A busy move-in week
Eight tenancies started this week. Deposits were received for all of them. The lettings administrator registers them with the scheme, downloads the certificates and sends the information pack to the tenants. Except one tenancy was set up by a negotiator covering from another branch, the deposit came in on a different day from the rent, and it never reached the administrator's list.
Nobody notices until the end of the tenancy, when the landlord's deductions are questioned and someone checks the scheme.
Why deposits get missed
Deposit protection is a process with several steps and several people: money received, registered with the scheme such as DPS, TDS or mydeposits, certificate obtained, required information served to the tenant and anyone else it must go to, and proof of serving kept. Your compliance lead sets out what your process requires and within what time; this article does not give that advice.
The problem is practical. Deposits arrive by bank transfer with inconsistent references. Some tenancies are set up outside the normal route, such as renewals or tenant replacements. Some landlords hold deposits themselves on let-only tenancies, and your process for them is different. The administrator's list only works if every deposit reaches it.
| Step | Where it slips |
|---|---|
| Deposit received | Payment not matched to the tenancy |
| Registered with scheme | Tenancy set up outside the normal route |
| Required information served | Sent to lead tenant only, others missed |
| Proof of serving kept | Sent from a personal inbox, no record |
| Changes during tenancy | Tenant swap or top-up not re-registered |
What a missed deposit costs
Getting deposit protection wrong can have serious consequences for a landlord and for your agency's relationship with them, and it can affect what can be done at the end of the tenancy. Your adviser can tell you what the exposure is. The operational point is simple: a missed registration is usually discovered at the worst moment, when a tenancy is ending or in dispute, long after it could have been fixed.
Checking deposits by hand across a portfolio is also slow, so it tends to be done rarely, which is when gaps survive the longest.
The deposit tracker we build
- Start from the money: deposits are identified from your client account bank feed or lettings software and matched to tenancies. Unmatched deposit-sized payments are flagged.
- Checklist per deposit: each deposit gets a status for each step your process requires, with a due date calculated from the date your process counts from.
- Scheme link: where the scheme offers an API or bulk upload, registrations are prepared from the tenancy data for a person to submit, and certificates are fetched back.
- Serving documents: the information pack is generated from your template and sent to every tenant and relevant person named on the tenancy, with delivery recorded.
- Warnings: anything approaching its due date without the next step done appears on the administrator's list and, if still outstanding, the lettings manager's.
- Changes: tenant changes, renewals and deposit top-ups create new checklist items so they are not forgotten.
Nothing is submitted to a scheme or sent to tenants without your team's approval of the templates and the data.
What the lettings team sees
One list of deposits, each with its status, so the question of whether every deposit is protected has an answer on screen. Deposits set up outside the normal route are caught because the tracker starts from the money, not from a form. At the end of a tenancy, the certificate and proof of serving are already on the file.
A periodic check against the scheme's records confirms the two agree, which is the kind of reconciliation that rarely happens by hand.
Does this match your office?
- Deposit registration depends on one administrator's list.
- Deposits have been found unprotected at the end of a tenancy.
- Required information is sent from personal inboxes with no central record.
- Tenant changes mid-tenancy are not always reflected in the scheme.
- You have never reconciled your deposits against the scheme's records.