. Dates default to today through one year out; adjust the range if needed.
- Payments (Stripe Connect). This step redirects you to Stripe's hosted onboarding to connect a bank account, which takes about 5–10 minutes and requires your bank details and a form of ID. If you're not ready, use the "Skip — I'll set up rent collection later" link. Keep in mind that tenants cannot pay online until this step is complete.
- Complete. This screen checks your live Stripe Connect status. A green "all set" message means charges, payouts, and account details are all enabled and tenants can pay you now. An amber message means something is still missing, with a pointer to Settings → Payments to finish it.
A note on tenant invites
If you enter an email address for a tenant in step 4, Tenvale sends that tenant their portal invite right away. You don't need to trigger it separately. The tenant's page in your dashboard will show "Invite sent" with the date, and the button changes to "Resend Invite." Check for that before clicking "Send Invite" again, so you don't send a duplicate.
What happens on the 1st of the month
Once a lease is active, Tenvale generates its rent bill automatically on the 1st of each month, due the same day. You don't need to create bills manually. See Rent Collection & Fees for how tenants pay and how payouts reach your bank.
Checking your Stripe Connect status later
If you skipped payments during onboarding, or the Complete step showed the amber "finish rent collection setup" message, go to Settings → Payments at any time to pick up where you left off. Tenants cannot use Pay Now, and autopay cannot run, until your Stripe Connect account shows charges, payouts, and details all enabled.
Need help?
If a step in the wizard isn't behaving as described here, email support@tenvale.com with the step number and what you're seeing.