Maintenance requests start in the tenant portal and end with a vendor directory entry you can track cost against. This article covers both sides: what a tenant submits, and how you review, assign, and close the work.
How tenants submit a request
From their portal, a tenant fills in:
- A title and description of the issue
- A priority: low, medium, high, or emergency
- A category: plumbing, electrical, HVAC, appliance, structural, painting, flooring, pest control, general, or other
- Optional photos
The request appears in your dashboard as soon as it's submitted, with the tenant's chosen priority and category attached.
AI triage and priority
After a request is submitted, Tenvale runs an AI triage step over it. Triage reads the title and description and records a suggested category and priority alongside the request — for example, suggesting "high" on a "medium" plumbing request whose description points to active water damage. The tenant's original selections stay on the work order itself; nothing changes unless you change it. When triage's suggestion is higher than the tenant's chosen priority, your work order list highlights it so you can decide whether to act on it.
Your workflow: review, assign, track, close
Once a request lands in your work order list, the flow is:
- Review the request, its priority, category, and any photos.
- Assign a vendor from your vendor directory.
- Track cost against the property as the vendor's work is billed.
- Close the work order once the repair is done.
You can revisit a work order at any point before closing it — reassign the vendor, adjust priority, or add notes as the situation develops.
The vendor directory
Your vendor directory holds one entry per vendor, with:
- Company name and contact information
- Specialty
- Rating
- Hourly rate
- Notes
- W-9 status: not requested, requested, or on file
- Tax classification
The W-9 status and tax classification fields feed directly into the 1099-NEC report described below, so keep them current on each vendor as you go.
Vendor payments feed the 1099-NEC report
Costs you track against a vendor through the work order flow roll up into your vendor's payment total for the year. Combined with the W-9 status and tax classification on that vendor's directory entry, this becomes the basis for the 1099-NEC report — which flags vendors whose year-to-date payments cross the IRS filing threshold. See Expenses & Reports for how that report works and what it does (and doesn't) do for you at filing time.
Need help?
Email support@tenvale.com if a triage decision looks wrong, or if a work order or vendor record isn't behaving as described here.